THE WEST END ACCORDING TO JOHN MARTIN

The story of John Martin is more than a tale of real estate savvy and unbridled confidence. That might at first escape you as you listen to Martin reel off leas- ing percentages and extoll the virtues of the soon-to-be-completed Marketplace in the old Home Furniture warehouse at Market and Ross. But listen carefully: You’ll hear a lot more-about creating something that will last, about looking to the vibrant history of Dallas, about trying long shots. You might also hear a joke

or two. But the story of John Martin, with or without the jokes, is a story based on history in a city notably short on heritage.

Within just a couple of years, the restored buildings of Dallas’ West End have opened their doors to a varied array of businesses and restaurants. The old warehouse district-once a forgotten, rodent-infested no-man’s-land-is undergoing a revitalization that has chiseled away the traditional 9-to-5 facade of downtown Dallas. Soon, Martin and the other West End developers hope, the West End will be the 24-hour entertainment mecca that city visionaries have dreamed of for years.

The more Martin hopes, the more of a visionary he becomes. As he walks the streets of the warehouse district, he talks with his hands, outlining his strategy for the success of the West End. First, he says, you have to capture the lunchtime trade. (“After all, we have 180,000 workers in the Central Business District. The people who work here have to eat somewhere.”) Then, branch out to dinner. (“Bring the business community back downtown.”) Next, go for live entertainment. (“That gives people something to do after they’ve been to dinner.”)

But the West End according to John Martin isn’t complete yet. There’s a very important ingredient missing. It’s housing, of course-that most urban of urban dreams. John Martin will tell all those who ask: He wants the West End to be “a full package.”

But there’s a stumbling block to that dream, an ordinance that restricts the height of buildings to 100 feet in the area. “Until there’s a modification of that ordinance,” says Martin, who also heads up the Mayor’s Task Force on the West End, “housing, economically, will be pretty difficult to justify because of land prices. If we could build housing at 140 feet, it would give us another four stories. This is what I’d need as a developer to make it work. We’re hoping to find the right tract of land-we’ve tried on several occasions to buy land down here. Physically, the old buildings won’t convert to housing. It’s got to be new construction. We found that in a suburban situation, you’ve got to have housing to justify retail. In the West End, you need retail to justify housing.”

And that they’ve got. But parking’s in short supply. “For now,” says Martin, as if he were laying to rest a nagging issue. “There are garages under construction and we’re setting up a shuttle system from the Bramalea parking garage at Lamar and Elm that has 1600 spaces. [Bramalea is a development company whose 70-story In-terfirst Plaza was developed in close coordination with the West End.] If you come to the West End, park there and it will be free or minimal. And as other garages open, at Lamar and McKinney, we’ll incorporate those into the loop and add more shuttles. All you’ll need to do is step out onto the street and you can walk to 15’ or 20 places, so you don’t need a car. That’s the beauty of it. If you! can put people in a nice garage and put them on a quick, clean shuttle for nothing, how can you go wrong?”



JOHN MARTIN’S ROLE in the restoration and commercialization of the West End is an unlikely one for an Iowa boy who earned his real estate degree in Miami and later returned to graduate school in Iowa. His father was a pharmacist, his mother a homemaker. But from an early age, Martin heeded the call of real estate.

Carrying his suitcases (one packed with clothes, the other with resumes), Martin hit Dallas with nary a look back to the Midwest. (“It’s a great place to be from,” he says.) Upon his arrival, he was armed with a hit list of small businesses that he’d compiled from talks with former fraternity brothers. “I didn’t want to be a small fish in a big pond,” he says of his strategy. “I wanted to be a small fish in a small pond.” Noting that small companies are often well-capitalized, Martin summoned all of his considerable bravado and knocked on Blackland Properties’ door. He handed them a resume’ and a good line. Although Martin had no experience in real estate development, he didn’t let that stop him from convincing the managing partner, Patrick DuPree, that he was the man for the job. Although the company was operating basically as an investment entity, it was beginning to test the Dallas development waters. Says Martin of his initial interview: “We both sort of bet on each other.”

A lucky break, says Martin, came when he started coordinating their newborn development activities. When Martin came aboard, Blackland was specializing in the glittery golden corridor of Ad-dison. And the West End wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of DuPree, the original instigator of Blackland’s development of The Brewery as an entertainment/office complex. (“I would have thought you were putting me on if you told me I’d be renovating turn-of-the-century buildings then,” Martin says, wincing.)

