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decades with Ebby Halliday Realtors.

“The funny thing we like to joke about as real estate agents is that when we’re selling a house, we say it’s in ‘the vicinity of Preston Hollow’ or ‘the Preston Hollow area,’ ” Player says. “You want to use those words in the description because it’s appealing to buyers.”

It’s appealing to developers, too.

Leon Backes, president of Provident Realty Advisors, is responsible for the new mixed-use shopping center at the northwest corner of Walnut Hill and Central, calling it Preston Hollow Village. The shopping center, 10 years in the making, “named itself,” he says. Even after branding companies came up with plenty of suggestions, people were already calling it Preston Hollow Village, and the name stuck.

“It’s a state of mind,” he jokes, when asked where Preston Hollow actually is. His estimate is more generous: LBJ Freeway to Northwest Highway and Hillcrest to Midway. But, he concludes, “I don’t think there are any boundaries.”

The shopping center houses a Trader Joe’s and a slew of hip restaurants new to the Dallas market. Backes, who also lives nearby, says the name is appropriate because the development aims to serve Preston Hollow residents. He doesn’t claim that it’s actually in Preston Hollow (although, who’s to say?).

“Putting Preston Hollow in the name increases the marketability,” Player says. “The corner of Walnut Hill and Central Expressway is not Preston Hollow.”

So, where does the name-dropping end? Neighbors have questioned the new Preston Hollow Emergency that recently opened on the east side of Central, complete with a jumbo red sign displaying the words, “Preston Hollow.”

The company’s marketing director, Cortney Rodriguez, says our neighborhood is one of the target markets for the 24-hour upscale ER.

“We felt we were right on the cusp of Preston Hollow, especially with Preston Hollow Village opening across the highway from us,” Rodriguez says.

While the residential real estate community takes a more exclusive approach, the commercial real estate community paints Preston Hollow in much broader strokes. It’s no wonder that the average homeowner hesitates to claim the neighborhood name. Many neigh- bors describe where they live by their street name, “off Boedeker,” or a reference point, “behind St. Mark’s” or just the catchall term, “North Dallas,” as it was 30 years ago.

“I don’t really hear Preston Hollow being tagged like Lakewood,” says Carol Short, vice president of public affairs for the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

That’s probably because Short’s definition of Preston Hollow is the broadest of them all: Northwest Highway to LBJ and Central to Marsh.

She grew up on Azalea from the late-1950s to the mid-1970s, just a few blocks north of Royal — an area Realtors would call “the vicinity of Preston Hollow.”

Short remembers playing on the railroad tracks that eventually became the Dallas North Tollway — one of the early initiatives of the chamber after it formed in 1954, united under the push to pave Preston northward.

As Dallas continued to grow, the chamber stopped claiming boundaries for its membership. Its members now hail from all over the

WHERE IS PRESTON HOLLOW?

Cynthia

LANGHORST is a board member of the Preston Hollow Early Childhood Association. The Chicago native moved to Dallas to attend SMU and eventually settled in Preston Hollow.

Hugh Herr

MIT Media Lab | Biomechatronics Program Head

HUGH HERR is responsible for advances in bionic limbs that offer new hope to people with physical disabilities. Time magazine called him the “Leader of the Bionic Age” because of his work in the emerging field of biomechatronics, a technology that marries human physiology with electromechanics.

Tony & Jonna Mendez

Author of Argo and both former CIA Chief of Disguise

TONY and JONNA MENDEZ are former CIA officers whose lives have been featured in books, TV documentaries and the Oscar-winning film Argo Tony Mendez engineered the 1980 rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran in an operation that inspired the movie. Jonna Mendez worked as a technical operations officer with a specialty in clandestine photography.

Visit utdallas.edu/lectureseries for tickets and more information.

WHERE IN THE HOLLOW?

city and neighboring suburbs, and a typical meeting features presidents and CEOs from major banks, law firms, utility companies and restaurant groups.

“We’ve got members in Irving and Plano and Richardson,” Short says. “We’re very supportive of development in South Dallas because it takes the tax burden off of North Dallas. We want to see all of Dallas prosper because not only does it bleed into other parts of town, but it evens out the tax base.”

What defines us

Dallasites are perhaps more aware of our city’s neighborhoods than in previous decades. We are no longer simply north or south.

“People are trying to break down the size of the city by affiliating with the neighborhood,” Kleinman says.

And each has its own identity, which tends to originate from a cohesive push for improvement. Lakewood and East Dallas activists have mobilized to protect White Rock Lake and transform Lower Greenville. Oak