North Texas has seen a population boom, but Dallas-area business leaders want to ensure the potential in southern Dallas isn’t being overlooked.
Areas like Southern Dallas have been “under-championed for far too long,” Dale Petroskey, president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber, said Wednesday. He said more than 300 companies have relocated to the Dallas area over the past 15 years, adding that jobs are on the rise.
“That’s all good news, but it’s not enough if everyone, everyone, doesn’t have an opportunity to share in that prosperity,” Petroskey said. “We won’t be the community we want to be, we should be, we know we can be, until everyone has a chance to reach their full potential and that’s what today is about.”
Petroskey was one of several speakers who discussed economic opportunity for the region during the first-ever Opportunity Summit held at the Shops at RedBird and hosted by the chamber.
Business leaders and others flocked to the mall, where they discussed the future of southern Dallas’ development. ists included Dallas College’s chancellor, a Dallas Economic Development Corporation board member, a Regions Bank team leader and the president of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, which is building a deck park over Interstate 35E.
In recent years, the mall has undergone a reimagining, with additions like a Dallas College workforce center, medical services, child care and more. Peter Brodsky, CEO of the mall, said the region has untapped potential, holding a large portion of the city’s population and a large amount of undeveloped land.
“It takes infrastructure, and it takes investment to realize the potential of southern Dallas,” Brodsky said. “Southern Dallas gets a lot of philanthropy, but not enough commercial investment. People choose to live in this area for many reasons, and they deserve to have their commercial desires and comforts treated as a market opportunity, and that is what Red Bird is all about.”
Cynthia Figueroa, a Dallas Economic Development Corporation board member, said the organization, a nonprofit formed by the city of Dallas, is focused on marketing the city and, specifically, southern Dallas, which is “right on the precipice of exploding.” The organization sees the future for the region in the area’s development.
“The thing that people don’t really understand yet is that southern Dallas is really on the edge of major development,” Figueroa said. She said it’s not a question of “if” but “when” southern Dallas will develop, with the community, business opportunities and the area’s closeness to the city center.
Asked about how the EDC would ensure that longtime residents and small businesses benefit from investments in the area, Figueroa said, “They are very much going to be integrated into the success story. That is in the front of our minds.”
April Allen, president and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, said parks drive development. Halperin Park, the deck park being built atop Interstate 35E, is situated between South Ewing and South Marsalis avenues.
When I-35E was built, it disconnected communities from downtown and bulldozed homes belonging to people of color.
The park is seen as a bridge for neighborhoods in Oak Cliff, with its impact also likely felt in the Tenth Street Historic District, one of the only remaining intact freedmen’s towns in the nation. It’s slated to open in 2026.
Allen said it’s important to address the people in southern Dallas neighborhoods and how development will benefit them. The park, she said, was shaped by from neighbors, and it’s important to understand how to use the space to address health disparities, a need for educational programming and other benefits.
Allen pointed to opportunities with people in southern Dallas, with “a very can-do, will-do spirit,” the entrepreneurial energy the community has to offer and the area’s proximity to downtown.
While the Dallas-Fort Worth region is “on fire,” Allen said the city of Dallas is not expanding in the same way as the suburbs, and to grow the city’s tax base, it’s important to grow southern Dallas.
Brodsky told the crowd that “we’re almost in Oklahoma because within the city of Dallas and within Dallas County, the northern half of the city and county are full.” It’s time to invest in the southern part of the area, he said.
Brodsky recalled how he initially thought about southern Dallas before realizing the area’s potential.
“All I ever heard about southern Dallas was ‘don’t go there,’” Brodsky said. “I was told it was poor, it was dangerous and not a part of town that one wanted to go to… I thought that South Dallas, up by Fair Park, was all of southern Dallas. I really was very ignorant.”
The region, he said, has long been home to Black professionals, with segregation having been “violently enforced” in the city. There’s money in the community, he said, but amenities do not correspond with it.
“Those are amenities that aren’t there even though they’re desired, they’re deserved and people in this community can afford them,” Brodsky said. “The only conclusion one can draw is that they aren’t there because it’s been drilled into our heads: ‘don’t go there.’”
It’s time, he said, to get rid of preconceived notions and invest in the area.
“I decided to invest in southern Dallas because I saw an opportunity, a very rare opportunity that one gets in life, to do well and to do good at the same time,” Brodsky said, “because this area is so much more than I have been told and that so many of us have been told.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative ed by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.