Husband And Wife Collaborate on Brentwood Trinity Heights Development in East Oak Cliff

A new 40-unit housing development is under construction at Ewing and Morrell Avenues in East Oak Cliff, and you better believe it’s being built with love. 

Stephanie and Ryan Behring are behind the Brentwood project. Stephanie is an architect with Re:Studio Architecture; her husband, Ryan, is a managing partner and brokered the land. The Behrings joined forces with developer CAP Multifamily and general contractor Gordon Highlander,. The project broke ground in March.

New East Oak Cliff Development Near Southern Gateway Park

One of the first new commercial construction projects in East Oak Cliff in decades, the residences will be within walking distance to the Dallas Zoo, a Dallas Area Rapid Transit station, Southern Gateway Park, the under-construction Oak Cliff Assembly, and the future Smittox Brewing Co.

A key mantra of CAP Multifamily is “the community is your amenity,” said Chris Aaron, who co-founded the boutique apartment development company with Chad Patton.

“One of the things that helps instill that message is having some walkability and excitement in the area,” he said. “We think the zoo brings so much to downtown Dallas, On top of it, the actual bridging of [Interstate] 35 with Southern Gateway Park opening up, we think that opportunity for our residents to live and play in the area is so beneficial.”

The future for this area is so bright, you gotta wear shades — or at least have shade trees. 

“It’s a corner lot on Ewing and Morrell, and it has some very mature trees,” Stephanie Behring told CandysDirt.com last week. “A lot of our design was trying to keep some of those trees. We have one main building, a standard double-loaded corridor apartment building. It’s four stories, and it has a rooftop deck on the fourth floor overlooking the zoo toward downtown.” 

A second building will house four rental townhome structures. 

“We were able to provide a mix of different unit types for the area,” she said. 

In addition to Stephanie Behring, other members of the Brentwood Trinity Heights design team include Kirk Nelson, Joshua Gordon, Ethan Etchieson, Urban Strategy, Bonnie McInnish, LPSE Inc. Cory Potts, and Evergreen Design Group. 

Brentwood Trinity Heights Development

The Trinity Heights neighborhood could benefit from “any and all types” of housing, Ryan Behring said. 

“In recent years there have been more new builds and remodels of single-family homes, but there hasn’t been much multifamily,” he said. “To our knowledge, this project is one of the first self-sustaining, market-rate, privately funded multifamily developments in this area.

The project will take advantage of the Dallas Mixed-Income Housing Density Bonus for a small percentage of affordable units, Aaron said. Market-rate rents will be about $1,300 to $1,600 a month for studio and one-bedroom apartments. The townhomes will rent in the low $2,000s per month.

“We feel like our development complements communities rather than displaces communities,” Aaron said.

The foundation will be poured this month and construction could be complete by the end of the year. 

The land was already zoned multifamily, so there hasn’t been much neighborhood outreach, but the Behrings say the feedback they’ve received has been positive. 

The site, which has long been vacant, is bordered on the north and the east by another L-shaped multifamily property.

“With development coming nearby, it was important in our design to balance both public and private greenspace, to minimize the impact of vehicular access on the site design, and to maximize the street frontage for the pedestrian experience,” Ryan Behring wrote in a social media post about the project. 

“We love the idea of growing neighborhoods in a sensitive way, but also recognizing that to add services — jobs, grocery stores — to southern Dallas, there’s an equation with more rooftops that will make the area more attractive for retailers to locate,” Behring told CandysDirt.com. “We think it’s a great spot.” 

Growing With The Trinity Heights Neighborhood

The Behrings moved to Oak Cliff between Winnetka Heights and Elmwood about 10 years ago. 

Ryan Behring worked on former Mayor Mike Rawlings’ GrowSouth AmeriCorps program from 2015 to 2017. The campaign was an effort to spark interest in the city’s reforestation program and market southern Dallas. 

“We saw it as a way for neighborhood associations to come together to make a positive, tangible difference in their community — fall Saturday mornings with coffee, doughnuts, and the camaraderie of making a difference,” Behring told CandysDirt.com in October. “The reforestation program became a great bonding opportunity for neighborhood associations and something they could be proud of. In all our team planted around 150 trees.” 

The GrowSouth experience was Behring’s first introduction to the Trinity Heights neighborhood. 

Former Mayor Rawlings used some neighborhood grant funds for an artist to create a mural at the northwest corner of Ewing and Vermont avenues, so Ryan Behring’s face has been in the Trinity Heights neighborhood — along with other “Cliff Dwellers” as part of the mural — for quite some time, his wife explained. 

Rawlings believed that the opportunities for growing the city and its tax base were south of Interstate 30, Ryan Behring said. 

“That really resonated with me,” he said.