Church resisting presence of scourge motel

South Dallas: Pastor says planned community center will rise above

By SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning News

May 21, 2006

A short walk away on Bertrand Avenue sits True Lee Missionary Baptist Church. Founded nearly 100 years ago, it's a place where teens feel safe playing basketball out back at night on newly paved and painted courts that double as a parking lot.

Between the church and motel is an empty plot strewn with trash and tall weeds. There, between a place of worship and a pocket of blight, church leaders are preparing to break ground on a $3 million community center that will include an indoor basketball court, classrooms and offices.

The tension between these forces has long existed in this community. Still, Donald Parish, True Lee's senior pastor, said he was never bothered by the idea of opening the center next door to the motel.

"I'm perfectly willing to put our outreach center right there so that every time someone goes in there to do the wrong thing, they'll be confronted with the chance to do the right thing," he said.

Closing the motel is a battle Mr. Parish and others have been fighting for years.

He has accumulated several folders of documents on the two-story formerly known as Mi Amor Motel. He has pages of petitions filled with signatures calling for the motel's removal. Stacks of police reports detail assaults, drug use and robberies, along with a murder last June.

But the June murder and the usual dangerous activities prompted Mr. Parish and other active community members to increase their efforts to have the motel closed.

They made progress in 2001, when Dallas sued to shut it down temporarily. But it reopened within months.

"It's not a viable business that a community, anybody traveling through, could use," said Willie Mae Coleman, president of the Bertrand Neighborhood Association.

Residents have called on local leaders for support, but there were few signs of progress until this year.

Dwaine Caraway, a former City Council candidate, was one of the neighborhood advocates who took the matter to the city's Board of Adjustment. In April, that board ruled that without a change in zoning – which currently doesn't allow for a motel there – the business would have to cease operations May 9.

Dallas also sued the motel's owner and operator for failing to pay taxes and operating a sexually oriented business – renting rooms by the hour – without the proper zoning and license. Assistant City Attorney Chris Caso is handling that case and said the owner last paid taxes in July 2001 and owes at least $46,000.

Also named in the suit is Jagdishkumar Patel, managing member of motel owner Yasoda Enterprises LLC, Mr. Caso said. Labi Akere, the attorney representing Yasoda Enterprises, didn't return calls seeking comment.

Ms. Coleman and others said the motel continues to operate illegally, and a man behind the front window said Thursday that the motel was open for business.

The community outreach center will be funded primarily through a loan to Hope Restoration Inc., a nonprofit group headed by church members. It will take at least a year to build.

The Rev. Donald Parish Jr., youth pastor at the church and son of Mr. Parish, has been using the courts to attract young people.

People like 18-year-old Albert Ross, who grew up in the community.

Albert said he's changed his life since connecting with the younger Mr. Parish and now lives with his sister in North Dallas.

He spends much of his time at the church and said the basketball courts and playground fill a critical need. Life for him and his peers, as he used to know it, was largely predictable, he said.

"Pretty much like stealing, smoking, fighting," Albert said. "Just there ain't really nothing to do but hang around and let life pass you by."

Organizers say the center will be an even better resource for others in need. Hope Restoration will partner with nonprofit corporations to provide job training and placement for ex-convicts and support for at-risk youth.

Calvin Carter, who launched his own South Dallas community center in 1995, said it is often the smaller achievements that inspire others in the community to get involved.

"When you try to do a whole lot of stuff, you get nothing done. That's when people get discouraged. ... They just back away," said Mr. Carter, who runs Sunny Acres Community Center.

Alexander von Hoffman is senior fellow at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. He said that while plenty of work remains, successes like shutting the motel could carry heavy weight.

"Small changes contribute to that change in psychology," said Dr. von Hoffman, author of the book House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America's Urban Neighborhoods. "And when you can stop something – a problem like this motel – you're actually doing more than one thing.

"You're not only getting rid of the nuisance, the plague, whatever it is, but you're also showing, you're demonstrating their ability to affect their environment, and that sense ripples through the community."

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