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Mid-Century David Braden Home On OOCCL Fall Tour

David Braden, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, was one of a whole generation of gifted architects in Dallas during the middle part of the last century, gifted enough so that George Dahl chose his firm into which to merge his own when he was ready to step back from running his own firm.  Although much of Braden’s work has been non-residential, you will have the opportunity to tour Braden’s very own house during this year’s Old Oak Cliff Conservation League Fall Home Tour, October 10 and 11.  It is said that the cantilevered deck was one of the first in Dallas–caught on pretty well, I’d say.

Casa View Oaks

I’m back–temporarily–to help Candy out as she takes care of family business.

I’m always amazed at how many tucked-away neighborhoods there are in Dallas that I’ve never heard of.  With really good architecture.

Just drove over to an area that I guess might be called Casa View Oaks, in an area of east Dallas that can only appreciate, near Ferguson and Oates.  There’s quite a pocket of Cliff May-designed houses over there that are crying out for young families to come on in, buy a house for next to nothing, do some restoration work, and end up with affordable architectural significance.

Cliff May, who is sometimes referred to as the Father of the California Ranch House, practiced throughout the mid century (20th, right).  His houses were notable for their close connection between interior and exterior spaces, which tends not to be the case with the ranch houses we all grew up in.  The houses over in Casa View Oaks clearly have it.  One current listing, 2651 Andrea Lane, is on the market for $146,000 and has been a hot topic over at livemodern.com.   Take a look at the photos.

White Rock Lake Health Care Vigil and Real Estate

Could the health care protests be reflecting neighborhood personalities? Anti-public option Tuesday night at Preston Forest, pro-public in White Rock Lake.

Dallas Neighborhood: We Love Fresh Food, Free Speech

This neighbor explained she wants to get a message out to President Obama about free speech and health care: let people speak their minds, and we don’t want socialized medicine in this country, she said.

Disney Week: Great Pinocchio Listing— And We’re Not Lying!

Wonderful listing in the storied Disney Streets, where things are Goofy these days over a proposed Conservation District. Disney is the closest thing you can get to Leave It To Beaver living in Dallas. My favorite things about this home: it’s on a huge corner lot, and has just been reduced by $10,000 to $359,000. (Even so, I still think it’s a wee bit pricey.) Check it out: pool, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, try to forget the fact that the third bedroom is now a pool hall and the home’s updating lacks an overall sense of cohesiveness. Oh — almost forgot: the sellers are excluding the wine fridge, fireplace screens (???) and the sauna. Hope they’re calling Curtiss.

Dallas Real Estate: Lake Highlands Town Center Delayed….

Not good news for Lake Highlands real estate. In fact, I am starting to look at shopping centers in a whole new light: they are predictors of the neighborhood around them. I will be snapping pics as I explore this town and send them off via Twitter. (Feel free to follow.)  Show me a shopping center in the process of being spruced up, I’ll put my money down that surrounding property values are edging upwards.

The Perfect Ficus: Bailey’s Prime Plus, Park Lane

My Ficus trees are shedding right now, not the happiest of campers. I’m asking where Ed got these trees — the leaves are real, but the bark is synthetic, they never need water, leaves never shed. I’m thinking, the perfect fake Ficus, perfect fake kids and husband cannot be far behind. Stepford, anyone?

Spurring Romance In The Bar: Bailey’s Prime Plus, Park Lane

Red is the hot new color for fall fashion — which means it will soon be dominating interiors. And Ed certainly brought out the red in the bar at his Park Lane location.

The Board Meeting: Bailey’s Prime Plus

Is this room not great?

Sneak Peak Inside Bailey’s Prime Plus Park Lane

Little “private luncheon” there yesterday and I was honored to meet the proprietor, Mr. Ed Bailey himself. He told us he wants Prime Plus to be the sort of steakhouse where ladies would feel at home for lunch with the girls as well as going out with the boys to devour a huge, juicy steak. (As a Chicago girl, let me tell you, there is nothing better.) I ooohed and ahhhed over the design, while lunch will necessitate the addition of two inches to my Mama wedding frock: the food was fantastic! (Click here if you like Food Porn — warning: House Porn has fewer calories.) The restaurant is huge — 12,000 square feet — in the new Park Lane development at Park and Central.

