Since opening Barrett Optical in Old Town Shopping Center with her husband in 1981, Valerie Barrett has watched businesses come and go along Greenville Avenue.
But recently, she has had more and more come.
“I think there’s been a revitalization,” says Barrett, who also served as president of the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association. “It’s just long overdue.”
Barrett says businesses have been sprouting up along Greenville Avenue to take advantage of the traffic side-stepping Central Expressway construction.
But one of the biggest coups for the area, Barrett says, is the construction of a new mega Tom Thumb store and a Border’s Book Store in the Old Town Shopping Center.
“I think it’ll benefit the whole neighborhood,” Barrett says.
Tom Thumb is constructing a 70,000-square-foot store at Lovers and Greenville to replace the existing store next door.
The new store is expected to open this summer, and it will be one of the largest Tom Thumbs in the City, says Robert Dozier, vice president of retail for Lincoln Properties, which owns and runs Old Town Shopping Center.
When Tom Thumb moves out of its location this summer, Border’s Book Store will move in this fall, taking up the existing 30,000 square feet and adding another 10,000 square feet, making it the biggest Border’s around, Dozier says.
Several national chains were vying for the Old Town location, Dozier says, but Border’s was chosen because Lincoln felt it would be the best for the neighborhood.
Border’s and the new Tom Thumb aren’t the only changes at Old Town. Dozier says over time, the shopping center will be renovated with a new façade.
Lincoln also controls the property at Lovers and Greenville that formerly housed a Shell station, Dozier says. The site probably will become either a restaurant or retail business.
Confidence Pays Off at City Place
When many developers look at an inner-city neighborhood, they see an economic dead end.
But the developers of City Place Market saw an opportunity.
Roger Gault, vice president of Cityplace Company, says his company purchased the land to develop City Place in 1991. Today, the center houses Target and Office Max. And recently, the developers signed a lease with Sony (formerly Loew’s) for a 14-screen theater.
City Place stretches across both sides of Central Expressway, down Haskell Avenue on the east side, one block from the Roseland Homes housing project and through the middle of a neighborhood that looks like it is on its last leg.
But Gault says his company saw potential in the area.
“The land had value,” Gault says. “There was a demand for in-town housing, and whenever you have that, you need in-town retail.”
The City Place plan is to develop retail businesses on the east side of Central and multi-housing complexes on the west side. After conducting neighborhood surveys, Gault says his company decided to attract Target to the development, which took more than a year to accomplish.
But since opening in the fall of 1993, the store has consistently been one of the top-producing Targets in the Dallas region, says the store manager Jerry Wichertsman.
“It’s been beyond our expectations,” Wichertsman says. “We’ve exceeded our goal every month.”
But City Place’s success didn’t stop with Target. A Stuarts and Stuarts Plus clothing store and a Radio Shack will open soon, as well as two other undetermined retailers, Gault says.
To accompany the movie theater, Gault says the developers hope to attract some restaurants.
“There’s a lot of other developers who wouldn’t have had the courage to do what we did,” Gault says. “It’s a win-win situation.”
“The neighborhood is happy. The retailers are happy. The developers are happy, and the City is happy.”
