Ask Kathy Stewart about retail development in Lake Highlands, and especially in the center of the neighborhood, and she can offer various perspectives. There’s the perspective of a 24-year Lake Highlands resident. There’s the perspective of the president of the White Rock Valley neighborhood association, which includes the intersection of Walnut Hill and Audelia. And then there’s the perspective of the co-owner of the Highlands Café restaurant on the southwest corner of that intersection.
“Do we need neighborhood shopping centers? Yes, we do,” says Stewart, who has run the café for the past two years with co-owner Anita Siegers (and with the financial backing of 20 Lake Highlands families). “We need centers with a bank and a dry cleaners and a grocery store. And then we need to figure out what else we need.”
And how to get it. And this, despite much good news over the past couple of years, remains the most perplexing issue facing retail and residential development in Lake Highlands. Yes, there has been progress on the neighborhood’s periphery, including the Park Lane project near NorthPark Center, and a good amount of renovation on Northwest Highway and northward along Skillman. But is all of this enough to jump start development in the rest of the neighborhood, in the strip centers with their empty storefronts along LBJ, up and down Abrams, farther up on Skillman, and at Walnut Hill and Audelia in the heart of the neighborhood?
Equally as important, where does the proposed town center on Walnut Hill, between Skillman and White Rock Trail, fit into this? Is there enough momentum to make this project — currently on its seventh developer — work?
“The middle is still the problem,” says former Lake Highlands resident Chris Kelly, a principle with Bedrock Mfg. Co. in Dallas, which funds real estate development projects. “There are still a lot of apartments there, and until the problems those apartments present are addressed, you’re going to have difficulty developing the middle.”
What’s going on?
The good news is that the redevelopment situation in Lake Highlands is not nearly as bleak as it was just a couple of years ago, say residents, local officials and developers. A lot of storefronts that were empty then, especially in centers on Abrams and Skillman, have tenants. The development of what had been a largely vacant shopping center at Walnut Hill and Skillman is complete, bringing with it top-rated tenants. In addition, the neig