WHAT TOWN CENTER?

We were promised a movie theater, cool new restaurants, a community grocer and a walkable neighborhood gathering place. Ten years and $23 million of public funds later, all we have is another apartment complex. What happened to the town center, and why is the developer telling us that the grand plan won’t work?

You could feel the optimism that bright November morning in 2008. City officials and developers in hardhats rallied with Lake Highlands High School cheerleaders, dancers and band members outside an empty apartment complex at Walnut Hill and Skillman.

Drums rolled. Highlandettes highkicked. The crowd cheered. A wrecking ball careened through the top floors, walls crum- bling close to where the Haven Lake Highlands apartments stand today.

Former Dallas City Councilman Bill Blaydes, who spent much of his term courting potential Lake Highlands Town Center developers, took the podium to deliver a rousing speech.

“Because of what we celebrate today, Lake Highlands will not become stagnant for our children,” he proclaimed.

Attendees responded with a standing ovation.

That same day, representatives from Prescott Realty, the development company promising to tackle the $300 million Lake Highlands Town Center project, told Advocate reporters they were “right on schedule” with the anticipated 2010 completion date. Blaydes had cycled through six developers before securing Prescott, and Prescott president Vance Detwiler joked that seven is his lucky number. “I just hope it won’t take us seven years to finish it.”

OK, developers are an optimistic lot by nature, but it’s been seven years since that heralded groundbreaking. It’s been 10 since a Tax Increment Financing district (TIF) was established along the Skillman Corridor to set the fiscal stage for the town center, five years since DART built its town center rail station, and one since a grocery store anchor unofficially agreed to lease a space at the town center. The land, aside of a single multifamily residential building, remains a 70-acre prairie.

Its fallow appearance belies all that has happened behind the scenes in recent years.

Our new city councilman campaigned on pledges to promote town center progress; the center is under the new management of Cypress Real Estate Advisors; the Skillman Corridor TIF — which potentially could funnel millions of dollars into the project — enjoys new, motivated board members.

But a stalemate has formed between new town center head honcho Cypress Real Estate, which wants to deviate from Prescott’s original vision, and city designers, who are pushing for Cypress to stay true to the initial concept.

This recent activity indicates the project is at a tipping point and that, for better or worse, neighbors of the development could soon see some bona fide construction. Or not.

In recent months, neighbors, developers and stakeholders have been asking some core questions: Does the original vision still stand as the best solution? Will taxpayers who have contributed millions of dollars by way of the City of Dallas, Dallas County, North Texas Council of Governments, DART and TIF funds settle for something different from the original dream for Lake Highlands Town Center? And, what realistic design can succeed on this site?

“85,000 PEOPLE AND NO DOWNTOWN.” That about sums it up for Bill Blaydes, the Lake Highlands resident who served as District 10 councilman from 2003-07. Blaydes did the heavy lifting during the center’s formative years, combining his hope for a real “downtown Lake Highlands with the widespread belief that the apartments on Skillman between