Remember 2020? It was the year the American Planning Association Texas Chapter designated the Bishop Arts District a Great Place in Texas.
Two years later, a plaque signifying that designation was unveiled on Bishop at Seventh.
Jim Lake Jr. and Amanda Lake
A neighborhood resident asked Mayor Pro-Tem Chad West to apply for the designation, and he enlisted the city’s Department of Planning and Urban Design.
Planners Megan O’Neal and Don Raines, who live in Oak Cliff, spearheaded the project.
Raines is a Dallas native who moved to Oak Cliff in 2007, and O’Neal is a third-generation Oak Cliffer. Her grandparents lived in the Bishop Arts area during World War II.
City of Dallas planners Don Raines and Megan O’Neal
Jim Lake Jr. and wife/business partner Amanda Lake unveiled the plaque, which is on the restaurant Âme, a building Jim Lake Cos. owns.
That company is responsible for making Bishop Arts a thing. Jim Lake Jr. and his father bought this building and the one across Bishop, once Oak Cliff Pharmacy now Bishop Street Market, in the 1980s.
Here’s what it looked like then.
The City of Dallas spent $2 million from bond funds to improve sidewalks and streetlights in 1987.
Photo by Ashley Long
Photo by Ashley Long
From left to right, Daniel Church, Arturo Del Castillo Don Raines, Megan O’Neal, Chad West, Amanda Lake, Jim Lake Jr., Mike Anglin. Photo by Ashley Long
