Gaston Avenue redevelopment

Zad Roumaya is not taking any shortcuts. His Change Chamber Development wants to build apartments, retail and offices at the intersection of Gaston and Garland road, where the current two-story, back and front strip center has sat mostly vacant for 20 years.

This summer, he met with neighborhood groups and got an understanding from several city types about how the zoning process works. He uses the word collaborative a lot.

He says he has seen how others who want to redevelop in this area have failed, and he doesn’t want to repeat their mistakes. His goal? Spend $40 to $45 million to build on the intersection’s southwest corner –- a five-story building on Gaston and a four-story building on the second tier behind it, where CJ’s Billiard’s is now. All told, he sees 250 to 350 apartments, plus 35,000 to 40,000 square feet of retail and office space.

I spent an hour or so yesterday with Roumaya at Buzz Lofts, his south of downtown condo development that has the media and green aficionados swooning. He is an East Dallas resident who has lived in Forest Hills, which gives him an insight out of town developers don’t have. The point Roumaya kept emphasizing: The last thing he wants to do is to spring a deal on the community as a fait accompli. He wants input from residents, and he wants to try and work with the community to address problems. Case in point: The project has already been changed to take into account privacy concerns from residents who back onto the back, CJ’s Billiards part of the development.

Yes, he says, not everyone will be happy with everything with the project, but enough people should be to make the deal work.

Roumaya’s observations on the development:

• He is building apartments instead of condos, like Buzz, because the condo market in Dallas is pretty much non-existent. He sees rents of about $1.40 to $1.50 a square foot, which would make an apartment more expensive than a similar apartment at the Village. Figure on $1,500 to $2,000 for two bedrooms.

• The retail mix will be local and regional –- dry cleaners, postal centers, a bike or running shop, and the like. He wants to keep the current tenants, if they want to stay.

• The retail area on the ground floor will include office space. Roumaya is an advocate of an urban planning concept called live-work, in which people live near where they work. In this case. a lawyer or accountant who lives in the complex could rent an office in the building and walk down every morning.

• Construction probably won’t start until late summer or early fall of 2009. Roumaya doesn’t expect the city to approve the zoning changes he needs until next spring. After that, it’s 18 months or so for construction. And the deal is contingent on the zoning change. Otherwise, it stays as a strip center.

• The building won’t be LEED certified, but it will contain many green features, using what he learned in building Buzz. And Buzz, he told me, is not LEED certified despite all the acclaim it has received.

• What will it look like? The architect is JH+P Associates, who designed Cityville Southwestern Medical District on Motor Street on a similarly-sized property. They also did the Cityville projects on Lower Greenville and Fitzhugh. Roumaya says he likes the hospital project a lot. Regardless, this development will look more traditional than Buzz.

Technorati Tags: East Dallas development,Zed Roumaya,Gaston Avenue

Comments

[Robert]

Does he own the propert, or have an opton to purchase based on zoning changes?

[Kim]

This development could be the first step in changing this intersection for the better - something which is desperately needed!

[Rick Wamre]

According to the DMN story on the development, Roumaya does not own the property (he has it under contract to purchase), and he won't buy it unless the zoning is changed to match his development. Here's the link to that story...
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/091308dnbusgaston.19041bb.html