UPDATE: Dallas City Council approved the rooftop bar during its March 9 meeting.
ORIGINAL STORY: The Dallas City Plan Commission approved the Bishop Arts District’s first rooftop bar last week.
Urban Genesis, owners of the Bishop Highline apartments on the southeast corner of Madison and Ninth, gained approval to operate a bar on the building’s roof with a private-club license from the State of Texas.
Those who’ve lived in our neighborhood longer than a decade remember when Oak Cliff was dry, and being served a drink in a restaurant here required joining a “private club.” It’s basically a very strict version of a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission permit, which requires 50 members, separate bookkeeping and a lot of red tape.
Bishop Arts restaurateurs Jason Roberts and Amy Cowan will operate the bar. Roberts and Cowan own Oddfellows and Revelers Hall, and they also have a brewpub and beer garden currently in the works.
The rooftop bar won’t have a kitchen, but the owners plan to offer food from their other Bishop Arts kitchens in order to satisfy the private-club permit requirement that 60% of sales come from food.
The building’s entire roof comprises about 10,000 square feet, but the private club would be allowed to operate only in the 287-square-foot bar.
The bar also will be prohibited from using speakers, and sound measurements taken from the street must be lower than 63 decibels. The plan commission approved the rooftop bar for two years, after which the business will have to reapply for another one- or two-year permit.
The Bishop Arts Neighborhood Association sent a letter in support of the rooftop bar.
Exxir Capital, the developer that owns adjacent high-rise apartment buildings, initially opposed the plan out of concern for its residential tenants. The company later wrote in support of the project on the condition that there be no speakers and that noise is kept low. Exxir also wanted the bar to close at 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, but that point was compromised. The bar will be allowed to stay open until midnight seven days a week.
“We’re not picturing a large, rowdy atmosphere,” Roberts told the commission. “This is more of a lounge.”
The bar will be open to anyone; it’s not just for people who live in the apartment building, although it will only be accessible via residential elevators.
Urban Genesis owns several apartment properties in the area that are all named Bishop Highline. This one is unique in that it’s a reuse of an old medical building.
A representative for Bishop Highline told plan commissioners that the property is 100% occupied and consists of many small apartments, “almost micro units.”
The project partners argued that the bar’s immediate neighbors, in the apartments below them, will be tenants of their own landlord.
“It behooves us to be good neighbors,” Roberts told commissioners.
The bar could open as soon as this summer.
