BIZ BUZZ

WHAT’S UP WITH NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESSES

Evicted

Thirteen years after neighbors raised more than $200,000 in cash and inkind donations to build White Rock Lake Museum, much of which was done with volunteer labor, the city handed it a 60day eviction notice from the Bath House Cultural Center. There was no discussion before the notice came with an email that stated: “After more than a decade, we feel the museum has lived its useful life. In addition, the number one resource we hear that is needed by the cultural community is more gallery space for emerging artists. Hence, we are requesting that you remove the museum panels so that we can replace them with an emerging artist space.” The museum board was shocked, and got the support of the White Rock Lake Task Force to ask the city to delay the decision to allow for more discussion. “It took a community to build this museum; it’s going to take a community to save it,” says Kurt Kretsinger, president of the museum board. The building is overseen by the Office of Cultural Affairs, and has existed as a community center since the early 1980s.

New Owners

Hillside Village shopping center in Lakewood has a new owner in Northwood Retail . Neighborhood investors, husband-and-wife Rebecca and Jim Tudor of Twinrose Investments, sold the 62-yearold shopping center at the northeast corner of Mockingbird and Abrams for an undisclosed price. They first bought the land in 2007 and proceeded to revitalize the 169,299-square-foot property with fresh tenants, which today includes Olivella’s Neo Pizza Napoletana, Dream Café, White Rock Coffee and Manny’s Lakewood Tex-Mex.

Food News

Times Ten Cellars is just completing an upgrade to add a kitchen to its mix. The wine bar has long offered cheese boards, salads, dips and other bites that can be prepared without a full kitchen, in addition to hosting rotating food trucks. The upgraded kitchen will allow for an expanded menu, while also opening the door for specialty wine dinners. Don’t worry, for those who love the Wednesday pizza nights with Urban Crust or Sunday afternoon jazz, both of those traditions will continue — now with more food options.

Knox-Henderson is getting a new fastfood offering. Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is busy building a location on Ross at Greenville, near the Waffle House and Burger King. A spokeswoman for the company says the opening date has not been set and won’t be announced until six weeks before the business is ready to begin service.

Greenville Avenue Pizza Company, a.k.a. GAP Co. Pizza, is almost ready to open its second location in our neighborhood at the corner of Garland and Peavy this April, in a small location that used to house a tattoo parlor. The second outlet will mostly be geared toward delivery and take-out services, but there will be a few limited seats for those who want to dine in.

Schools

The PTA and Booster Club at Woodrow Wilson High School is considering whether they could build a $10-million athletic complex, the centerpiece of which would be a 5,000-seat football stadium. “It’s not going to be Woodrow’s stadium — it won’t have our name on it. It’ll be a Park Department stadium that we would just have first right of refusal on,” says Maria Hasbany, PTA president. The stadium and other facilities, including new tennis courts and a track, could be used by other neighborhood schools that lack athletic facilities, such as Bryan Adams, in addition to neighborhood teams. It would all take place in Randall Park, adjacent to the school, where local sports have been played since Woodrow’s athletic director Bobby Estes led a community effort to improve the park for school and community use 15 years ago. The current field and track at the high school, which is in failing condition, would become a parking lot to provide for the growing complex.So far, the idea is just a dream; it will take buy-in from Dallas ISD and the city’s Park Department to become a reality, goals that will take several months to accomplish. “We’re just in the preliminary stages of talking to people in the neighborhood,” Hasbany says. “We need to find out if we are going to have enough community support to go out and raise the money we need to get this thing built. Because we’re going to have to raise a lot of money to make this work.”

By this time next year, students at Lakewood Elementary School will be out from the dingy modular classrooms that have housed the overflowing student body for decades. The long-planned 52,500-square-foot addition will allow the school to increase capacity to roughly 1,000 students, up from 552. That extra room is needed. There are1,844 elementary-aged studentsliving in Lakewood’s attendance zone currently, which is almost double that of any other East Dallas elementary, although around 700 attend private or home school.

PARK PATROL

Those of us who get perturbed when you see someone fail to clean up after their dog or litter in public parks might see some relief this year. The City of Dallas has reinstated its Park Rangers program, assigning six staff members to patrol its parks for added safety and to better enforce city ordinances. The rangers would be certified in CPR and other life-saving skills in case they need to assist the public in a medical emergency, but largely they would be charged with enforcing the often-unenforced rules of the city, like banning public alcohol consumption, ensuring special events in the parks follow city code and the newly passed ban on smoking, which goes into effect March

1. Most major cities in Texas have park rangers on staff — Austin has 24, while Houston has 37. The Park Department hopes to find the funds needed to eventually add 10 bicycle patrol rangers as well as a citizen park patrol.

By GEORGE MASON