Image courtesy of Crescent Communities
A developer’s plans for the northeast corner of Zang and Davis includes 305 apartments as well as townhomes, restaurants, shops and a 15,000-square-foot public plaza.
North Carolina-based Crescent Communities bought the property that houses Dallas County Schools, the bus service for the Dallas Independent School District.
The property is zoned for buildings as high as eight stories, but Crescent is planning to build six stories on Zang at Davis, scaling back to five, four and three-and-a-half stories moving north along Zang, where there will be two-story walkup apartments made to look like townhomes with stoops.
The company also wants to build three-story townhomes on Zang at Neely, but the zoning requires a retail component, so the developer is requesting a zoning change to allow the for-sale townhomes, which would have their own private garages but also front porches.
Part of the property, just east of Beckley, could be developed in the future, possibly as a grocery store.
“As a company, we are a bit obsessed with community and thoughtful place making that necessarily starts with understanding a project’s context, its history, its people … its story,” says Michael Blackwell of Crescent Communities.
Image courtesy of Crescent Communities
Crescent provided these renderings to the Advocate, emphasizing their plans to use brick and high-end materials that complement the neighborhood. The apartments will consist of the “flatiron building” and the “Davis building,” both inspired by early 1900s architecture, with a plaza at the center. The plaza is “inspired by great European precedent and select cafe-lined pedestrian streets in some U.S. cities,” Blackwell says.
The development also includes about 13,000 square feet for restaurants and 10,000 square feet for shops.
A one-level parking garage on Beckley will serve the shops and restaurants, and the apartments will have a five-and-a-half story garage off Zang at Neely.
At the request of Dallas County Schools, the city abandoned the stretch of Neely between Zang and Beckley years ago. So it was included in the sale to Crescent, as well as an L-shaped property north of Neely, where the townhomes are planned. The developer hasn’t finalized plans for the street, which totals about 17,000 square feet, but they are considering turning that into some kind of public plaza as well, accommodating garage traffic as well as pedestrians and bikes.
The project is seeking the zoning change for the townhomes. But it’s not taking away existing housing, and unlike two adjacent projects, from Alamo Manhattan and the Nazerian family company, it is not seeking taxpayer funding.
