Growth push begins along southern sector rail stations

July 16, 2007 - By BRAD WATSON / WFAA-TV

(link to video coverage of story)

DALLAS - While private developers have flocked to DART rail stations to the north to build offices, restaurants and apartments, that hasn't been the case at stations along Lancaster Road in Dallas' southern sector.

Members of the community are now voicing their desire for change.

Record's Old Fashioned Bar-B-Que has taken orders for nearly 30 years. They even kept smoking the brisket when construction began on the nearby DART rail station.

The trains have been running ten years now, but at Record's, some are asking where's the development?

"...As far as what they said it was going to do, it didn't do it," said Loquita Record, restaurant owner.

DART estimates private developers invested more than $3 billion near stations along the 45 mile light system.

At the Mockingbird Station off of Mockingbird Lane, one DART study found through 2005 developers spent $270 million dollars building apartments, offices and restaurants. But around the Kiest Station, only $39 million has been spent.

There are some new stores and banks, but not the retail or restaurants like Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway thinks there should be.

"Where you can get a salad, shrimp cocktail, under candlelight with a tablecloth, those are the types of businesses that we do not have here," he said.

Caraway and the other southern sector council members start a renewed effort this week to bring more development along the Kiest Station.

It will work with an ongoing city effort to develop two locations along DART rail lines in the south.

Caraway said he thinks any rail development must bring better retail choices, especially in the Lancaster-Kiest area.

"If we don't make this flourish, then expect to continue to have the crime, the motels ... the stray dogs, [and] everything we've been fighting," he said.

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