I drove by Valley View Mall again the other day, and cannot wait for Dallas developer Scott Beck to get his show on the road for this place. Been trying to get in touch with him for an update but alas, Candace Carlisle at the Dallas Business Journal caught up with him FIRST and snagged an exclusive interview. Great interview: Candace works her behind off. Scott told her plans are still on to redevelop Valley View Mall into Midtown Dallas, the huge 430 acre live/work/play community he told us all about back in 2012.
Alas, time has passed, property and building costs have all gone up, and Beck has had to “re-imagine” the new Valley View aka Midtown. (Maybe no gondola rides to the Galleria — I don’t know, Candace did not ask him about that. Sad.)
According to Candace’s interview with Scott, the 42-year-old “under-utililzed mall” (she was nice, I would have called it the 42-year-old- Zombie Mall) would be
“peeled apart,” and taken down in pieces to salvage the steel and other recyclable materials used to build it, he said.
Before the mall is torn down, Beck will be working with members of the North Dallas Chamber and the City of Dallas to finalize the zoning plans for the site. He plans to meet with the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission on May 21. The plans would be subject to City Council approval in June.
“We are delighted to see something is happening so the center of North Dallas matches the rest of North Dallas around it,” Beck told me. “It’s all very positive for the community, but what happens at the end of the a long process like this is you have to draw a line in the sign and say, ‘We’re going to start,’ and we are ready to do that.”
The scope of this project boggles my mind, and I still think Scott is amazing to tackle it. There are so many moving parts and pieces and property owners — this is Preston Center on steroids!
According to Candace, the plans still include a main statement-making boulevard street at Dilbeck Lane and Preston Road, a 20-story Spanish-style hotel and condo tower adjacent to a proposed park. If approved in June, I guess the whole shebang could get underway before Christmas 2015. By this time next year there could be cranes.
Beck said he’d immediately get underway on the redevelopment of Valley View Center. He said there was no adjacent property owner issues with his part of the redevelopment district. “There is not affecting or touching other property in terms of design,” he said. “We will locate all streets on our own property and connect into other streets.” Beck plans to move the existing AMC Theater into a new 12-screen theater on top of an office building with ground floor retail, much like what exists for the Angelika Theater in Legacy Town Center. Beck said he decided the mall needed to be torn down after experiencing a “tetris nightmare,” when trying to put the mall — which sits on a 45 degree angle — into the rest of the project. “It’s hard to create a grid in an urban district with any parts of a building being at a 45 degree angle,” he said. “It effectively called for the total demolishment of the mall, but we are starting with a major anchor.”
Glad to hear they are going for a grid — so much easier to navigate. Note that Beck also says there are “no adjacent property owner issues with his part of the redevelopment district.” Glad to hear, should make it smooth sailing through the Plan Committee and the Dallas City Council.
Me, I still would like to see the Gondolas.
