The commercial strip between Martel and Penrose Avenues on Greenville appears to be changing again.
Brazamar, which promises “contemporary Mexican fire dining,” is expected to move in at 3606 Greenville Ave. Tacos Richy, the offerings of which should be self-evident, is planned for next door. These restaurants will reportedly open this year, but time will tell when exactly that will be.
Unrelated to food, Degree Wellness was granted a certificate of occupancy earlier this year. The spa that offers cryotherapy and light facials is in between the future taco shop and another vacant space. Further down the line is Jars, which closed last year even though its sign was recently still hanging.
This corner, sitting on the iconic Greenville Avenue, has potential in the future, but currently, its emptiness speaks for itself.
Just a few years ago, the string of businesses there had the opposite problem. On a summer night in 2021, there was once a camel outside of the former Bar 3606.
Unlike the mostly commercial Deep Ellum, the bars and restaurants on Greenville Avenue are surrounded by people’s homes, making it easier for problems at those establishments to affect residential streets. Bar 3606, which opened around 2018, and the next door OT Tavern, opened in the mid-2000s, were at multiple times crime scenes for shootings (including one involving former Dallas Cowboys player Kelvin Joseph), murder, aggravated assault, criminal mischief and sexual assault between 2018 and 2022 as well as parking issues.
“It brought so much violence into the neighborhood,” says Darren Dattalo, who lived in Lower Greenville for 25 years but is now in Oregon. He was vice president of his neighborhood association and part of the crime watch. “One of the shootouts they had … I think there were 60-something shell casings picked up. There is literally residential property next door to it, and my neighborhood was pretty safe other than that. We have other businesses there. We had plenty of bars and restaurants, and no complaints there. But this was not what that was. This was something different.”
In the early days, OT Tavern was just a run of the mill sports bar, even one that Dattalo patronized for lunch several times. But the space that Bar 3606 occupied had always been inhabited by problematic businesses, he says.
The side-by-side bars fed into each other, with OT Tavern being the “pregame” and quieter spot while Bar 3606 (Dattalo described as a strip club without absolute nudity) was where the party ramped up. And he insists they tended to attract patrons from all over the city as opposed to just Lower Greenville folks like other neighborhood establishments did.
“There were accusations that it was a racial thing,” Dattalo says. “Had nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it at all. We had a similar problem on the other end of Greenville, 10 years prior to that, with a place called Sofrano’s that was just as bad. But Sofrano’s was a white crowd, and we got it shut down, too.”
Instead, he says the establishments were just out of place within close proximity to the residential neighborhood that also includes churches and Mockingbird Elementary to the north.
And technically, he was correct. The properties the bars occupied were zoned for community retail, and in 1993, the City started requiring alcoholic beverage establishments to obtain a permit in all zoning districts. But the former bar Fish Dance at 3606 Greenville Ave. was established before this new rule from the City came down, according to Board of Adjustment minutes. And thus, the nonconforming use was born and was passed down over the years. After a period of vacancy, the nonconforming status for the purposes of an alcoholic beverage establishment and dance hall were reinstated for both Suites A and B.
The city council tried to make the bars conform to current zoning. That worked for OT Tavern as a settlement was negotiated but not Bar 3606. The Board of Adjustment denied the request against the latter in 2021.
“There is no basis to conclude that continued operation will threaten public health and safety,” said attorneys for the company behind Bar 3606, SNNR Ventures LLC, at the time.
To back that up, SNNR Ventures’ attorneys said the crime records they obtained via open records requests showed that violent crime didn’t occur within the bar, and patrons were not given citations. Moreover, they said Bar 3606 hadn’t been linked with two 2020 shootings, nor had the establishment received a noise citation.
OT Tavern had to comply with a slew of rules, like having stricter hours of operation; placing signs dictating where and where not to park; hosting community meetings; installing security cameras; removing all litter each night; mitigating noise by not running outdoor speakers past sundown and closing doors and windows; and hiring security guards or peace officers and a trained crowd manager to be on site at certain times.
OT Tavern was scheduled to cease operations by Aug. 7, 2023, but the bar closed before that in 2022. Foxtrot replaced it but didn’t last long. This shuttering might seem like a win for the neighborhood, but Dattalo says this action didn’t really help.
“OT got all the airtime, but it was never about OT,” he says. “It was always about 3606 is the big problem.”
Sure enough, Bar 3606 was eventually closed, too.
In 2022, Dallas threatened to protest the renewal of Bar 3606’s Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission permit if it was applied for. That year, the City also filed a lawsuit against property owners Uptown Ventures LLC and Hillcrest Towers LLC to seek a temporary and permanent injunction that would stop them from maintaining a “common nuisance.”
“The property owners are absentee landlords who have failed to implement or require implementation of any crime prevention measures,” the City’s original petition states. “Despite the persistence of violent crime, the property owners irresponsibly rely on their tenants to implement crime prevention measures to abate the ongoing criminal activity. However, neither of the bars have the necessary measures in place to ensure adequate crowd management, crowd control, disturbance prevention or disturbance response. As a result, violent crime continues.”
SNNR Ventures LLC was added to the lawsuit in the City’s amended petition. This document alleges that the tenants allowed Bar 3606 to be a hub for unabated dangerous and criminal activity and was a nuisance to neighbors.
Both the property owners and SNNR Ventures denied the City’s claims in the court documents, but SNNR agreed to a temporary injunction in summer 2023. The terms were not dissimilar to that of OT Tavern — six licensed security guards or certified peace officers on site; a strict timeline of when to stop admitting customers, making sales and vacate the establishment; install a camera surveillance system; host crime watch meetings and address concerns; hire a trained crowd manager and promoter; provide valet for customers and monitor criminal activity.
But in the long term, Bar 3606 was required to close on Greenville Avenue by Oct. 31, 2023. To SNNR’s benefit, the City agreed to report to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission that it didn’t oppose SNNR’s liquor license, provided that the tenant leave 3606 Greenville Ave.
The case against the property owners and SNNR Ventures was then dismissed.
Dattalo says the property owner agreed to rezone the property to a planned development, which doesn’t allow businesses to be open after midnight or alcoholic beverage establishments. This was approved by the city council in 2023.
The crime rate improved in the immediate aftermath, Dattalo says.
“After they were closed, that whole area, the crime is the same as it is everywhere else in the neighborhood,” he says. “But there was a while, for a couple of years, if you did a heat map, there would be a big, bright dot right on top of 3606.”
OT Tavern’s closure garnered responses of “good riddance” on Facebook but also some “moving won’t fix the problem” and “just move to the suburbs if you don’t like nightlife.” And there were people who mourned the bar specifically, describing it as a place where memories were made, good wings were eaten and was a signifier of their Dallas experience.
The change at 3606 Greenville Ave. was made possible by a partnership between business leaders, residents and City officials, current Lower Greenville Neighborhood Association President Jean McAulay says. She is happy to see new restaurants move in as long as they are respectful to the neighborhood and willing to accept reasonable feedback.
“It’s fantastic to see places that can have daytime uses, anything that creates locations that area residents can walk to and enjoy,” McAulay says. “It’s fine if they attract people from other areas. We know that we’re a destination, and that’s a good thing. We want all the businesses here to thrive, but we just want them to be good neighbors, too.”
Bar 3606’s former owner declined to comment on the record for this story. Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate also attempted to contact the former owner of OT Tavern and the majority property owner Uptown Ventures LLC but didn’t hear back by press time.
