Knights' Tale

Last week, for the first time in six years, Dallas officials in charge of preservation and development stepped foot in the Knights of Pythias Temple and were displeased with what they saw. They discovered, to their horror but not surprise, two holes in the roof and evidence of considerable water damage on the floors. Wood was rotting, and interior bricks were damp from the lack of ventilation. The adjoining two-story building, once part of the Union Bankers complex, allowed easy rooftop access into the historic building, meaning that anyone who could get to the top of the smaller structure could get inside the old temple.

Only, according to both Mark Doty, the city's historic district planner, and Preservation Dallas' Katherine Seale, the building's owners insist they had no idea it's a landmark. According to both, during separate interviews, the woman who let them into the temple told them, "We weren't sure it was a historic landmark." Which is difficult to believe: The "we" is Westdale Asset Management, which purchased the building for between $4 million and $5 million in April 1998 with the intention of turning it into a "mixed-use development," as The Dallas Morning News reported back then. Westdale had earlier converted the Adam Hat Factory on Canton Street into apartments. Of course they know it's historic.

That hasn't stopped Westdale from letting the building rot, so much so that Doty and Seale were touring the property to see if it had become a victim of "demolition by neglect." According to an earlier "demolition by neglect" study, the city determined in July 2001 that "the building is not watertight and is exposed to the weather elements" but apparently did little to pressure Westdale into fixing the problems. Doty insists the city won't let that happen again.

"We will look over their shoulder and put them on notice," he says, adding that he wants Westdale to have fixed the problems no later than February, lest he refer the building to the City Attorney's Office. In a letter he sent to Westdale last week, Doty said that "if the issues mentioned above and in particular, the holes in the roof are not corrected immediately, the building will continue to deteriorate."

Westdale's vice president (and former SMU quarterback) Chuck Hixson sent Doty a brief response that said, "We will set a course of action to address your concerns and meet your suggestions. Thank you for taking time to review the property and for providing helpful suggestions." This is the same Hixson who's prone to hanging up on reporters who ask questions about historic landmarks such as the Pythian Temple.

Of course, there have been promises made concerning this property before. In 1996 Dallas developers Cliff Booth and Randy Moses of Southwest Properties Group promised a $15 million development on the site, which was to house retail, restaurants and offices. There was even a news conference announcing the project, and Govenar was brought in to help research the building's history so it could be restored to its former glory. Then...nothing.

Three years later there once again came the whisper of great things: Brady and Brandt Wood—owners of Trees, the Green Room, Jeroboam and the Gypsy Tea Room—were going to convert the entire block into a gargantuan hotel-residential-retail-office complex called, naturally, Epic. Sources close to the project say they wound up spending close to $200,000 on the plans, which would have used the temple as a hotel complete with café, pool and a rehabbed ballroom.

The plans, which Brandt Wood has kept close at hand all these years later, are extravagant—evidence of the involvement of New York-based Rockwell Group, the architectural firm responsible for everything from the W Hotel in Manhattan to Cirque du Soleil in Orlando; Dallas-born designer Todd Oldham, who was hired to make the interiors sparkle; and Dallas-based Corgan Associates, which has rehabbed, among others, the Kirby, Wilson and Davis buildings downtown. In short, imagine Victory Park transplanted onto a single block of Elm Street.

But a downturn in the local economy in 2000 put the project on hold. September 11, 2001, put the project in a box. And then came the new hotels—downtown, Uptown, all over town. Brandt Wood says the W almost chose the temple as its local location in 2002, but instead settled on Victory Park.

"We wanted to preserve the historic features of the hotel," but ultimately, Wood says, the plans were simply "too glamorous" for Deep Ellum. "We dreamt bigger than Deep Ellum could support," Wood says.

Karl Stundins, in the city's Office of Economic Development, says that a small, unnamed company was considering making the temple its headquarters earlier this year, but "it wasn't able to work out a deal with Westdale." It's a common story: Folks get interested in the Knights of Pythias Temple, only to walk away at the end of the day.