Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

Dallas restaurateur and entrepreneur Mike Hoque has purchased about 15 acres on Corinth Street at Cesar Chavez Boulevard for redevelopment.

The purchase includes the shuttered Pilgrim's Pride plant south of downtown.

Hoque - who owns several successful downtown restaurants and businesses - said he wants to redevelop the land as a mixed-use project.

"There is an opportunity to build affordable housing there," he said. "A lot of people are being pushed out of Deep Ellum because rents for apartments and art studios are going up. It's the same thing in the Design District."

Renovation that begin Monday will transform the Ambassador Hotel into loft apartments with shops, restaurants, a swimming pool and once again, the speakeasy bar.

Lake is starting work to transform the historic building into 103 "micro" apartments.
"They will average around 500 square feet," Lake said. "We started demolition on the project today. We are officially underway."

was touted as the city's "first suburban luxury hotel."

exelone31 wrote:I had forgotten they were going to be small units, which I think it pretty cool, especially if that brings the price point into a pretty reasonable range.

exelone31 wrote:Wasn't there something listed before about an underground tunnel that connected the Ambassador to somewhere in the Cedars? Does anyone happen to know if that still exists? If it connects to Four Corners, that'd be an AWESOME amenity to feature.

This evening, three development teams will take the stage at Gilley's in The Cedars to pitch their community-focused projects in front of a live audience in the inaugural The Real Estate Council (TREC) version of Shark Tank.

If all goes well for the participants, the teams have the opportunity to walk away with $2.5 million of investment capital from some of North Texas' most well-known real estate investors and developers.

And they could score funding from Cuban, who is getting in on the action by offering his support through Shark Tank and his celebrity as an investment shark. The exposure could benefit the proposed projects and future projects in southern Dallas.

DPatel304 wrote:So basically it's too wide to deck? I have seen that there are a lot of weird on-ramps, but, potentially those could be reconfigured to make this more feasible?

But you're right, this is a pretty ugly stretch of highway, and this project would be much harder than KWP. I guess my original point was that, would this be harder than tunneling/demolishing I-345? We've been talking about I-345 lately, but, by comparison, this seems to be easier (doesn't really mean it's a piece of cake or anything).

And no, I definitely wouldn't expect any development on top of it. Seem unnecessary, considering how much develop-able land there is around it.

muncien wrote:That mess from Cesar Chavez to St Paul is precisely why this needs to be done. Doesn't TxDOT have a plan for this corridor that already involves reworking these ramps? I'm not talking about the full relocation plan either... I don't think that current configuration is long for this world.

joshua.dodd wrote:I've also read that TxDOT has gone as far as to propose a twenty year plan of completely rerouting the 30 corridor away from Downtown, which would connect the Cedars back to the CBD. If they follow through with that plan, 45 would T near the Trinity River.

jrd1964 wrote:The 7-Eleven store/Mobil station on S. Lamar (next to South Lamar Flats) is coming along. Looks like it's not far from opening. Gas pumps are installed, signs are in place and lit up. I guessing this store will do well, as there really isn't anything else in that immediate area for those in the South Side part of the Cedars.

Might this be an alternative to putting in that proposed 7-Eleven with gas pumps that was planned for St. Paul between the Stewpot and the Bridge? Or are there still plans for the St. Paul store?

DBadger wrote:/\
Maybe this? Although this article is quite old but it fits the description.
Intown did all the townhomes by Farmers Market.
https://dallas.towers.net/2016/11/09/in ... -district/

cowboyeagle05 wrote:There are already good pockets all over the Cedars and good bones between all the generic warehouses built over the decades. Akard and Ervay both have great potential strips of old buildings waiting for new revival into a street long active area like Davis street in Oak Cliff or Magnolia in Fort Worth.

itsjrd1964 wrote:Didn't know about this, but the Nylo Hotel on Lamar is now Canvas Hotel Dallas (https://canvashoteldallas.com/).

(A Google of the other Nylo properties finds the others have changed as well, with the Plano, Las Colinas, and Providence-Warwick, RI hotels becoming Tapestry Collection by Hilton properties, and the NYC hotel has flipped to a different local name, Arthouse Hotel NYC. So it looks like the chain and the brand has poofed. The website for Nylo even redirects to the Tapestry hotel in Plano's website.)

https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/nyl ... l-11417141
https://www.interstatehotels.com/2018/1 ... ry-1-2019/

Before work begins, Lake needs Dallas City Hall to give him a street — the stretch of South St. Paul coming out of downtown across Interstate 30. In Lake's plan, St. Paul would be gated off at East Griffin Street and turned into the Ambassador's new driveway — no one in or out save for residents and their guests. The road would no longer merge back into Ervay, into that concrete tangle that makes driving that stretch of the Cedars confusing even to the Dallas born-and-bred.

To accommodate that ask, East Griffin between Ervay and St. Paul will have to be two-wayed. So, too, will Ervay coming out of downtown. That will require new signage and new signals.

And none of that can happen without approval from the City Plan Commission and the Dallas City Council.

City officials like the idea of sorting out the mess of roads. Michael Rogers, the city's newish transportation director, said Thursday that the prerequisite public hearing is penciled in for the end of February or early March.

DPatel304 wrote:Sounds like everything is on hold right now, until they can come to some agreement regarding the roads here. Anyone with some insight/thoughts on these changes? I generally don't drive a lot in the urban core, and rarely make it out to the Cedars, so I'm almost always on board for reducing roads and getting rid of one-ways.

Dallas bar owners partner up to create new dive bar in the Cedars District
Two young Dallas bar owners have joined forces to open a bar together.

The new bar is called Mike's Gemini Twin and it's a collaboration between Sam Wynne, co-owner of Braindead Brewing, and Pasha Heidari, owner of Bowen House.

Mike's is going into a space at 1902 S. Harwood St. that previously was home to a bar called El Granero, which has moved.