In the beginning of his tenure with Blackland, Martin needed all that bravado to help him get through the days. After business meetings, he says, he would “read everything in the world” and get everybody he knew on the phone to answer his questions. “I knew enough of the language and I taught myself what I needed to know. My partners probably didn’t know at the time that I was searching so desperately for direction.” But, says Martin, he never succumbed to insecurity about doing the job.

Whether or not his partners ever worried about Martin’s inexperience in the early days, they have very little doubt today abouthis expertise. Blackland has confirmed letters of intent for about35,000 square feet of the available 180,000 in the new Marketplace-a testament to self-confidence and astute marketing. To JohnMartin, project manager, it’s more than just a commercial success;it’s a way of contributing to Dallas. “You can build an officebuilding,” he says, “but when you die, you’re not going to leaveanything behind except a very disposable asset. Here, in the WestEnd, we’re creating something that will last for generations. If I hadgrandchildren, I could show them what I did. It’s important to me.That, more than anything, is the best part of my job.” ;

Co-workers and colleagues say his job is a consuming passion. His black Audi 5000 is often the first car in The Brewery’s parking lot in the morning and the last to leave at night. And when it does leave, it rarely gets farther than one of Martin’s favorite West End watering holes. “I probably spend four or five nights a week down here, mingling and talking to tenants,” he says. Then after a moment’s thought, he adds with a wink: “Or conducting business.”

Because of his financial background and somewhat conservative suit-and-tie appearance, Martin is often labeled a “numbers man.” But, says Martin, “I don’t think in financial terms. I reinforce with it. I like to think that I’m as creative as the next person, but I have a tendency to be very analytical and calculating, weeding out what I think are inferior or unjustified thoughts.” But lest you get the wrong idea, he says emphatically: “I’m not stuffy.”



THE 30-YEAR-OLD developer describes the planned West End Marketplace in precise detail while all a visitor sees are dusty planks and worn bricks surrounding a recently hollowed-out atrium and a makeshift roof. Pointing skyward, Martin narrates his own script: “.. .and here is where the retail shops will begin. Up there, on the left, will be a big screen where you can watch sporting events. Over there is the opening of the entertainment complex, where there’ll be six nightclubs that will each offer a different kind of music-Sixties, jazz, rock, etc. And we’ll have live entertainment throughout the building to lend a festive air.”

Outside, Martin gestures to three silver water tanks on top of the building that can be seen for miles around. Below them is an open space. “There,” he says, “I wanted to put in my own nightclub. Glass walls all around, looking out over Dallas. Everybody has a dream of owning a nightclub.” But there are only 24 hours in a day, a fact that Martin says deterred him from indulging in his fantasy career. He likes real estate too much. So he declined his option. “But I’d still like to see a nightclub up there.”

Martin is careful to point out that the West End Marketplace will be a “festival” retail center. “Festival retail is more of a feeling than a physical attribute,” he says. “We have a very common goal with the tenants in maximizing the traffic down here and maximizing sales. Many times, it’s an adversary position in a landlord/tenant relationship. I think people expect that. Now, we’re on the same side of the table: sell, sell, sell. When the tenants do well, we do well.” If all goes as planned, the Marketplace will be a mix of 40 percent retail, 20 percent entertainment and 40 percent food-related tenants.

The completion date of the Marketplace “shell” (real estate lingo for the framework), is next month, timed to beat potential tax reform. Of course, says Martin, the retailers won’t be able to move in until the spring. “At this point,” he says, “it’s sort of a gamble. We’re rolling the dice and hoping that the finish-out work and the additional money spent will qualify in 1986. But we’re not relying on it by any means. There are a lot of people out there right now who are doing a lot of very fast dancing to get things done in 1985.”

The rooftop will include an open-air beer garden/cinema. “It’s really pleasant up there with the prevailing winds,” says Martin. “During the summer, on any given day or night, you could see one of our team on the roof saying, “This isn’t so bad,’ and making a mark in a book. “The count today is 52 days okay, four days unbearable and 16 days, I could do it, if I had three drinks.’ “

The restoration of the West End buildings to their historical selves is strictly governed by the city and state. “We try,” says Martin, “to determine what the initial conditions were and to return the building to that. With new construction you have to make it look new and not part of the original.” Sometimes it’s not a matter of just restoring history, but of incorporating it into the new project. “The Home Furniture building was originally the Brown Candy and Cracker factory in 1904. When we bought the building, you could still smell candy in the rooms. So we kept one of the old ovens to put in a cookie shop that will still have the old external racks.” Another case called for building around a 10,000-gallon oil drum that “just appeared” when workers started restoration.

