retail renewal

from 2011 March Lakewood

I’M TO LIVE IN EAST DALLAS

Hillside Village Shopping Center is making a comeback

The announcement of a local coffee shop opening its second location in hillside Village was the first indicator of change in the air.

Before White rock coffee Express finished construction on its double drivethrough kiosk on the northeast corner of abrams and Mockingbird, two more restaurants had staked claims in the shopping center — Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and Pizzeria Venti. Both hailed themselves as “quick-service” concepts, and both would have patios facing Mockingbird.

Then the dominoes began to fall.

Within a matter of months last year, hillside Village welcomed seven new tenants, most of them mom-and-pops based inDallas. allof a sudden,thearea referred to as “the shopping center at video

Watch a video the northeast corner of Mockingbird and Abrams” once again became known by its original name, the one dubbed by the late Dallas developer W.W. Caruth when he built the shopping center in the mid-’50s.

Visit lakewood.advocatemag.com/video to hear the perspective of shop owners and customers from some of Hillside Village’s oldest and newest store in a series of videos from photographer David Leeson.

Sarah and Chris Rogers make a first-time visit to the Pizzeria Venti, a restaurant that opened recently at Hillside Village. Sarah Rogers says she and her husband “never really had a reason to come here” until new businesses began to open at the center.

Caruth already had developed Inwood Village and Park Cities Village, the strip of shops on Mockinbird west of Central. ButHillside Village was to be his greatest yet, serving a burgeoning area of Dallas that, at the time, was the fastest growing with the highest income bracket. Caruth must have had dollar signs in his eyes as he announced an eventual 300,000 squarefeetofretailspreadacross30 acresnorthofMockingbirdandspanning both sides of Abrams. The shopping center’s original tenants included “Dallas’ largestsupermarket”with a whopping 15,000 square feet, and a slew of neighborhood shops with quaint monikers such as Mrs. Northcutt’s Dress Shop and Fritz’s Paint Store.

Fast-forward five decades, and the picturehadchanged.Theagingcenter’s anchorstorescomprisedDollarTree, Steinmart and a party supply shop, with Blockbuster, which was quickly becoming a technology dinosaur, occupying prime real estate on the corner of Mockingbird andHillside.

That was the state of Hillside Village in 2007 when Jim and Rebecca Tudor of Twinrose Investments bought it. The husband-wifeteamforesawwhatwas coming — the loss of both Blockbuster andthe25,000-square-footpartysupply store in the corner where the much smaller Tuesday Morning now sits.

Losinganchortenantslikethese especially Blockbuster, a mega-corporation that, in the past, guaranteed a substantial rent check each month — could havemeanttheendoftheshopping center’s viability.

In this case, however, it signaled the beginning.

After the coffee shop and two restaurants made their announcements, PK’s Wine and Spirits, a Dallas-based company with locations in Highland Park and Preston Hollow, signed a contract to open its third store in the center.