How They Plan to Save Lakewood Shopping Center

In the Twenties and Thirties, when the model for suburb and shopping center was the American small town with its Main Street, Lakewood Shopping Center was an integral part of the neighborhoods which radiate away from it. In that more leisurely era, there was time to stop in and chat with Doc Harrell at his corner drugstore with its turreted entrance reminiscent of Rothenburg and Dinkelsbühl, or to converse with Howard Holloway as he peered under the hood of your Hudson at his Mobil station, or to take in a matinee at the Lakewood Theater, after stopping off at the Lakewood branch of the Dallas Public Library for the latest Edna Ferber.

But as Dallas grew in the Sixties, Lakewood Shopping Center became The Templins: “Highland Park was too much.”



Don and Judy Templin had wanted to buy a house in Highland Park. They had lived there for a year in a rented place, but had begun to outgrow it.

They found a large one-story on St. John’s that they thought might fit their buying capability – around $40,000.

“As it turned out, we looked at it and liked what we found, but it cost too much,” says Templin, a young attorney. “I think it sold from $60,000 to $70,000.”

When the house was purchased by someone else, the Templins watched in awe as the new owners proceeded to rip off the roof, gut the interior, and build an entire second story. “They must have spent close to $100,000 – after they bought it,” says Templin.



The couple turned to East Dallas, specifically to a small, medium-priced section of the Historic District, Bryan Parkway.



Eventually they found “it,” a $30,000 two-story red brick at the corner of Bryan Parkway and La Vista, with three bedrooms, a living room, dining room, morning room, breakfast room and more closets than they ever expected to find in a 50-year-old house.

While there was a lot of work – ripping up carpets, sheet-rocking, removing burglar bars – the house had bonuses: mutli-colored tiles on the floors of the morning room, sleeping balconies in two bedrooms, original brass and glass fixtures all over.

Other young professionals are moving into the area, but the couples havenot yet fallen into a middle-class routine in the neighborhood. “I no longerfeel compelled to vacuum twice aday,” says Judy. “I just go to anotherroom.”

The Big Picture: Aerial sketch shows key elements of Lakewood Shopping Center renovation: construction of an Abrams road bypass (lower center), designed to carry most vehicular traffic around the shopping area, instead of through it; conversion of the bypassed section of Abrams into a pedestrian mall, flanked on both sides by mini-malls; creation of a park at the intersection of Gaston and Abrams; doubling of Lakewood’s current 1,200 parking places, and placement of the bulk of parking off the streets. $1.8 million of the proposed $150 million winter bond program would be allocated for engineering and acquisition of right-of-way for the Abrams bypass. Even then, though, Lakewood renovation backers would not be out of the woods: a second bond issue would be required to pay for paving.