Can Urban Market make downtown relevant?
But it will be a hard slog. In the annals of urban living, downtown Dallas is a gritty frontier outpost. That's why Urban Market is a risky plunge into this paved hinterland. It's also why it is a necessity. Without it, the residential development project in the Interurban Building couldn't go forward, and the viability of downtown living would be dead in the gutter.
"Development is a lot about the perception game," says Alice Murray, former interim president of the Central Dallas Association. "So it was very important that a grocery store land in the downtown area...It was huge."
So huge that the Dallas City Council made it the linchpin in the tax increment financing package the council approved for development of the circa-1916 Interurban Building. The structure at 1500 Jackson Street had been abandoned and crumbling for nearly 20 years. Now, developers have transformed it into a 134-unit collection of downtown lofts and penthouses ranging from 600-square-foot cubby holes for roughly $750 per month, to 1,900-square-foot penthouses for $2,500 per month.
"Dallas isn't Manhattan. Yet," says Jeff Benton, property manager for the Interurban building. "L.A. is kind of like Dallas. They still haven't got the whole downtown thing down yet. But they're getting there."
Benton says the building is filling mostly with urban professionals and empty nesters. And the 20,000-square-foot Urban Market is part of the draw. "It is now a viable lifestyle," Benton says. "It really wasn't before. The people who lived downtown were hard core."
Urban Market is part of a $27.5 million Interurban Building renovation project spearheaded by Barker Nichols Real Estate. The venture is divided into three parts: the 134 residential living spaces, the grocery store and the attached 460-space parking garage.
"You can't convince people to live downtown, and say get in your car and drive to the suburbs to get a roll of Charmin paper," says Barker Nichols partner Craig MacKenzie. "This store is such a tremendous amenity that it's really driving our leasing business."
That's why the city granted them some $5 million in financial assistance and a 10-year property tax abatement worth close to $1 million. "The development agreement...required us to develop the grocery component," MacKenzie says. "And in order to start collecting the TIF money, we had to open the grocery for business." (TIFs use the growth in tax revenue from a neighborhood to help pay for community improvements and spur development.)
The grocery store was developed with lots of advice from Zambrana, a food retailing consultant who trudged in the grocery trenches with H.E. Butt Co., Wild Oats Markets and Whole Foods Market. In the 1980s, he dreamed up his own upscale food emporium in Chicago's ritzy Lincoln Park. Will that experience be enough? Digesting an investment that exceeded $4 million, the grocery store features a limited supply of everything from tea and cheese to bacon and performance snacks in roughly three categories: conventional, specialty and natural/organic. Urban Market stocks Angus beef and a broad range of varietal wines in the $15 and under category with a handful peeking over $20. The store also features a 98-seat café and full bar serving three meals per day with everything from breakfast tacos and biscuits and gravy to grilled Atlantic salmon. It's this restaurant-bar component that MacKenzie hopes will float the grocery store until it lurches into profitability.
"We're probably a couple of years premature," MacKenzie admits. "We're not stabilized. We're going to try and limit losses."
These growing pains are in addition to the birthing pains Urban Market suffered before the first deodorant stick was scanned. Barker Nichols initially tapped grocer Daniel Furr to bring the urban grocery store to life. Furr once operated two Fresh Approach grocery stores in Dallas in the 1980s before they collapsed. Under their agreement, Barker Nichols would develop the market, and Furr would raise capital, lease the space and operate the store. "There came a point in time where we had to make a commitment to the city that we would deliver what you see here today," says MacKenzie. "[Furr] tried very hard, but raising that kind of capital for this type of venture is very tough." So caught without an operator to run the store keeping their development structure intact, MacKenzie says they scrambled to find an operator, courting a klatch of established grocers including Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market and Central Market. "Frankly, there was very little interest," he says, explaining that current downtown dynamics and the demographics fell short of their business models. So they turned to Zambrana and made him a partner.
"The customer base is telling us this is heaven," Zambrana insists. "We are going to be the anchor for the future development here."
And that's the big hope of downtown boosters. With just 2,500 residents in households downtown, the residential density doesn't yet exist to make the grocery store viable. Zambrana says most of their traffic comes from the thousands of office workers who flood downtown during the day. To prosper, Urban Market needs ring up a consistent succession of $75-$100 grocery buys.
In Urban Market's favor, Kortny Penn, managing director of the Downtown Partnership, projects the number of downtown residents to double within the next 18 months. MacKenzie is even more optimistic. With the number of residential projects currently sketched on paper, he expects there may be as many as 10,000 downtown dwellers within five years. "It's the chicken before the egg," Penn says. "If you build it, they will come. " --Mark Stuertz
Controversy has dogged SMU adjunct professor Bryan Mark Rigg for the last year as he's traveled around the country promoting his second book, Rescued From the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe. (See "In the Wolf's Mouth," February 26, 2004).
His research has uncovered a little-known chapter of WWII history: soldiers of Jewish ancestry who served in the Nazi military. Published by Yale University Press, Rigg's book describes the dramatic 1940 rescue of Joseph Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement (the largest Hasidic community in the world), now based in Brooklyn, New York.
With the combined efforts of Lubavitchers in America, sympathetic politicians close to President Franklin Roosevelt and several highly placed Nazi soldiers, including the head of German military intelligence, Schneersohn's escape is an amazing tale.
Now optioned by a film producer, the story has been causing anger among Lubavitchers for its unflattering portrayal of Schneersohn.
Like Christian fundamentalists who blamed Katrina on New Orleans' sinful ways, Schneersohn called the Holocaust God's punishment of secular and reform Jews, Rigg says. Some Lubavitchers believed Schneersohn was the messiah and was thus without sin, able to hear God.
But historical documents, says Rigg, show Schneersohn suffered from illness, was intolerant of others, made mistakes and, when he had the chance, cared more about rescuing his 40,000-volume library than Jews still trapped in the Reich.
"It's like going to a Christian audience and saying, looking at the historic documents we have, Jesus never rose from the dead," Rigg says.
Of the estimated 200,000 hard-core Lubavitchers worldwide (more attend their schools and synagogues), several hundred families live in the Dallas area. On the Jewish Book Council tour, Rigg has lectured in more than 100 synagogues in the last year. But few Chabad centers would invite him to speak.
When Rigg spoke at Chabad House in Plano, a rabbi's wife upbraided him. At a Connecticut synagogue, a rabbi yelled at him and then walked out.
"They are saying to me that I can't question a guy that's perfect, because I'm imperfect," says Rigg. He always refers them to historical documents he uncovered in his research. "After I speak, they will go to their rabbi in tears."
While he was working on the book, Rigg says, he sent the manuscript to rabbis for feedback. "As soon as I find a new document," Rigg says, "I was asking their take on it. I try to be respectful of their beliefs and give a balanced view."
He started getting calls from all over the world from Lubavitchers who promised they'd give him documents, but only if they approved of what he wrote. "That's unethical," Rigg says. "They were calling me up and blackmailing me. One rabbi said it's my Germanic blood that has polluted me. They have a hard time with any negative press."
Rigg's book is now in five languages; the Hebrew version will be out next year. His third book, Voices of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, the case studies of about two dozen "Aryanized" soldiers, will also be published next year. --Glenna Whitley
