Back Talk Oak Cliff

Belmont Hotel partners with Bunkhouse Management for facelift

Watching the sunset at Bar Belmont is about to get even better.

So says Bunkhouse Management, an Austin-based hotel management and ownership company that recently partnered with the Belmont Hotel. Other Bunkhouse properties are boutique hotels in Austin —  Hotel San Jose and Hotel Saint Cecilia.

Kevin Osterhaus, Bunkhouse vice president of operations, says his company approached the Belmont asking to work with its team to enhance their offerings and grow their business, and Bunkhouse employees have been in Dallas since July putting together a conceptual plan to evaluate the hotel's services and amenities. "Obviously, the Belmont is a wonderful staple of that  community," says Osterhaus, a former Dallas resident. "We love what Belmont owners have done to make it part of the Oak Cliff community."

The goal, he says, is to improve on what is already there, starting with the bar.

Council subcommittee considers a smoking ban in bars, billiard halls

A city council subcommittee is considering expanding the city's current smoking ban from restaurants and workplaces to bars, billiard halls and within 15 feet of entrances to publicly accessible villages, according to the DMN. A majority of the six councilmen on the subcommittee seem to be leaning in favor of the proposal, according to the News story and more comments on its blog.

I have to admit that when the city council first decided to restrict smoking in restaurants and other public places a few years ago, I had my doubts: It seemed like a draconian measure, and it seemed likely to drive business out of Dallas. Today, though, I haven't seen a single study indicating that significant business was lost to the more smoking-friendly suburbs, and the air in most places I go these days is cleaner and clearer.

This weekend: Art shows, homebrewing contest and retracing Lee Harvey Oswald's steps

There's a little something for everyone in Oak Cliff this weekend.

On Saturday night The Soda Gallery opens its new "50/50 II" art exhibition, back by popular demand. The show, which asks 50 artists to each create a work and sell it for $50, was such a hit in February that the shop decided to give it another go. Soda Gallery arts director Jonathon Kimbrell says that, "one, it shows people all the great work being created around the country and two, illustrates the idea that buying original art doesn't have to break the bank, so to speak." You can preview the art before Saturday night, but nothing will be sold until 7 p.m. — and "work will go fast, I assure you," Kimbrell says. Some of Kimbrell's own work will be on display as well.

The Oak Cliff Artisans sixth annual fall sale offers handmade works ranging from stained glass and clay to metal sculpture, jewelry and photography. The sale takes place Saturday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. at Kidd Springs Recreation Center.

Easing credit crunch puts the convention center hotel back on track

Good news for fans of the taxpayer-owned downtown convention center hotel, as well as for the pending DISD bond issue: The credit market, at least for public works projects, appears to be easing enough to allow AA-rated and above public entities to obtain financing. A DMN story indicates the city of Dallas intends to close on $253.3 million in water improvement project bonds this week; a few weeks ago, this and just about every other bond project in the country were frozen due to lack of capital or political will or lenders — take your pick. The $550 million convention center hotel, which Mayor Tom Leppert and many city councilmen have vowed to fund in January, requires issuance of municipal revenue bonds to generate the cash, so now that the market is coming back, lack of available funding shouldn't hold back Leppert or the council. I guess we'll see if the May referendum on the project causes the council members any heartburn when it comes time to approve the bonds in January.

Bishop/Davis land use study: Thoughts from Val Haskell

Land use study committee member Val Haskell told me a lot of interesting things that I didn't have the space to include in November's story. She's one of 12 neighbors appointed to the committee by either Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia or Councilman Dave Neumann, and she lives in the Kings Highway Conservation District.

What's happening on Davis, Haskell says, is a lot of dynamic, organic change, and the process of the land use study is about trying to get the kind of change Oak Cliff neighbors want. "It's preparation for what we know is coming and making sure what comes is more of what we want instead of less of what we want," she says. "Personally, I would love to be able to walk from my home down to Bishop Arts and have an interesting urban streetscape and one that, if I wanted to run a few errands, I could."