Blackland officials liken the project to renovated urban centers like Fanueil Hall in Boston, Harbor Place in Baltimore and South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan. “This project is going a lot easier,” Martin says. “The Brewery was really a test case. We did it to see if the viability was here. It was. In the beginning, it was strictly a financial decision. We bought a building for less than you can build a shell. We said to ourselves, ’We have a significant amount of land here for parking. It’s walking distance from the Central Business District. Let’s see what we can do.’ As soon as we saw the viability of The Brewery and the West End, we tried to make as many acquisitions as we could.” Blackland’s stable of buildings has since grown to include the Higginbotham-Pearl-stone, Fairbanks-Morse and Howell warehouses, all tidily put together as Market-Ross Place. The company also owns the building where The Palm restaurant is located.

Buying land is the easy part. Filling it up with tenants is another story. John Martin is choosy: “We go out of our way,” he says, “to attract unique operators. We want a well-mixed group of tenants.” So far, Martin has gotten his wish, most notably with the powers-that-be at the highly publicized Starck Club. “Philippe Starck? Well, I don’t know how to characterize him that you could print. During a meeting with him in which we were going over the plans, we got off on a tangent about lease rates. We had just had a reception in the conference room and there were these colored toothpicks on the table. Philippe was wearing a stocking cap. During our conversation about leasing rates, Philippe systematically began sticking toothpicks into his hat. I looked over and there were 15 or 20 colored toothpicks stuck in his hat. Nobody mentioned the toothpicks, but it sort of dissolved the moment.”

Martin claims he’s never stuck toothpicks in his head, but friends and co-workers politely agree that he does have a particular sense of humor. Who else, they say, would write several articles devoted to the virtues of Spam? He explains it this way: “The market was slow and interest rates were up. I had a lot of free time. When things are slow, my mind doesn’t slow down, so I have to fill in the time one way or another.” Martin and a co-worker filled it up with short takes such as “Stories of Spam in the News,” which detailed the Spam adventures of notable Dal-lasites. Martin didn’t discriminate. There’s Trammell Crow’s “Building with Spam” next to Candy Montgomery’s “Slicing, Dicing and Chopping Spam.” Or Betty Gore’s “I Stuttered While Saying ’Pork Sh-sh- shoulder’ and Paid.” You get the idea. “The market was very slow,” Martin insists.

Occasionally, Martin’s sense of humor spills over into his work as a landlord. Just ask Richard Chase, the inimitable Dick of Dick’s Last Resort, who now stocks Old Style beer, a beverage he calls “despicable.” “John Martin threatened to raise my rent unless I stocked it,” Chase grumbles. “Now, John and his compatriots drink it. Those guys from the Midwest have a genetic disorder that makes them like it.”

Martin acknowledges what he calls the “request,” but maintains that the beer is really popular, even if he does have to drink most of it by himself.

WHEN THE BREWERY first attracted notice as something that was going to “work,” the press, says Martin, saw it as a historical renovation, not as a business story. Then, when the project was successful, the press began to focus on its business implications. There’s a certain irony in that, he laughs. “Whereas before it’s been ’look at these risk takers,’ now it’s ’look at these far-sighted people.’”

But in either case, Martin shies away from the term “risk taker.” What he does is more of a creative calculation, he says. “You can’t dissociate yourself from the fact that risk and return are directly associated. But at the same time, risk can be controlled. And it can be offset if you take the proper procedure. It can’t be eliminated by any means. But look at it as an opportunity.”

Martin also believes you can’t teach real estate. Either you have a nose for land or you don’t. “I’d like to say that you go through this very calculative process to say that this land is worth this, but you look at it, drive by it in the car, and then say that the land is worth $2.8 million. You can back it up on the computer, but it’s really a gut feeling.”

And that gut feeling, more than anything, explains the West End. At least to John Martin. “If you went at it from a strict financial standpoint, the numbers and dollars were here. But what you have to do is convince yourself mentally that it will work. The risk here wasn’t necessarily financial. We won’t come down here and dump $15 million or $20 million in something that won’t work. It’s going to take a serious commitment. This is more of a sure deal than just erecting some high-rise. Everybody’s doing a high-rise. These buildings were built back during the turn of the century and they offer something that Trammell and all those guys can’t do.

“Here, we have a diamond in the rough that’s going to take a lot of work. We’ll get there by perseverance. It’s been hard. We’ve had to convince bankers. We’ve had to convince tenants, the press and public that the West End will work.”

And as John Martin winds his way across the brick streets, past the restaurants and shops to Dick’s, where he works the crowd and buys a few Old Styles for old and new friends, he keeps polishing that diamond.