Retail Report: Has the Recession Hit West Village?

by Kassi Schmitt
kschmitt@smu.edu

It’s 3:30 on a rainy Wednesday afternoon and Gardens’ manager Kevin Brown is rapidly racing from one end of his store to the other, helping customers load their cars and arranging items for a promotional event the next evening.

As he runs into the back, he wipes his forehead, laughs and proclaims that this is just like any other day at his store in Dallas’ posh West Village neighborhood.

Across the street at Mi Cocina, waiters are dashing from table to table taking drink orders as bus boys clear the dishes in record speed.

Around the corner, Shannon Sturdivant has her schedule booked for the entire day at Lash Studio, where she’ll give customers eyelash extensions and airbrush tans.

It’s just another day in this bustling shopping center near the crossroads of McKinney and Lemmon Avenues.

West Village may be a bright spot in this dark economy.

The area has a 95 percent tenant occupancy rate and a 100 percent occupancy in the center complex, rare for a mixed-use development these days.

With 70 retail stores and restaurants, West Village continues to expand say developers.

In downtown Dallas, it’s a different story. It has the highest retail vacancy rate in North Texas with almost 40 percent of the storefronts deserted, according to an Oct. 9, 2009 article in the Dallas Morning News.

At Victory Park, west of downtown, Italian restaurant Nove Italiano, Mexican tequila bar La Condesa and Chili’s Bar and Grill have all left. Vacant stores and shops line Victory Park Avenue.

Dallas isn’t alone, however. Many stores and restaurants nationwide are closing their doors after months of waning business.

But West Village is opening new ones.

During the past nine months, 11 new restaurants and retailers including Haven, Assembly and Lazare have started business in the complex.

In addition to the opening of the frozen yogurt store Orange Cup four weeks ago, current leases are in progress for the unoccupied areas.

In the past eight years, the West Village area has rapidly grown to acquire tenants across from Blackburn Street and has added on CityPlace West Village as well.

The shopping center is “very accessible and friendly to Dallas,” David Levine, one of the original partners in the development, said.

Director of Marketing and Public Relations Katie Beal said they are expanding their marketing techniques to appeal to people who don’t necessarily enjoy going to the mall and spending hours getting lost in a closed area.

“Mallternative” is the term Levine uses.

“People come and have an experience here,” said Beal. “They don’t necessarily need to shop; they can just pop in a store or take a look around.”

Not all West Village stores are recession proof, though.

Levine said restaurant sales are up as a whole for the area, but some of the retail shops have felt the heat of the downturn.

Narsin Hormozi owns the only lingerie store in the West Village area, Trousseau of Dallas. She said that she has a very loyal customer following that allows her to keep her business going.

“We’re doing about 30 percent less than we were doing before,” she said. “But, thank God, we’re here and the doors are open.”

Still, Levine said West Village is the most active sub-development in the Dallas base.

This is because the area attracts customers from all parts of Dallas to Fort Worth and beyond.

For resident J.D. Yates, West Village is the perfect place to be because of the mixture of the downtown business crowd and uptown residents.

Yates lives just above the retail and restaurant strip in the Gables McKinney complex, which currently has 72 of its 75 apartment homes leased out, according to leasing professional Ashley Alsip.

“It just has a really fun and great energy about it,” Yates said about the West Village area.

Yates is also employed at P.D. Johnson’s Dog Day Deli, right below his apartment complex and said that that it “keeps us as busy as we can be.”

Because the sandwich shop targets a wide variety of people, the shop is constantly filled with students and professionals on their lunch breaks, while the staff rushes to fill orders for delivery.

Across the street in central West Village, Walter Rosales continues to greet every customer at Mi Cocina with a friendly smile.

Mi Cocina has been one of the main attractions in West Village since it opened four years ago and has drawn a very loyal client base, which Rosales said has led to much of the restaurant’s success.

“For the most part, we’re doing better than what we did last year,” Rosales said.

Levine believes West Village will remain strong throughout the recession and will continue to grow.

“We see West Village becoming the Milwaukee Avenue to Chicago, Elizabeth Street to New York, Hayes Valley to San Francisco and Melrose to L.A.,” Levine said. “We are clearly headed in the right path with strong momentum.”