Small-scale developers seek to change Dallas for the better
Aging strip centers need new life, and these folks want to give it to them.
Written By Dallas Morning News Editorial
Jun. 30, 2025
An aging, semivacant strip shopping center along Abrams Road in Dallas. Dallas and its inner suburbs have an overabundance of similar obsolete retail space. Photo taken in 2019.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)
Once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere: Forlorn, aging retail strip centers marooned in an ocean of cracked and patched asphalt. Even the smallest of these obsolete commercial centers can be challenging to reinvigorate, so they languish, generating little economic activity or tax revenue.
But what one person sees as blight, another views as an opportunity. These optimistic but clear-eyed entrepreneurs aren’t traditional real estate developers building blocks of apartments, they are incrementalists. They take what already exists and try to transform it into something more attractive and useful to nearby residents, while also making a modest profit. They are profoundly local, avoid public subsidies, and often live or work in, or near, the projects they undertake.
In a region where demolish-and-build-new is the most common approach to redevelopment, this evolutionary approach is welcome and needed, especially on small sites. Dallas, Fort Worth and their inner suburbs have an abundance of outdated properties that need reimagining. It will take an army of incremental developers to bring these places back to life.
Happily, local leaders of the small-scale development strategy welcome others into their field. Monte Anderson, best known for rehabilitating the Texas Theatre and Belmont Hotel, and transforming a 1930s warehouse into Tyler Station, co-founded a support group for incremental developers. It meets every other Tuesday evening at Tyler Station to share knowledge, contacts, advice and stories.
The group is free and open to anyone. Each meeting focuses on one of the 12 steps Anderson considers critical to “town-making.” The most recent meeting focused on pro formas, the income and expense projections that reveal whether a real estate purchase or development plan is financially viable.
Lucas Reader, 31, an Oak Cliff professional musician turned real-estate agent and small-scale developer, calls the town-making gathering the “best group ever.” He attended last week’s meeting partly to seek advice about a nearby house he wanted to buy, renovate and lease to a family in the neighborhood.
“It was extremely useful to see if the deal works,” he said. “We had a healthy debate.”
Even though incremental developers work at a completely different scale than traditional, corporate developers, both groups understand that healthy cities change over time. That puts them at odds with many neighborhood activists and homeowners, who increasingly revile almost all change. Rental housing is especially unpopular, whether a developer proposes adding 10 units or 300 to an underperforming commercial property.
North Texas is big enough for both large- and small-scale redevelopment; in fact, we need both. This region has a serious housing shortage, especially of lower-cost homes and apartments, and an oversupply of deteriorating retail space. Dallas and its older, inner suburbs can compete with the newest, outermost suburbs by nurturing neighborliness, giving current residents more reasons to stay, and adding homes and services they need. It’s a task perfect for an army of incremental developers.
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