It’s official: The new mixed-use development at the northwest corner of Central Expressway and Walnut Hill will be anchored by coveted grocer Trader Joe’s, according to a front-page story in the Dallas Morning News.

We suspected this might be the case when Leon Backes of Provident Realty told us they were looking for a “relatively small” anchor and retailers not yet seen in the Dallas market.

He said the development, which is being called Preston Hollow Village, will be walkable with limited surface parking in an effort to get away from the typical strip-mall shopping center we around the neighborhood.

Provident is a partner with Missouri-based Kroenke Holdings, which bought the land in November 2010.

This will be the second Trader Joe’s in Dallas but the first to come in with new construction. The grocer announced a spot on Lower Greenville last December, taking over the old Arcadia night club. Locations also are planned in Plano and Fort Worth. Wondering what all the Trader Joe’s fuss is about? Advocate editor Keri Mitchell explains its cult following.

Preston Hollow Village is considered one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Dallas right now. The entire development will take several years to complete.

The Lady Wildcat volleyball team will host a Father-Daughter Car Wash Saturday at Highlander School. While the girls and their dads clean your car or truck, you’re invited to enjoy a fresh-grilled hot dog, hamburger or nachos while you wait.

The cost of a car wash is $10, and funds will be used to participate in tournaments. Highlander is located at 9120 Plano Road at McCree, and the car wash is from 10am to 2pm.

Next year’s freshman, JV and varsity players will all be participating. All three teams will be defending their undefeated 9-5A District Champion titles in the fall. Go Cats!

It is if you believe city manager Mary Suhm, who told the council on Wednesday that there is enough money to restore some services that have been cut since the bloodletting started four years ago. Or, as Suhm put it, “restore some things we cannot do without.”

Which raises a host of questions, not the least is how we did without them in the first place. Or whose fault it is that we had to do without them.

Which is why I’m not holding my breath waiting for any of those essential city services to be restored. These pronouncements have always been as much shell game as fact, part of the way that Suhm manages the council to her will. After all, how many of us got 10 percent raises when our company was cutting costs and laying off employees?

I wasn’t able to attend last night’s Dallas Park Department meeting. But I’m told by my colleagues who did attend that the Winfrey Point parking issue wasn’t on the agenda.

I’m not sure why or how that is, especially considering that the meeting was held at Winfrey Point. I can understand that the meeting has probably been planned for some time, and the main topics — improvements to the trail, the White Rock Dog Park, etc. — took precedence. But really? No talking about the elephant in the room?

Anyone disappointed in the lack of parking discussion last night will happily inhale Jim Schutze’s most recent Observer column on precisely this topic.

Schutze begins his reporting by talking to master naturalist Becky Rader, whom Rachel Stone quoted in her first report on the parking issue. Schutze’s takeaway from Rader:

“When the buffalo arrived here on their annual migrations it took the herd three days to pass through Dallas. That’s millions and millions of animals. … The patch of land at White Rock Lake that city officials want to turn into a parking lot is a tiny window on that enormous past.”

Schutze, who is married to Dallas Morning News garden editor Mariana Greene, shows respect for the appeal of the arboretum.

“In a city where we sometimes complain there’s little to do outdoors, the arboretum has become a rare treasure. It’s the place where tens of thousands of citizens go every year because they yearn to pause, hand in hand, to smell the flowers. Zillions of flowers.”

He also, however, criticizes the arboretum’s reaction to neighbors who took it to task.

“From the moment the arboretum first ran into resistance, its own internal culture was on high display. It dug in its spiked heels and lifted its bejeweled fists. The arboretum hired a naturalist with absurdly exaggerated credentials, and he cranked out a report for them saying that Winfrey Point was a piece-of-crap vacant lot choked with weeds.”

And then, Schutze points out the unforgivable sin.

“To the defenders of Winfrey Point, the most appalling thing about the response of the arboretum and park board was that it meant they knew nothing of the decades of research and activism that had gone into safeguarding Winfrey Point as a natural treasure.

“The Dallas Arboretum, this supposed temple of botanical wonders, did not know and did not care that entire teams of experts and dedicated citizens had fought for decades to preserve Winfrey Point.”

Schutze also interviews Matt White, the author of “Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait,” who reaches a similar conclusion that I did last week — it’s not just about the prairie land.

“It’s parkland that is being taken away. … White Rock Lake is Dallas’ Central Park. … For the elected officials who are willing to give that away, I think it’s a violation of the public trust.”

These are only a few of the highlights. Take a few minutes to read the column in its entirety.

John Tui, taylor Kitsch, and Rihanna save the world from special effects in 'Battleship'.

The first big, dumb, and loud movie spectacle of the summer has arrived in the form of Battleship, ostensibly based on the Hasbro board game and directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) with something for everyone: tons of heavy ordnance and explosions for the boys, and plenty of chiseled eye candy for the girls, all set to a cock rock soundtrack almost as ear-splitting as the sound effects.

Fortunately, Berg is a skilled director most of the time, and he successfully apes the excessive style of Michael Bay, but with the restraint that constantly eludes Bay. Battleship knows it’s silly, is content to be so, and rides high on the courage of its silliness, making it slightly less of a soul-sucking exercise in vacuity than the usual fare of this caliber.

Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights, John Carter) stars as Alex Hopper, a directionless slacker who gets in trouble with the law while trying to impress hot blonde Sam (Brooklyn Decker), and is summarily punted into the U.S. Navy by his straight-laced older brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard, Straw Dogs).

Flash forward a few years: Alex is serving as a lieutenant on the destroyer USS John Paul Jones, while Stone is commanding officer on another, the Sampson, both supervised by Sam’s father, Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson, The Grey). Alex is still hot-tempered and impulsive, not only stalling his career in the Navy but also his chances of getting permission to marry Sam.

Things really go south during a round of international naval war games of the coast of Hawaii, when aliens arrive on earth with a less-than-benign response to a friendly transmission broadcast to them years earlier. Circumstances leave Alex in command of the one out-classed ship in a position to do anything about the invasion.

What follows is roughly two hours of cartoonish and suitably bombastic combat maneuvering and reheated race-against time peril that feel like leftovers from Independence Day and the Transformers series crosscut with the most expensive Navy recruitment film this side of Top Gun. It’s also hard not to snicker just a bit when the USS Missouri is dusted off for action.

The cast is a mixed bag, though their characters are more fleshed-out than is usual for this type of movie. Kitsch comes across as slightly less wooden than he did in John Carter, Skarsgard and Neeson are fine but under-used, and Decker is a fairly generic screen hottie. It’s the supporting cast who breathe any life into the formulaic tale, namely Tadanobu Asano as a hard-nosed Japanese officer and John Tui, Jesse Plemons, and pop-star Rihanna (in her screen debut) as Hopper’s crewmates. Especially of note is Gregory D. Gadson, a decorated Iraq war veteran who lost both legs to an IED; the non-actor stars as a bitter Army colonel who rises to the occasion. He cuts a strong presence, and seeing a wounded warrior allowed to shine as an action hero with dignity and respect is inspiring.

Battleship has its moments of cheap thrill, but they are few and far between, especially when its bloated 131-minute runtime is factored in. There are the obligatory references to the board game — it is a licensed property based on a pop culture icon — but they thankfully stop short of dredging up the “You sank my battleship” line. It’s not a beating to sit through, but it is ultimately forgettable.

Ah, well. There’s always Stratego: The Motion Picture.

Four passes to the 2012 HP Byron Nelson Championship just landed on my desk. They can be used for any day of the tournament (today through Sunday).

The 1st person to email “I Love the Advocate” to mriney@advocatemag.com gets four one-day passes to the tournament and 20 food & beverage vouchers.

On your mark, get set, GO! …

Lake Highlands High School grad Ally Collier was featured in Style Archive online magazine in May, described as “the perfect mix of Kate-Bosworth-hip meets old-school-Lynn-Wyatt-chic.” Ally is an OU grad working at Verdura, a chic jewelry boutique in New York City.

The profile highlighted Ally wearing a variety of pieces, from diamonds to pearls, gold chains to chunky bracelets, in Verdura’s trendy Fifth Avenue salon. You can see the full layout here, or pop in to say hello on your next NYC visit.

In 2010, Advocate published this graphic of proposed trail improvements. The plan doesn't appear to have changed much since then.

Dallas Parks and Recreation Wednesday hosted a meeting to discuss plans for White Rock Lake, specifically regarding improvements along the trail from Mockingbird to the Bath House on the northeast side of the water, as well as the White Rock Lake Dog Park, which Joanna Raines reports on here.

The city announced plans to begin rebuilding the existing trail northeast of the lake rather than building a new trail along the shoreline (as the city did along the west side of the lake). A 2006 bond program, allocated $1.8 million for phase one of the trail and parking reconstruction, for the area from Mockingbird Point to the Bath House Cultural Center, so this is the most imminent of intentions discussed at tonight’s meeting.

And though these trail improvements are on the brink of happening, a few people are calling for the city to rethink the plan.

Several of the meeting attendees argued that revamping the existing trail is a waste and that pedestrians and cyclists will not use it. Comments (paraphrased) included:

You will never get people off that road. (more…)

Tonight at 6 p.m., Dallas Park Board member Gerry Worrall hosts a meeting at Winfrey Point to address the recent parking vs. park dust-up, of course, as well as other improvements to White Rock Lake. One of the focal points of the meeting is the White Rock Dog Park, and thanks to dog park events chairman Stephen Foster, we have a sneak peek at what the city has planned.

Mess and mud will be reduced in the areas marked with “improved surface” (click on the rendering for a larger view), which will soon be artificial turf. A dog bath outside the gates and new restroom facilities also will improve the park’s sanitation, Foster says.

What is now a waterfront with jagged rocks will be replaced with safe, sloping stairs — a “dog launch” on the first rendering, which is depicted in detail in the second.

To address the problem of parking, the gravel lot will be transformed to concrete.

The total cost of the project is $1.2 million. City of Dallas bond funds are providing $800,000, and the rest comes from donations.

The purpose of the renovation is to make the park cleaner, safer and more accessible, Foster says.