Reimagining Bishop Arts
There seems to still be a hang-up about opening grocery stores and pharmacies next to the higher end retail and restaurants in Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts District. Without these kinds of stores, there’s an implicit barrier created between those who can afford to frequent the District and those who can’t.
The other night I really wanted Sour Patch kids. I could have taken the 21 bus down to Walgreens on Colorado, but that would’ve meant a half-hour ride what with the turn-around wait. It wasn’t worth the effort. With all the amenities of being in the Bishop Arts—Espumoso’s, Hunky’s, Veracruz, Epiphany, and Alchemy, to name a few—there just isn’t anywhere to go for your daily necessities. (Admittedly, Sour Patch kids aren’t an everyday need). Such a gap ends up cutting off the neighborhood’s possibilities.
I pondered these absences on the way to work one morning. What’s the rationale for not opening up “convenience” stores in a boutiquey area? Is it because such stores would create places where the people who live here would mix with the people coming in to eat and shop? Such demographic questions don’t seem to arise over in Knox-Henderson or Lakewood Village. But there seems to still be a hang-up about opening grocery stores and pharmacies next to the higher end retail and restaurants. Without these kinds of stores, there’s an implicit barrier created between those who can afford to frequent the District and those who can’t.
Let’s imagine for a moment that a grocery store/pharmacy filled in half the empty lot next to Vitto’s. The store could be made to fit the size and look of the Bishop Arts area, and yet provide everyday items. More foot traffic would emerge, thereby creating more personal encounters between locals and business owners, drumming up more business and creating a more trusting relationship between the neighborhood and the businesses. As it is, that parking lot ends up bleeding all the resources and energies of the Bishop Arts into a waste land, serving no one.
The District could also do with a little more landscaping. What if that empty space that’s now next to Ouch! Fashion got developed into a fountain area—which it looks like it was intended for—drawing people to sit on those benches and eat and talk? Instead, the lovely tree-lined Bishop Ave dead-ends into an uninviting non-space. There ought to be a something welcoming and beautiful that stands at the end of the avenue as a marker for what the area represents. What’s keeping that space empty?
The alleys, which have been muralled and moderately landscaped, could be blocked off (unless vital for deliveries) and turned into pedestrian-only arbors, parks, and beer/smoking gardens. Or why not create an organic garden (divorced from the smoking one, of course), that could then supply the nearby Bolsa with some of its produce? If possible, the zoning that allows occasional festivals to park it in the streets, like last weekend’s Cliff Fest, could extend into the alleyways. These alleys need to be made more use of instead of becoming muddy, tangle-weed cesspools.
The Bishop Arts is great in terms of providing the local and intimate, but it still needs to work harder at providing spaces that annex the people who live in the neighborhood to the stores provided by it. Granted it’s called Bishop Arts, but if cake, soy bean candles, and soda all comprise art, then why can’t Kleenex and bananas? If sustainability is really going to happen here, it can start by including more of the necessities alongside the luxuries.
I had thought there was a public sculpture project in the works for the pocket park next to Ouch! being headed up by (I may be wrong) The Office of Cultural Affairs. But since that office was swallowed into the library, maybe the project has been cut? I do know, because I was contacted about the project, that as much as two and half years ago they were forming a committee to consider options for the space. No clue as to what happened to the plans.
3 December 2009 at 1:07 pm