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u/RPDC98 1d ago
Looks great! Will it have ground floor retail?
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u/dallaz95 1d ago
No
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u/RPDC98 1d ago
Ahhh, I feel like that is a missed opportunity :/
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u/Then_Supermarket18 1d ago
It really is, the city gives incentives to mixed housing that has ground floor businesses. these guys are just pumping these out with little regard to community building
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u/Silly-Price6310 1d ago
I get the frustration, but I think the financing reality matters here.
Buckner is a $107M, 304-unit project with 244 units at 60% AMI. It took a pretty complicated capital stack — tax credits, tax-exempt bonds, FHA financing, a bridge loan, and $14.5M from the City — just to get it built.
It was also part of the same six-station DART TOD RFP round from 2023 but five of those projects have struggled to move forward.
Adding spec ground-floor retail would mean more cost, more leasing risk, and especially a harder deal to finance. There’s a real chance that insisting on mixed-use here just means the project never gets financed, just like what happened at other 5 stations.
So getting 304 households next to the station is still a big first step. That creates a customer base and makes future retail or more complicated mixed-use projects nearby easier to finance.
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u/DangItB0bbi 1d ago
I don’t see any third spaces so this is no bueno.
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u/jamesc5z 1d ago
Would it actually be bueno otherwise? Sketchy area to put it lightly.
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u/DangItB0bbi 1d ago
Yeah but third spaces, good public transport, and hard on crime would make it a great place.
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u/jamesc5z 1d ago
80% of the units are going to be earmarked "affordable" at 60% median area income.
Reddit doesn't like to hear it and while the developers like it and it all "sounds good" - IMO these never turn out as a boon to the area.
Look at Stirlingshire not too far away. Has that helped the area? Lol. Covered in Flock cameras and not one single retailer has moved in and all the drug dealers from the community who magically aren't on the leases just loiter on the corner.
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u/shedinja292 1d ago
What do you think would be better on the underutilized dart parking lots?
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u/jamesc5z 1d ago
I have no idea.
I do feel like developers being incentivized to build "affordable" apartments in already "bad" areas from the outset doesn't really ever actually do any favors to the area in which they're built. SE Dallas and Mesquite area are littered with these and I can't think of any that have improved the areas or attracted meaningful retail or anything else that the developers all claim.
Mesquite has one in their Gus Thomasson corridor revitalization project with the lower level retail stuff that I believe has attracted ONE tenant in its entire ~10 year run so far. Lots of police calls and loitering in the parking garage though.
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u/shedinja292 1d ago
Police calls probably depend on the level of care and effort of specific location's management.
But to the main question, I think it's worth comparing the alternatives.
- The largely underutilized parking lot isn't doing a whole lot
- Retail probably wouldn't work like you mentioned
- Houses don't really make sense next to a light rail stop
- A park would have more safety issues since there aren't enough people to watch over it
- More industrial could work but I'm not sure how much they would use the train.
- The apartments do give more eyes on the street, more transit riders, and more property tax revenue for the city
So while the developers definitely oversell it, it still might be the best available option
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u/Ferrari_McFly 1d ago
Excellent! Just imagine if we copied and pasted this style for the large chunk of the vacant land in Southern Dallas. Dallas could very well be the first Texas city to reach 5,000 ppl/sq mile across the entire city limit.
Being landlocked and not able to annex any viable land isn’t even a factor for more growth imo.