Redevelopment Plan For an Old East Dallas Cafe With Bonnie And Clyde Ties Hits a Roadblock With Parking Requirements
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A spirited debate on minimum parking requirements for new Dallas development resurfaced recently, prompting many residents to advocate for a solution to neighborhood spillover and cumbersome codes.
Chase Beakley saw the discussion as an opportunity to share his personal experience with the city’s parking requirements as he works to repurpose the long-vacant 3302 Swiss Circle.
The Old East Dallas property near Baylor Medical Center was built in 1921 and “has a really cool architectural style with a curved facade that mirrors the curve of the street,” Beakley said.
And for true crime junkies, it also has a pretty cool history.
In the 1930s the site was home to Hartgraves Cafe, where Bonnie Parker worked before her crime spree with Clyde Barrow — giving it an added historic and cultural significance for Dallas and a likely draw for true crime buffs.
“Unfortunately it’s been unused and sitting empty for decades,” Beakley said. “The last active certificate of occupancy I can find via the city website dates to 2006.”
3302 Swiss Circle
Beakley and his partner left stable corporate jobs in late 2022 and found the Swiss Circle property in April.
They plan to open Horns Wine Bar and Bottle Shop in the fall. The restaurant will have a retail component, so guests can enjoy a meal and take a bottle or two home. They’ll even feature a photo of the late Bonnie Parker, an infamous bank robber who was killed in a police shootout in Louisiana in 1934.
Historians say Parker worked in several Dallas diners, so Beakley isn’t sure if the photo they have is from Hargraves, but it doesn’t matter. He has bigger things to worry about, like the city’s minimum parking requirements.
Based on the square footage, a restaurant would have to provide 46 parking spots, “a ludicrous amount,” Beakley told CandysDirt.com.
“When we were looking for real estate … the easiest thing to do, in Dallas, is find a building that was the same type of business in its prior life,” Beakley said. “That’s why you see so many restaurants replaced by other restaurants. It’s just easier. If you are trying to use a historic space like ours, it is really difficult.”
Dallas Parking Requirements Stifle Development
The Swiss Circle space has an attached parking lot with eight spaces, and there is “ample street parking” on Swiss and North Hall Street.
The city’s restaurant requirement is one parking space for every 100 square feet. Retail requires one space for every 200 square feet.
So how does Trader Joe’s, for example, get away with a relatively small parking lot?
“Parking minimum requirements disproportionately disadvantage individual local entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs of color or LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs, in favor of large corporations,” Beakley said. “Corporations are able to lobby for parking exceptions or reductions much more effectively than individuals are.”
The City of Dallas has more than 1,000 planned developments with parking requirements that are completely different within the small PD boundaries than other areas of the city, Beakley added.
Time and money are required to address the complexity of Dallas’ parking requirements, he said. Beakley spent about $50,000 on an architect and zoning consultant to create a layout offering the right proportion of retail and restaurant space.
‘Onerous, Antiquated Standards’
The city’s Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee addressed the matter of parking minimums at an Aug. 15 meeting, at which Beakley and others spoke in favor of removing minimum parking requirements. District 1 Councilman Chad West has championed the cause, saying the city should allow developers to determine how many spaces are needed for new businesses.
West is not proposing to remove any parking spaces but rather to eliminate what he says are onerous, antiquated standards.
Beakley said no business is going to take the risk that they won’t have enough parking to be successful.
Advocates for parking reform, including developer Nathaniel Barrett, say the answer to spillover parking is a curb management policy and parking benefit districts by which meter revenue would pay for neighborhood improvements within a particular area.
Urban planner Patrick Kennedy has studied downtown Dallas parking. He said, due to a lack of publicly-available, accurate information, he did not have data on surface parking lots citywide. He estimates that about 153 of 915 acres within the “downtown highway noose” are dedicated to only parking, meaning parking not included in a mixed-use building or underground.
“Pulling some [Dallas Central Appraisal District] data, a typical surface parking lot in downtown generates $2.50 per square foot in property taxes,” Kennedy said in an email obtained by CandysDirt.com. “Two recent developments in downtown: Amli Fountainplace is at $86.38 per square foot and the East Quarter development is at $47.82 per square foot So if there are 124 acres of surface parking lots in downtown Dallas (estimated), that’s 5.4 million square feet. If it was all to redevelop at the level of the East Quarter development, that’s $258 million in new property tax revenue.”
The conversation about parking minimums isn’t about whether people want a dense, urban, walkable city or a car-centric city, Beakley said.
“I think it’s about how difficult it is to start a business in Dallas,” he said. “Do we allow entrepreneurs the ability to decide for themselves and decide for their neighborhood what parking solutions work for them versus mandating a system where a ton of our land is used up for parking lots whether people need it or not?”
As the debate continues with the City Council expected to vote on the matter late this year or in early 2024, Horns Wine Bar and Bottle Shop is scheduled to submit final plans for approval within the next week and open for guests in the fall.
They can’t afford to lose the money by waiting to see if parking minimums are dropped, Beakley said, but he hopes reform is addressed for future small business owners.
“If we want a Dallas that preserves historic buildings and a Dallas with local entrepreneurs to succeed, then we need to lower the hurdles they have to clear to be successful, and parking minimums is one of those,” he said.
