A building at the corner of Jefferson and Zang is showing signs of change.
Wonderland Tropical Pets at 200 W. Jefferson has closed, and a New York-based investor bought the building.
Abingdon Square Partners now owns the building and many others in our neighborhood. The company began buying up properties in Oak Cliff last year, including a block of buildings at Zang and Tenth, a few blocks away from this building. The company invests in properties in New York City, South Florida and Texas, according to its website.
From their website:
We target investments from $5 million to $50 million. Acquisitions are primarily sourced by direct canvassing and a wide network of transactional brokers.
Through identifying and investing early in emerging markets, the Company has established a proven track record of generating opportunistic returns. We utilize detailed macro-level data to identify growth markets with strong demographic profiles and favorable business environments as well as micro-level data to identify specific neighborhoods and asset classes within those markets.
We don’t know what the investor has planned for the building, but they hired Coeval Studio, the designer behind many restaurants, including Houndstooth Coffee and Krio. The building’s facade has been removed to reveal its original brick, including this ghost sign.
If you’re curious about the “rooms by day or week”: We found one classified ad from the 1950s that asked interested parties to contact Mrs. Loro and described the rooms as “cheap.”
The pet store dated back to the 1970s, when Tom Lewis originally opened it on Camp Wisdom Road. Cesar Valdez bought the place in 2000, when it was already on Jefferson Boulevard. The shop was a unique holdover from the days before the dominance of corporate-owned pet stores, but it was unpopular with some neighbors who accused the store of animal cruelty.
The building housed a furniture and appliance store starting in the 1940s, according to newspaper archives. Ford’s Furniture occupied the building for several decades. Richard Franklin Ford, the son of that store’s original owner, parlayed Ford’s Furniture into a coin-operated laundry venture, Kwik Wash, which now has more than 200 locations.
