In the early hours of July 5, a fight broke out in a parking lot on Canton Street and South Good Latimer Expressway. Police officers arrived to find five shooting victims, along with 22-year-old Caylen Fritz, who was shot and killed. Two 19-year-olds, Gael Aguilar and Tevin Valentine, were arrested; the former is being charged with Fritz's murder, and the latter is recovering from non-life-threatening injuries in the hospital after fleeing from police with a gun and being shot.
We’ve long defended Deep Ellum, especially when its reputation for being a dangerous, crime-ridden part of town is perpetuated. But when the neighborhood's business owners speak up for themselves, we listen. It's far from the first time that a call-to-action has hit Deep Ellum following violence in the neighborhood.
On Monday, July 21, an emergency meeting took place at St. Pete's Dancing Marlin, where Deep Ellum's business owners and patrons put their heads together to develop a plan for the neighborhood's future. Dallas City Council Member Jesse Moreno concluded the meeting with an imposed 30-day timetable for completing a course of action to improve safety in the neighborhood. On July 31, the Dallas Police Department announced that streets in Deep Ellum will close at 10 p.m. on weekends indefinitely.
“There were between 150 and 200 people on the patio voicing their opinion,” says Pete Zotos, owner of the restaurant St. Pete's Dancing Marlin. “I love Deep Ellum, it’s been my home for 30-plus years. To watch it not get taken care of and pruned like a nice little tree, it just needs help.”
Zotos is a gatekeeper to Deep Ellum. Aside from the safety concerns, he's also found himself on Dallas Observer covers at the forefront of an ongoing battle with the city's long-term street and drainage reconstruction project on Commerce Street.
“Everything that was addressed was about more police, not just presence, but actually getting in there and doing something,” Zotos says. “At St. Pete’s, we close at midnight because it’s just been safer for the guys that work for us.”
Pete Zotos hosted a meeting at his restaurant and bar, St. Pete's Dancing Marlin, with other Deep Ellum business owners and the city to discuss recent violence in the neighborhood.
Mike Brooks
This is particularly concerning for Allen Faulkner, who owns the bar and nightclub The Nines, which closes after midnight daily.
“If we were forced to close at midnight, we would either have to completely close our business or restructure it,” Faulkner says. “And it would have to be a different business.”
A strict midnight curfew could wipe out a significant rung of Deep Ellum's economic landscape. Like many business owners in the neighborhood, Faulkner believes that changes to the neighborhood are needed, just not as extreme as that.
“There’s always a problem down here with a lot of things going on and the police not arresting,” he says. "The reason why they’re doing that is because they didn’t have enough manpower to lose an officer to take someone down to arrest them. So one of the things that we’re pushing for is stricter enforcement against violence, more enforcement against open containers, loitering, things like that. I feel like if people understand that if they come down here and cause trouble, they’re going to get arrested or they’re going to get a ticket; maybe they don’t come down here and cause problems anymore.”
Though Faulkner acknowledges the severity of the July 4 incident, he also thinks Deep Ellum might be unfairly blamed.
“The shooting happened at 2:20 in the morning, so it was outside of business hours,” Faulkner says. “Also, it happened in a parking lot that is, although technically in Deep Ellum, not considered to be the core of Deep Ellum at all. The people who were involved in it weren’t even over 21. They came down to Deep Ellum with guns, like they came down here for a gunfight. Those people weren’t here to patronize businesses, to put money into the neighborhood, support the neighborhood, and they’re negatively impacting the neighborhood. So it’s very frustrating.”
'It's About Police ... Doing Their Job'
His sentiment is echoed by other Deep Ellum business owners, some of whom feel the area is being unfairly targeted because of its poor reputation for crime. Mike Church and Victor Garcia operate Scarlet Lounge and Kitchen in the space formerly occupied by Garcia’s Truth and Alibi.“We understand you want to make Deep Ellum safer,” Church says. “In my personal opinion, it’s about police enforcement and them actually doing their job down there, not about the nightclubs being open. If it was a nightclub issue, the Cedar Spring bars would be shut down, or Knox Henderson. All those bars are open till 2 a.m. It’s ridiculous that they’re going to focus on Deep Ellum.”
“It’s all these teenagers coming around,” Garcia adds. “They come around in groups of 20-plus. They’re coming out with bottles, and they’re drinking while cops are just turning a blind eye.”
Ahead of Moreno and the city's decision, Garcia and Church have found themselves in their particular bind. With their lease renewal coming up, they say that their landlord, Westdale Management, has added a new stipulation that they must close at midnight.
The Observer obtained a portion of the lease agreement, which included several stipulations that seem odd for a business operating in an entertainment district. Among them, Scarlet would be prohibited from having any DJs, third-party promoters or offering any VIP or bottle service packages, as well as being forced to close at midnight. The proposed lease from Westdale comes before any formal curfew decision has been made by the city of Dallas, effectively strong-arming local businesses into reshaping by the company’s own design, regardless of what the city decides. The deadline for their lease renewal is Oct. 31.
“I’m 55 years old. I don’t party. I’m in bed by 10 o’clock,” Church says. “But you’ve got to know your audience down there, and those 25-year-old kids, they’re getting ready at 10 to go out at 11.”
It’s not only a social decision, but an obvious economic one too for Scarlet.
“For the last three months, between 6 p.m. and midnight, we’re about $40,000 a month,” Church says. “Now for midnight until 2 a.m., our numbers are $80,000 a month. We could never agree to closing at midnight and especially signing a new lease on basically having to change our business model.”
Ahead of decisions on a curfew, Church could look into Scarlet obtaining a special use permit (SUP) from the city, which would allow it to stay open late.
Church, Garcia, Zotos and Faulkner have all operated their businesses for years in Deep Ellum. Though no stranger to the neighborhood, music promoter Mike Ziemer held a sneak peek event this week for his new venue, Puzzles, set to open in August. He attended the meeting at St. Pete’s as well, along with owner Jeff Brightwell of Dot’s Hop House. Both share a similar perspective on the future of Deep Ellum.
“I’ve been to a lot of different meetings around here since pre-COVID, during COVID and after COVID, and it’s all felt like no one was listening,” Ziemer says. “This is probably the first one that kind of hit that point where you have to listen, you have to care.”
Jeff Brightwell echoes the same sentiments.
“In Deep Ellum, it feels like the city just shrugs and says, ‘So what?’”
When discussing what makes Deep Ellum special, Brightwell referred to the historic party streets in America, including Bourbon Street in New Orleans and Beale Street in Memphis. Deep Ellum is an entire neighborhood of such streets, not isolated from each other.
Ziemer’s proposed solution to making the neighborhood run smoother also involved looking at other cities around the country, particularly entertainment districts in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles and even more recent developments like Sixth Street in Austin.
“I think the best solution that was proposed at the meeting, which I fully agree with, is bringing in somebody from a city that has successfully done this,” Ziemer says. “Street closures have never worked. They just hurt businesses, and they’ve also told people, at this point, this is when the party starts.”
Both owners are moving forward with cautious optimism that no matter what, Deep Ellum will always rise again.
“I am very optimistic,” Ziemer says. “I have seen all the cycles of this neighborhood, and I know that the people are willing to stick through these times and invest in the neighborhood.”
“Historically, we know this neighborhood does this,” Brightwell says. “It will jump back up, absolutely it will. But stakeholders, property owners and the city, we’ve got to all come together and figure out a way. We don’t want any more peaks and valleys.”
