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This morning, Steve Brown mentioned that more than 250 local commercial properties are up for foreclosure next month, including "several vacant tracts of land in Oak Cliff along Davis Street, Kings Highway and Stevens Forest Drive." But Brown didn't mention which properties -- or who had plans to develop them. Unfair Park has learned that the four parcels -- worth some $15 million to Amegy Bank, which wants the properties sold off, according to Foreclosure Listing Service Inc.'s October report -- all belong to INCAP Fund, which had hoped to either sell the land to another developer or build townhouses, condos and multifamily units on the land.
The largest proposed development -- which eats up nearly nine acres at 2105 W. Davis Street and is on the books for $7,199,941 -- is currently listed on INCAP's Web site as "Davis Street TOD," meaning transit-oriented development (given its proximity to the proposed Oak Cliff streetcar rail line). The other three addresses are: 1836 W. Davis St. (for which the loan was $3,594,035), 1610 Kings Highway ($1,652,017) and 1818 Stevens Forest Drive ($3,262,000). All of the addresses are included in the Bishop/Davis Land Use and Zoning Study, which INCAP helped fund (it paid $25,000 of the $60,000 price tag).
INCAP told The News in May 2008 it never planned on developing the properties themselves, even after razing more than 1,500 apartment units to clear the space, some of which you see pictured above. President Alan McDonald said the proposed developments were merely "what-ifs," and that he hoped to begin selling the land to developers by the summer of '08. A year before that, Brown wrote about INCAP's "ambitious" plans to "dramatically reshape the historic Dallas neighborhood."
Not one of INCAP's higher-ups was available to talk this afternoon; a message was also left on McDonald's cell. A message was also left with Amegy Bank's real estate rep handling the INCAP properties. But Bob Stimson, the former Dallas City Council member who's now president of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, says he hopes the foreclosure notice is but a "hiccup" in Oak Cliff's development, especially along Davis Street.
"We all want INCAP to be successful," he tells Unfair Park. "In my experience, having gone thorugh the '80s -- and this is as close as you can get -- it doesn't surprise me things get posted for foreclosure. It doesn't mean they will be forelcosed. A lot of times it's part and parcel with negotiations that occur. ... It's not a bellweather for the future of Oak Cliff, but a hiccup along the way."
