BUSINESS BUZZ

The lowdown on what’s up with neighborhood businesses

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Good beer to go

The owners of Goodfriend Beer Garden & Burger House on Peavy and the Blind Butcher on Lowest Greenville, Josh Yingling and Matt Tobin, plan to open a package store in the shopping center across the street from Goodfriend. They’ve been leasing the location at 1155 Peavy for at least a couple of years, but they’ve only used it for storage so far. Now construction is underway and they hope to be finished soon. The new shop will be like a deli/convenience store with to-go sandwiches, along with packaged meats and cheeses, other groceries, beer and wine. “It’ll be the one place in East Dallas where you can get a good sandwich, and that was kind of the thought behind it,” Goodfriend manager Jacob Neely says.

Lakewood Smokehouse

A restaurant called Lakewood Smokehouse has filed a certificate of occupancy for the space that Ali Baba formerly occupied in Lakewood Shopping Center. The center’s owner, Lincoln Property Co., recently said the space would soon become an “upscale barbecue restaurant.” Jason Hall owns the restaurant, according to city documents. Hall also owns 3 Stacks Smoke & Tap House in Frisco, where Trace Arnold, known as “the rib whisperer,” smokes the meat. That joint received a stamp of approval from neighborhood resident and barbecue critic Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly.

New apartments

Developers are expected to break ground this month, on a five-story, 270unit apartment complex on Northwest Highway at West Lawther. Since it was initially proposed, the project has been scaled back in size and scope. When it was first presented to the City Council in 2012 by a different developer, the design called for a six-story building comprising 350 apartments. At the time, neighbors north of the project expressed concerns that the high-density housing would draw low-income families, which historically has been the norm of housing developments in that area. Developers have always maintained that the housing will be “boutique” and “high end,” meant to attract families and young professionals. “We have never done any low-income projects,” developer J. Scott Rodgers said during a public meeting on the proposal in 2012. “We will be on the top end of the market cost to make it worth the land and development cost.” Previously, the site at 7545 Northwest Highway was home to a lawnmower store, liquor store, convenience store and a family residence that has long set fallow.

Driving range

A driving range called the Goat Ranch is coming to East Dallas from the people who brought us Bowlounge. It’s going to be at 723 S. Haskell with 15 hitting bays and “fun and creative targets,” plus a bar and lounge that’s being built in an old converted freezer building.

New CVS

CVS pharmacy recently began construction on a new 13,225-square-foot store on the West corner of Ferguson Road at Lakeland, a site that formerly housed a laundromat. When the new store opens in late December, the pharmacy/retailer plans to close its significantly smaller existing location across the street at 8686 Ferguson, says Stephanie Cunha, spokeswoman for CVS. “The larger store will allow us to offer our customers a wider selection of products,” she says. Because the project meets the site’s existing community retail zoning, city staff recommended approving the pharmacy when it was presented at the City Plan Commission. The new location will maintain its own parking lot with 60 spaces for shoppers.