Trend: The Feds Telling Us How To Do Everything, Even Real Estate

I spent the good part of the day researching the ensuing battle in the Disney streets — controversy in a neighborhood where they could film the remake of Leave It To Beaver without buying one prop. There are many things wrong with the battle, as I’ll post later, but what is good is that the homeowners themselves are involved and passionate. No one from two thousand miles away is telling them they cannot build carports or must have a ten foot side setback.  But that may not be for long. One of my favorite urban experts, Joel Kotkin,  warns us that Washington is rubbing its hands together, smacking lips and preparing to exert control over everything urban everywhere, including us. And who’s got the healthiest economy of them all? D.C., the new Rome, where decisions are being made in the “best interest” of everyone and money is flying. Dallas, he says, had best be watching:

“Polycentric sprawling cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Atlanta soon may find themselves forced to reorganize themselves along lines preferred by federal urban “experts.” Hard-pressed industrial cities may find new environmental restrictions on ports and other key infrastructures an impediment to a much-needed renaissance.”

Northern Hills Trying For Conservation Overlay?

That’s the rumor I’ve heard — anyone?

Here We Go Again: Disaster In Disney Streets Over Conservation Overlay

We’ve simply got to do something about those conservation overlays — my fingers are getting tired from writing about them! First it was Little Forest Hills, now the Disney Streets in north-west-ish Dallas (Royal west of Midway, east of Marsh) are embroiled in a neighborhood brou-haw over controlled building that is getting nastier and nastier, as they always do. I had heard (Bo) peeps out of there last summer but honestly thought things were chilling. Not so, I’m told. Cinderella’ got her wicked witch broom out and Pinocchio’s nose is about to be busted. I’m running a new Disney streets listing for D Sale of the Week next week. Doesn’t this neighborhood fighting hurt property values? So tell me, what’s happening. Anyone care to comment?

Dream Pool, Ctd.

This pool at Wimberley Place overlooks Twin Creeks Golf Course — see the fairway, not power lines in the back yard!

Dallas Real Estate: Sex Offender Notification System — Checked Your ‘Hood For Sex Offenders Lately?

The Texas Department of Public Safety has created a notification system that allows the public to receive e-mail notifications regarding database changes relating to registered sex offenders. Which means, if a sex offender moves into your ‘hood, you can be notified by email. Prior to this, you had to check your neighborhood by zip code for updates. I checked zip codes 75225, 75230 and 75229 — very surprising what I found! Everyone in the market for a home — or about to sell one — should check the database.

A note here: before we moved into our neighborhood, a sex offender drove around the circle and attempted to molest two young girls roller-blading on a summer’s day. I happened to know one girls’ mother, and thank God they knew to protect themselves and seek help. So just because sex offenders don’t live in your ‘hood doesn’t mean they won’t get there. 

Maybe Texas should be more like Florida when it comes to sex offenders. Florida is a highly restrictive state for sex offenders. Florida law requires a 1,000-foot buffer between registered sex offenders and schools, day-care centers, parks, churches or libraries. But one man seems to be creating a small real estate empire leasing to sex offenders. For reasons on why Florida law is so strict, read this article: hell hath no wrath like a lobbyst who’s daughter was sexually assaulted by the family nanny, but some also say the law leaves offenders with nowhere to live.

The Most Beautiful Homes In Dallas: Water Tower Place

Great view across the street.

Question: do folks who live near the Preston-Forest water tower get a reduced rate on their Dallas County taxes? I’ve always wanted to know why that wasn’t buried?

Dallas Neighborhoods: University Terrace Now a Neighborhood Stabilization Overlay

Passed today, and from what I hear, the battle has not been pretty. Gotta confess here — I hate  Neighborhood Nazi Nimwits. We had our own issues in Hillcrest Estates a few years back, when a handful of neighbors who had been here in their ranch homes since the dawn of eternity decided they wanted to control what new people coming in were building. One of them filed an encumbrance on our properties limiting window views — this in a ‘hood with minimum one acre lots. Never mind that most of them had deed restriction violations on their own properties — that was OK because they had been here so long. But none of us coming in could deviate and in fact, they wanted us to abide by stricter controls. That experience and the ego rush I felt coming from folks who were not paying my mortgage or taxes just fried me. So I do apologize, I’m a little jaded.