"The neighborhoods have different flavors, too, so there’s an attempt to honor the flavors," Haskell says. "We have to make sure Bishop Arts continues to do really well, and if we can help Davis do well, Bishop Arts will do better and better. I think of it in terms of little nodes and how do we connect these nodes better — Bishop Arts, then Gloria's and Bolsa, then Kavala — how do we make it great in between those pieces, and what do we want as a neighborhood? I hope we are able to facilitate or expedite the kind of change that we want."

Restaurant review: Cretia's

The Cretia's/Dicho's combo that neighborhood blogger Rob Shearer announced on Back Talk Oak Cliff in mid-September is up and running in Bishop Arts District's former Nodding Dog spot.

I stopped by yesterday to check it out, and had a piece of strawberry cake with butter cream frosting (yum) and a cup of coffee. The two bakery cases hold several different cookie, pie and cake flavors, the latter sold by the slice for $5. Carlos, the operating director, told me that on Fridays and Saturdays, people congregate in the shop and hang out almost as they would in a bar.

Dicho's makes book shopping easy, with everything divided into sections like cooking, humor, gift books and bestsellers. The children's section was one of the largest, yet not so large to be overwhelming. That was the great thing about the entire store — the sections featured some of the more interesting books available in each category, and there weren't so many that it was overwhelming. I guess I've shopped at Barnes and Noble so long that I have forgotten that this is exactly why small, neighborhood bookstores are charming and appealing.

Dicho's also had plenty of copies of President-elect Barack Obama's books, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father", at a display right in front of the register. I asked if they were selling well these days, and was given an emphatic "yes," but also told that they've been selling well for quite some time.

Barack Obama says "no" to a saggy pants ordinance

President-elect Barack Obama may well have an impact on one of the least-pressing but most-discussed issues facing the Dallas city council: whether to pass an ordinance outlawing "saggy pants". The DMN city hall blog reports that during an interview with MTV News, Obama dissed the very idea of outlawing saggy pants, saying: "I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time," among other comments you can read by clicking here. Anyway, deputy mayor pro tem Dwaine Caraway, an Obama supporter, has been the city's leading proponent of the saggy pants ordinance.

Leppert says our votes count. Except for the convention center hotel?

Here's an interesting juxtaposition: Mayor Tom Leppert is circulating an email with the top headline saying "Convention Center Hotel Critical to Dallas' Future", while the second item is headlined "Vote! It's Your Voice!" (Click here to download tom_leppert_email.pdf and see the email.)

The irony: At least one Leppert spokespuppet on the council already has chortled out loud that even if Dallas residents vote in favor of a potential referendum scuttling the $550 million taxpayer-owned convention center hotel downtown, those votes won't stop the council from moving forward to build the hotel.

So whose voice is Leppert talking about?

A credit card solicitation every week — what's up with that?

Not surprising news from credit card firms is that they're tightening credit, raising interest rates and taking cards away from some people. But buried in the story about the credit crunch is this interesting tidbit: "Mail offers to new and existing customers are on pace to drop below 8.4 billion pieces, the lowest level since 2004." A little quick math shows that 8.4 billion credit card solicitations divided by 300 million U.S. residents means that each of us, on average, received 28 mail solicitations this year. And if you further parse the numbers, eliminating about half of the population that is (or at least should be) too young to receive a credit card and people who don't have any income, that means that the rest of us receive about one credit card solicitation per week. No wonder so many people have more credit than they need or can handle.

Dallas home resale price drop is minimal compared with other U.S. cities

Another of the many stories in the good news/bad news vein these days: The DMN headlines its latest residential real estate story "U.S. home resale prices dive 16.6% as Dallas' dip 2.7%." Further good news for our area from the story: Among the 20 major U.S. cities tracked in this particular study, our area had the smallest decline in home prices compared with sales in August 2007, while Phoenix and Las Vegas both reported drops exceeding 30%. More bad news nationally was that the results from 13 of the 20 markets surveyed had worsened from the month before, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area (but by a pretty negligible 0.2%). Bottom line: Things aren't great in the rest of the country, but we're doing pretty well here on a relative basis. I couldn't find the DMN link for its story, but if you want to look at the actual study, click here and then download the August study pdf.