The tiny town that was

Before Buckingham went bankrupt, a budding Lake Highlands businessman almost turned it into a real-estate mecca

Story by Lauri Valerio |

Ask for directions near the tiny neighborhood of Buckingham and you might hear something like, “Turn left when you see the second liquor store.” But the neighborhood’s plethora of booze isn’t the only thing that makes it unique.

Despite Buckingham’s Lake Highlands connection (it straddles our northern border), it is mostly defined by a contentious relationship with the city of Richardson. Buckingham was once a city within a city, a 0.25-square-mile plot wholly contained within Richardson, which finally annexed the town in 1996. In 1985 this neighborhood was a site fought over by developers, garnering articles in the New York Times and USA Today These days,

Photos by

Can Türkyilmaz

few people even know it exists.

Richardson took center stage in Buckingham’s history, but 1978 Lake Highlands High School graduate C.W. Kendall group, Whitehall Development Company, to buy the town out of bankruptcy.

III held the strings. “The Boy Who Put Buckingham on the Block,” as Dallas Life Magazine dubbed him in a 1984 article, was twice involved in purchasing the community land and still has ties to it.

As late as 1995, Buckingham was reported as a “ghost town” comprised of empty or razed houses, despite the $20 million Michael Block originally spent on improvements. Today, Kendall calls the neighborhood a successful development,

The City of Buckingham versus Richardson

Buckingham, which is bordered by abrams, centennial, audelia and Park Bend, was its own incorporated town for about 50 years before it was annexed by Richardson in 1996. its time as an island city was rife with disputes. Think of the BuckinghamRichardson relationship as the Texas-union one, when our state fought against incorporation into the united States. The underdog fought back, though eventually it lost. Richardson knew to hit the town where it hurt most, providing juicy talk for a municipal version of “gossip girl.”

At 18 years old, Kendall earned his real estate license. At 19, he began dreaming of turning the farmland into high-rise apartments, offices and retail. Building this mini-Addison meant convincing the 64 landowners, many of whom had lived there since the land was first developed in 1945, to sell. At more than $500,000 per 2-acre lot, all but two lots sold to developer Michael Block by 1985, with Kendall brokering the deal.

In January 1984, one week after Block closed on most of the properties, the town voted 55-27 to allow the sale of liquor which Kendall says increased revenue for Buckingham and brought “a lot of traffic” — literally. Cars reportedly frequented Abrams Road as residents of dry Richardson sought out spirits.

This real estate-mecca success story didn’t pan out as expected, though. In 1987, a few years after Block bought Buckingham, the stock market crashed, sending the town into bankruptcy. Cue Kendall.

“In hindsight, [the original plans] were a little grandiose,” Kendall says.

He joined with attorneys to create a citing its multi- and single-family homes, retail and senior housing. People live, eat and shop in spaces where horses used to roam. According to Kendall, 97 percent of Buckingham land has been developed though a few “straggler lots” still await commercial zoning.

“[Buckingham] will always be special to me,” Kendall says. “It was a big deal at the time. It was something that impacted my career at a very young age.” animalS: Buckingham settlers in the 1950s loved their animals. a 1995 Dallas Morning News article reports that the town was originally founded to avoid Richardson’s ban on horses. Before a 1955 election on incorporation, some residents argued Richardson would zone all the animals out of Buckingham if they won control. The town voted 55-19 against annexation.

Nearly 30 years later, Kendall owns a commercial real estate investment company in Richardson where he lives with his wife, high-school sweetheart Sharon, and roots for the Lake Highlands Wildcats. He still sits on Whitehall Development’s board of directors.

Liquor stores are still disproportionately common in Buckingham. Richardson now allows the sale of beer and wine, but when people want something harder, they know where to head.

These stories first appeared on lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.

WaTeR: By the 1950s, Richardson had set its sights on annexing Buckingham. in an effort to pressure Buckingham residents, Richardson threatened to shut off their water. Buckingham residents secured a court injunction to stop this temporarily while they formed a water district and built their own artesian well, as Dallas Life Magazine reports.

TRaSh: Richardson, which did not want Buckingham to become wet, challenged the town’s 1984 vote on allowing the sale of liquor. Though Richardson threatened to stop collecting the garbage, Buckingham voted 55-27 to go wet, mostly out of spite, according to some residents. They contracted their own trash collectors, according to Dallas Life Magazine.