Mike Brooks
Audio By Carbonatix
Rodeo Dallas, the club in Deep Ellum that’s popular with drinkers while despised by some of its neighbors, is closed again. For now. The closure didn’t come from the police – though there are plenty of them in Deep Ellum these days – or Dallas code enforcers, or agents with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission that brought about the bar’s second closing in less than it week.
It was one of the bar’s neighboring property owners.
On Tuesday, Aug. 5, Rodeo Dallas’ landlord, Westdale Asset Management, chained and padlocked the door of Deep Ellum’s highest-grossing bar. The Dallas Morning News reported that the Dallas District Attorney’s Office sent a warning to the bar, laying out more than a dozen criminal cases at the property, including cocaine possession and 11 instances of disorderly conduct.
Rodeo was back open by 8 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a judge’s ruling that it could remain open until the bar’s owners got their day in court to contest the closure. That lasted until Friday, Aug. 8, when another property management group, Asana Partners, filed suit against Rodeo Dallas; District Judge Veretta Frazier OK’d a temporary restraining order that shut the bar down again, and a hearing is set for Aug. 15.
Throughout the weekend, Rodeo Dallas was shuttered and the streets surrounding it were quiet.
All of which raises a question: Who’s responsible for enforcing the law in Deep Ellum these days? Landlords?
In late June, Deep Ellum bar and restaurant owners piled into St. Pete’s Dancing Marlin to meet with the Dallas Police Department and City Council member Jesse Moreno to talk about safety issues plaguing the entertainment district this summer.
Tenants pleaded with city officials for better police work in the area, not just for a higher presence of cops, but for “doing something,” said restaurateur Pete Zotos of St. Pete’s Dancing Marlin.
After the meeting, a 30-day timetable was set for the city to return with a new plan to improve the neighborhood’s safety. That timetable means the new plan will arrive sometime around September, which, perhaps coincidentally, is when most kids return to school and Deep Ellum’s streets traditionally get calmer.
Stephanie Keller Hudiberg with the Deep Ellum Foundation said businesses can’t wait for summer to end to make Deep Ellum safer, and summer will be here again soon enough. She and the Deep Ellum Foundation are working on a broader safety plan modeled after other large entertainment districts that addresses the many complicated issues in the area. Hudiberg doesn’t want to just make it safe; her aim is to see Deep Ellum thrive as a music and tourist destination.
Mike Ziemer just opened a new venue, Puzzles, on Main Street, and hopes the city and neighborhood association – as well as the people who make up Deep Ellum – see past the summer.
“The timeline places the solutions around the same time that problems usually work themselves out,” Ziemer says. “While I am optimistic the city may finally take this seriously and come up with a game plan, I am also aware that they may end up taking credit for something that naturally happens every year when school starts back up.”
There have been two fatal shootings in Deep Ellum this summer and numerous other shootings. We’ve recently reported on property owners taking drastic steps, such as updating new lease agreements to include mandatory closings at midnight, instead of the more common – and lucrative – 2 a.m. closing time for bars and clubs.
The team at Scarlet (previously Truth and Alibi) recently received an updated lease from Westdale asking them to agree to close at midnight, and to not offer bottle service, DJs or third-party promoters. The bar generates $80,000 a month from midnight to 2 a.m., double the amount it makes from 6 p.m. to midnight; closing at midnight would be detrimental to their business.
A special use permit (SUP) may allow them to stay open later, but that’s something they are trying to solve with their management team.
“A more effective solution would be to force businesses with a known history of violence or violations to shut down,” Mike Church at Scarlet says. “The city should pull TABC and police records to identify these establishments.”
Until the city steps up, leasing companies are stepping in while businesses like Scarlet are taking the financial hit. An entertainment district without thriving bars, restaurants, crowds and late nights would almost certainly be safer, but it wouldn’t be quite as entertaining. (Think of it as the city planning version of creating a desert and calling it peace.)
Bar and restaurant owners are calling for better policing and more arrests instead. More than one bar owner has reported that groups of young adults and teens freely walk around Deep Ellum late at night with open containers, which isn’t legal in Deep Ellum or Texas. In March of this year, 21-year-old Jonathan Santos was fatally shot outside of Rodeo Dallas. Police said Santos was killed while trying to break up a fight that began inside the venue.
The cops have said they can’t make arrests because it would require them to leave their beats to take someone to the station. To address this, DPD has recently assigned two paddy wagons to Deep Ellum.
A photo from Saturday, Aug. 3, around midnight, shows a dozen officers, some holding pepper ball canisters, gathered in front of Rodeo Dallas. Shortly after the photo was taken, officers fired a pepper ball into the crowd after a fight broke out on the street. A bar owner nearby said this was the second time pepper balls had been used in the past month – customers had to be escorted out of the back of the bar to avoid the remnants of the spray.
While this method did clear out the fight, it also cleared out business for every bar on the street, even those not involved in any of the incidents.
Keller Hudiberg confirmed that pepper balls are something used to disperse crowds and that two paddy wagons are now parked in Deep Ellum on the weekends, although DPD would not confirm either of those things.
Another problem for a bar owner who asked to remain anonymous is that cops set up a perimeter, which now includes road closures at 10 p.m., but don’t patrol the middle; cops will congregate in one area while the rest is left unpatrolled. This echoes what others have said: The area needs better, proactive police work, not just a higher number of cops.
A Neighborhood Effort
According to the Texas State Comptroller reports, Rodeo sold almost $640,000 in booze alone in June, so Deep Ellum likely hasn’t seen the last of it.
In fact, the ownership group – Joseph JD Ybanez and Josh Reagan – is opening another bar right across the street from Rodeo called Trophy.
“If you stand out front on a Saturday night, it’s pretty clear there’s a lack of control,” says Jeff Biehler, who owns the now-closed Cheapsteaks and is working on a new concept, Dusty’s, at the same location. “If we want to see real change in the neighborhood, it’s going to take a team effort – and that includes Rodeo. The city is paying close attention, and that kind of spotlight isn’t doing them any favors.”
Keller Hudiberg spoke about the measures bars need to enforce to ensure they’re operating safely. These measures include security cameras and a beefed-up security team, including bouncers and experienced doormen. Running a busy club requires special attention to all these issues.
