At first glance, Wachovia’s plan to build a branch bank on Abrams Road in the heart of Lakewood seems like just another in the long-running series of battles between business and neighborhood residents over redevelopment — with residents being their usual unreasonable selves in trying to prevent it. After all, isn’t that what they always do? Isn’t that their reputation? Isn’t that why developers shy away from Lakewood and East Dallas?
And didn’t Wachovia spokesman Joe Stroop even describe the process as lengthy?
As a matter of fact, he did. But he was laughing when he said it, and he went out of his way to emphasize that the process was anything but unreasonable.
“It wasn’t any more difficult than anywhere else we’ve done this,” says Stroop, whose company will open the branch later this year. “Were there heated discussions? Yes, there were. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
“All it means is that Lakewood residents are passionate about their neighborhood. And why wouldn’t they be? They have a unique neighborhood. That’s why we want to be there.”
In fact, development is not only possible in Lakewood and East Dallas, but common, too, fostered by what many outsiders would see as a surprising spirit of cooperation between residents and developers. High-profile cases, such as Emerald Isle on the other side of White Rock Lake and the attempted rezoning at the Cityville complex on Lower Greenville, get all the attention. But talk to developers and residents, and they see something entirely different — collaboration between the two sides that has resulted in bold redevelopment around Baylor Medical Center, in the Wachovia deal, and in plans to redevelop the Casa Linda shopping center.
“We’re pro-development,” says Joanna Hampton of the Munger Place Historic District neighborhood association, whose group was one of seven involved in the Abrams Wachovia discussions. “But what we want is development that meets everyone’s needs, and that includes the businesses.”
A bad reputation
At the Northeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce economic summit last fall, Phil Brosseau, with developer Realty America Group, didn’t mince words. “Guys from wanting to develop here heard don’t go to East Dallas,” he told the summit. “At first blush, they were warned away.”
Talk to other developers, and that’s not an unusual sentiment. Steve Horne, who oversees real estate development for the Baylor hospital system and worked with several neighborhood groups to put together the deal that paved the way for Baylor’s East Dallas location to quadruple the size of its emergency room, said he hears that all the time. So does David McQuaid, whose Performance Properties is building townhouses at Live Oak and Fitzhugh.
Why do we have that reputation? Some of it has nothing to do with us, but the nature of the business. All things being equal, developers would rather throw up buildings in cornfields than in suburbs. There are fewer zoning restrictions, it’s easier to buy the land, it takes less time to do, and it costs less. In urban neighborhoods like ours, Brosseau said at the summit, “It takes a pretty crazy developer to want to do a project that takes more than a year — go to 50 neighborhood meetings, go every night.”
Some of it has to do more with the actual neighborhood than with who lives in it. East Dallas and Lakewood have little land to develop, which complicates the problem, and much of the land that is available is part of complex ownership arrangements, which complicates it even more. In Casa Linda, for example, AmREIT, the investment firm that bought the center last year, owns almost all of the three corners that make up the site. The exception is the Casa Linda Theatre, which is owned by SC Companies. This means that each owner could renovate its property in completely different ways or compete for the same tenants, both of which would further delay improvements.
Finally, some of it is us — or the perception of us. For every real estate executive such as AmREIT’s Steve Hefner, who has dealt with similar residents in similar neighborhoods in Austin and Southern California and knows what to expect, there are a host of people who have no idea why we’re so passionate about what happens.
Says Casa Linda resident David Baillif, the neighborhood’s liaison with AmREIT and SC Companies: “It’s the nature of that business. It takes them a while to see that there isn’t going to be an adversarial relationship. Once they see that, then you can have a more relaxed, open relationship. Then they know we’re the last thing they have to worry about.”
New projects
None of this means that developers are necessarily stupid or lazy. It means that since they’re developing to make money, they tend to shy away from projects where it’s more difficult to make money. When they see that’s not the case, they’re more willing to do deals here.
That has been the experience in and around Baylor, says J.W. Brasher, president of the Peak’s Suburban Addition neighborhood association.
“When they see we’re willing to work with them to do the right thing, they’re much more understanding,” he says. “They see a piece of dirt they want to develop, and we see something that adds value to the neighborhood.”
Case in point: The Baylor expansion, as well as new development in the Malone’s grocery store lot on Gaston from a second developer. Both Horne and Brasher see these projects as the beginning of substantial redevelopment along Gaston toward Fitzhugh, and perhaps even as far as Lakewood proper. The Baylor project, in addition to the emergency room expansion, will add a series of three-story offices, pedestrian walkways, new landscaping and retail. It’s a far cry from the 27-story tower that was originally proposed.
Getting to that point, say those involved, was not necessarily easy. It took a series of meetings over 16 months in which the two sides had to get to know each other, and sometimes in painful ways. But when it was done, everyone was glad they did it.
“We were building bridges,” Horne says. “We looked for something that was in the common good. We can get a better neighborhood and a better community when we’re all in it together.”
In fact, everything worked out so well that Horne and the neighborhood hold monthly luncheons for any developer who wants to learn more about doing a project in that area. “It’s about the whole marketing of the neighborhood,” says McQuaid, who has attended. “It’s a proactive, cooperative kind of scenario.”
That’s much the same thing that happened with the Wachovia site, and it’s something that Hefner and Baillif say is now going on all over the Casa Linda Plaza. AmREIT not only held an open house for the neighborhood shortly after it bought the center, but has worked with Baillif and the neighborhood association to figure out what kind of retail residents want, what kind they don’t want, and why all of this matters.
“They’ve said all the right things,” Baillif says. “They’re on the same page we are. They know we want the boutique-y kind of tenants, that we know there are probably too many restaurants in there now. AmREIT knows what needs to be done, and I think they know how to make it happen.”
Says Hefner: “What we have found is that the more you work with the neighborhood, the quicker, easier and better the finished product tends to be.”
The bad old days
That’s a far cry from the perception in the real estate community — which many neighborhood residents have always thought was neither fair nor deserved. Yes, there have been some instances where neighborhoods reacted negatively to proposals, including Emerald Isle, but also dating to the mid-1990s, when Albertson’s wanted to plop a grocery store at Live Oak and Fitzhugh in what was a mostly residential area. But it’s not so much the developments residents object to, Hampton says, as the way the deals are done.
“Don’t just go to the city and make the proposal without asking us,” she says.
That’s something Wachovia understands, Stroop says. Its original plan called for one of the bank’s usual branches, something neighbors felt would have been out of place in Lakewood.
“Their suburban model just didn’t fit an inner-city neighborhood,” says Hampton.
So the company revised its plans, working with the neighborhood groups, and came up with something everyone liked. The bank’s façade will match the rest of the street and use some the existing buildings. In addition, there will be 4,000 square feet of new retail space, essentially where the Mustang Auto was — a huge boon for a part of the neighborhood where there is little room for new construction.
“Would we prefer to have control over our real estate? Yes, we would,” Stroop says. “But we understand you just can’t come into an attractive neighborhood like Lakewood and say, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ Our primary goal is to have a relationship with our customers, and that’s not the way to do it.”
