A plan to revitalize a 1929 church building in the Winnetka Heights Historic District goes to City Hall Thursday.
The City Plan Commission will hear a proposal to turn the former Winnetka Congregational Church on Windomere at 12th into an instructional arts studio and theater. Lola and Todd Lott bought the building for about $330,000, and they’re putting $500,000-$600,000 into a painstaking historical restoration of it.
The Lotts, who live in East Dallas and own a film post-production studio, plan to turn the building over to graphic designer, Tony Wann, and his partner, teacher/choreographer/producer Anastasia Muñoz, for use as a community arts center. Wann and Muñoz also would live there.
Their plan requires a change to the existing zoning to allow an instructional studio and to allow a theater by specific-use permit. If the plan commission allows that specific-use permit, the owners (or a future owner, if the Lotts should sell it) would have to to reapply for its use as a theater after an as-yet unspecified amount of time.
The building has 20 parking spaces, enough to allow the instructional studio under the current zoning. If more parking becomes necessary for theater use, remote parking may be needed.
According to the zoning application: This would be a “neighborhood supporting use that will compliment the adjacent school [Greiner Middle School], and it’s an adaptive reuse of a historic property within a historic district.”