The problem I have with bulldog HOA’s and NSO’s is how they pit neighbor against neighbor — to wit, this from University Terrace’s NSO Yes! blog:

“you know what tubby. I actually have a life. I have a family. I have better things to do than to bully people into decisions and impose on other peoples rights. But if you feel so good about it that you have to celebrate, then have a great time. It really shows to all the people that did not vote or voted no just how low class, and trashy you are.” 

Please read the blog entirely and tell me if you are not instantly transported back to eighth grade. But that’s why city councils shouldn’t let these overlays happen — let the city make the rules, enforce them, anyone else can battle it out in court where the prohibitive costs might make people act like adults for about five whole minutes.

Man May Be Shooting Cats on Amherst

A reader writes:

“I live on the border on UP and HP, there is a restaurant on Lovers called Mangos.  For about a year now I go there every night to feed some wild cats that live in the alley.  Over the last few months I have noticed some of the cats (some old and some kittens) and been walking funny and injured, tonight I met some woman out there who also stops by to feed them and was told that one of the guy who lives in the houses that backs up to the restaurant has been shooting the cats because he sees them as a nuisance.  The woman have already contacted the police and so on but I was hoping to get some exposure for this situation.  I don’t know if you are an animal lover like I am but even if you are not no animal deserves to get shot just for trying to survive.  I was hoping you would have some advice on how I can get the word out on this guy.”

I am an ENORMOUS animal lover, three dogs and a parrot, have had as many as five dogs, but am sadly allergic to cats.  Still, I am speechless with horror. I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico, practically a bedroom community of Dallas, where I toured the new New Mexico History Museum and was taken back by the recorded stories of atrocity  –  like one of the first Spanish explorers, Juan de Onate, circa early 1500’s, who to quell a Pueblo uprising, battled and captured  natives as slaves and ordered that the left foot of every man over the age of 25 be chopped off.

I’m told a statue of him, north of Santa Fe on Highway 68 in Esplanola,  was recently dessicrated – the foot was amputated.

No wonder our dirt just cries sometimes from all the pain that it has witnessed.  On Amherst, no less.

Jan Mar Rocks, And Rolls

I’m writing about the Jan Mar area (east of Hillcrest, north of Royal Lane and just south of Forest) for our June/July print product. Would love some inside insight on this ‘hood if you have any to offer!

Highland Park Village Sale: What’s Coming, What’s Going?

At a private celebratory party last night, Ray Washburne was crowned the King of Highland Park Village at his Mi Cocina’s, the second floor so crowded a June Bug couldn’t fit in. HPV passes from one illustriou$ family to another. Breathe a sigh of relief: Ray Washburne tells the DMN that HPV is in good hands with its new owners, all locals who care deeply about the historical shopping center. Vince is coming — no word on rumors that Apple and Lela Rose or other new vendors will be nipping close behind. Stay tuned.

Earth Day and the Ag Exemption

If you love trees and tree farms, then you should love what the Texas agriculture exemption has done for them. In honor of Earth Day, here’s an out-take from my recent post on  farms and suburbs for the national land-use website The New Geography, an interesting aside relayed to me by Phillip Williams, developer of Montgomery Farm in Allen:

Margaret Crow thought that cows stank. Margaret was the elegant wife of Trammell Crow, Jr., a  Dallas property developer who created the Dallas Design District, Dallas Market Center, Atlanta’s Peachtree Center and San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center.

The problem was that without any cows, Mr. Crow would not be able to obtain an agricultural exemption on his extensive properties and would instead pay full Texas property taxes. How the hell, he asked, can you get an ag exemption without any cows? He posed the question to a young CPA at Arthur Young, Crow’s accounting firm, who shot back a memo to Crow saying sir, you can have your agricultural exemption: plant a tree farm.

 That CPA was young Philip Williams.

 ”By 1988,” says Williams, “Every major real estate developer in Texas had a tree farm.”

Neighborhoods We Love: Gastonwood/Coronado Hills

Otherwise known as the C Streets and one of the hottest little ‘hoods east of downtown. This is the land of the charming 1920’s and 1930’s Tudors, 16 blocks of darling homes ranging in price from below $200,000 to over $600,000 — most original and well-maintained, some new construction that blends well with the old, like 7053 Coronado.