If there is a point of reconciliation between high-rise development and neighborhood preservation, McGregor isn't sure where it would fall. "What do you do? I don't know," he says.
CityDesign Studio's plan centralizes high-rise development south of Singleton Boulevard. Buildings would increase in height gradually from La Bajada so it doesn't appear as though the neighborhood is surrounded by a giant wall. McGregor attended the CityDesign Studio meetings with residents, but his feelings toward the final plan are mixed: "Some of [the ideas] are good, some of them we don't agree with." As to which are which, he's fairly vague. "I haven't thought about it that much lately...They put townhouses up against the railroad tracks. Well, that's not going to fly. I mean, that's just an example." Later he says that "density" and "heights" were points of contention between his plan and the city's.
Danny Fulgencio
Felix Losada advocates preserving Bajada for single-family homes.
Danny Fulgencio
CityDesign Studio director Brent Brown designed the surrounding plans for the future of West Dallas.
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But it may not matter anyway. "It didn't influence our plans whatsoever," McGregor says. "We had plans before they existed." CityDesign Studio was created eight years after West Dallas Investments began buying in the area.
"When somebody comes along and tells you how to do something, you say, 'To hell with you. You go do it,'" he says, drumming his hands on the table, adding that by "somebody" he means, "Oh, just anybody."
Nevertheless, he says he feels a duty to develop the area responsibly. "We have to set a standard that will be a benefit to the city for the future...We're not looking at a quick nickel or something. That's not our agenda at all."
Though their means and motivations may differ, McGregor, like Brown, sees this as a progressive step for Dallas. "West Dallas isn't West Dallas...This is Dallas. This is the future of Dallas, it's not just West Dallas," McGregor says. He and his business partners, Phil Romano and Stuart Fisk, originally wanted to call their company "Long Term Investments," but the name was taken. The three partners met because their children go to school together, and they plan on this project benefiting their children more than themselves.
Monte Anderson, another area developer who is also a real estate broker and the owner of the Belmont Hotel and Smoke restaurant in Oak Cliff, also takes a long-term approach. "My mission is to build better communities...for seven generations," Anderson says. "What I build is for my great-granddaughter's grandkids." When Anderson discusses development, it sounds like a spiritual experience, and in the case of West Dallas, that would make CityDesign Studio his religious guide. "I think that plan is one of the most progressive, unbelievable beginnings of any plan or plans I've ever seen," he says. "The plan implemented and followed through will be incredible...It will be very soulful. It will be a soulful place." Anderson grew up in Oak Cliff and has made it his mission to improve southern Dallas County. "I make my money rebuilding old properties," he says. The Texas Theatre and the restored Bishop Arts firehouse, now Gloria's restaurant, were his projects.
He purchased the Belmont Hotel on St. Patrick's Day 2004, when it was a "fleabag," and he reopened it in 2005 as a trendy boutique hotel. He included a hotel bar with a patio furnished with reclaimed wood benches and tables. Anderson is a master of turning down-and-out spaces into desirable and profitable hangouts. He's working with another local landowner to create a mobile marketplace along the Fort Worth Avenue side of the trailer park less than a mile down the street from the Belmont. "We'll have an insurance office, snow-cone stand, shoe repair, just general services," he says. And these businesses will all be housed in trailers. "It's a portable space for small entrepreneurs," he says. "I'm obsessed with small, affordable, cool spaces."
His preferred method of development is to consider the culture of an existing neighborhood and fill in the voids with new businesses and improved neighborhood spaces or "figure out what the missing parts are." His ideal neighborhood is a mix of cultures and incomes. "Any time you build a neighborhood with cul-de-sacs and all the same income level lives there, you've failed," Anderson says. This is why he favors slowing gentrification in La Bajada. "I think we evolve as humans, and it allows us to evolve and not just throw us out of our house overnight...So, if the overlay helps that process, I would be in favor of it," Anderson says. He hasn't given the possible outcomes of an NSO enough thought to wholeheartedly stand behind it, but he would like to see the neighborhood preserved, even down to the style of "old cottage" homes.
"It's really about creating walkable, sustainable—when I say 'sustainable,' that doesn't only mean environmentally sustainable, but economically sustainable. I'm interested in the evolution of land, of what it can be today," Anderson says. He identifies himself as a "hardcore New Urbanist" who's worked within these basic tenets since before he even heard the phrase. New Urbanism centers on creating walkable, mixed-use communities with integrated commercial and retail locations. "We're all made for something, and I was made for this," Anderson says. Not surprisingly, Beasley, who worked with the CityDesign Studio, is known around the world as a leader of New Urbanism.
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