Councilman Mark Clayton has spoken out against the T store before, calling the “gas station that doesn’t serve gas,” a “bad seed” in an area on the upswing. The store, located on the corner of Peavy and Garland, recently caught Clayton’s attention again.
In a Facebook post the District 9 councilman says the owner of the closed storefront had not fixed a broken window on the property, forcing the city to step in.
“In accordance with the city code, the property owner was given the opportunity to secure the structure,” Clayton says.
Community Prosecutor Amanda Chase (who we profiled this month) says that, at the time the window was broken, the owner was out of the country, and it has since been boarded up. Her office got involved in the building earlier this year after receiving several referrals from city agencies. Since then they have overseen the removal of gambling machines, underground fuel tanks and health and fire hazards from the property. Chase says she understands some of the frustrations neighbors have with the building, but, at the same time, there are no more code violations to deal with.
“I’d issue a complaint, and he’d fix them in a reasonable time frame,” she says. “It’s a vacant building that’s boarded up. That’s not a code violation. There’s nothing in my power that I can do about that. The city can’t say how fast a sale of a building can go either.”
That’s where Jeff Brand of Brand Capital Partners comes in. He has signs outside the building and is hoping to develop the property in the future. Brand says that he’s communicating with the T store owner and hopes to buy the property in the near future.
The T store problem bucks the trending improvements being made around the intersection. The proprietors of Goodfriend opened Goodfriend Package right across Peavy in the strip center. Cultivar Coffee opened inside, moving from its location inside Good 2 Go, which Cow Tipping Creamery took over. Dowdy Studio, which had been selling T-shirts from a trailer parked in front of Good 2 Go, opened in a storefront next to Goodfriend Package. And Greenville Avenue Pizza Co. (GAPCo) announced its second location in the same strip center, taking over a tattoo parlor.
In addition to its work on the T store, the city removed brush and cleaned up the southeast corner of Garland-Peavy, upgraded the DART bus stop on that corner, and replaced light bulbs and street lights on Peavy between Garland Road and Lake Highlands Drive. And that’s not the end of it. In the near future there will be more street lighting, a new median, street re-striping, traffic flow improvements, safety improvements for pedestrians and a MOWmentum project, on which Clayton is partnering with Goodfriend’s Matt Tobin.
Marc Cassel, owner of 20 Feet Seafood Joint, is a big fan of the improvements being made in the area. He’s hopeful they will help make the area a little less “crimey” in the future.
“We’ve been broken into twice in as many months and probably a half-dozen or so attempted break-ins,” Cassel says.
The owner of the store is still out of the country, and could not be reached for comment.
