HOLY HENDERSON

A jaw-dropping amount of cash is about to transform this up-and-coming avenue — in a good way

COMMENT. Visit lakewood.advocatemag.com and search Henderson to tell us what you think.

The deep-pockets California developer that bought the Andres family properties on Henderson Avenue may well have given me one less thing to complain about. Frankly, it’s about time.

For more than 20 years, I’ve written and pleaded and nagged, trying to figure out why this part of town never got any respect from the people who run Dallas, and specifically from the City Hall elite and the big-money business types. And, since I’m neither a City Hall elite nor a big-money business type, they ignored me. They knew best, throwing tax breaks and development everywhere but our neighborhood, while we waited, lands, while we’re looking at what may be tens of millions of dollars of development headed for Henderson and lowest Greenville. That the money is coming from out-of-state companies — the Los Angeles group that apparently paid top dollar for the Andres properties between Ross and Central Expressway, and from Trader Joe’s and Walmart, whose out-of-state headquarters decided to set up shop on Greenville — is just one more reason to enjoy the delicious irony. placed Matt’s in the Lakewood center. He was too modest to take credit for it when I talked to him about the Henderson deal, but what he said a year ago and reiterated this time is worth noting.

“Trader Joe’s and Walmart put the neighborhood on the map,” he said. “No one likes to be first in an area, but when they see who is there, that’s when they make the decision. The businesses are there. The consumers are there. All it needs is someone to come in and finalize it.” patiently, knowing we had something no other part of Dallas did.

So much for the City Hall elite and the big money business types. They’ve got deserted and abandoned shopping malls in North Dallas and a town center without a town or a center in Lake High-

If it was big news that Dallas’ Lincoln Properties bought the Lakewood shopping center and the corner at Gaston, Grand and Garland roads — and it was — then the Henderson deal makes that look as ordinary as a sale on lettuce at the grocery store. The new owners, if they have as much money as I’ve been told they have, have the potential to just not finish what the Andres family started when they began their Henderson redevelopment in 2009, but to take it to the next level. And don’t you think, if and when that happens, that they’ll be able to bring in all the local money that always thought we were too funky and too colorful (read that anyway you want) to waste their time with? And that would be delicious irony No. 2.

Darrell Hernandez, who leases bigtime real estate projects and lives in the neighborhood, actually predicted all of this last summer, when Mi Cocina re-

That means two things. First, we’ll see (theoretically, anyway) fewer undercapitalized businesses opening in the area. One of the problems with the current development — and not just here, but elsewhere in the neighborhood — is that the businesses that moved in weren’t able to survive unless business was absolutely terrific. And the past four years have hardly been that.

Second, and even more important, is that we’ll have more business to choose from. This doesn’t mean we’ll get chains and national brands, the Chili’s and Starbucks that we don’t necessarily want, but more careful local names who might have shied away in the past, as well as more upscale companies from outside the area. It’s the difference between the West Village and upper Greenville, and Hernandez is convinced that it will be much more of the former and not the latter.

So, perhaps, no more bellyaching about how our neighborhood isn’t appreciated. Which, believe it or not, I’m looking forward to. We live in a neighborhood that deserves better than that.