The former University General Hospital will no longer be used by the city for homelessness services.
The 2929 S. Hampton Road property, which has sat vacant for over a decade, is currently under contract for about $6.9 million with Duncanville-based developer Monte Anderson planning to transform the 14 acres near Kiest Park.
Though the contract is underway, there was a time when city officials were set on using the property for homelessness services. That was the plan when District 3 Council member Zarin Gracey started his first term in 2023.
He said that the former hospital site was inherited with the former motel site of 4150 Independence Drive. Both locations were purchased in 2022 by the city to set up for permanent supportive housing, with the Hampton location for about $6.5 million and the Independence site for about $5 million.
The difference was that the hospital site was not the right place, Gracey said.
“Just like the community said, ‘you got the school, the park, the senior housing and all of these things and the library,’” he said. “This was not the right place, but since I’ve already inherited 4150 let’s see if we can shift and move 2929 South Hampton because it’s just not a good fit.”
As soon as he was elected, Gracey said he started to understand the community was complaining about what was going on.
“It’s not that we don’t want this in our backyard,” Gracey said of homeless services. “It’s just this is not a good spot. Period.”
And on the other side of things, city staff was pressuring him to keep the initial plan in motion. Rather than it being a community based issue, city staff told Gracey they need to solve homelessness problem with the Hampton facility for all of the city.
“But the one thing that hadn’t happened was nobody talked to the community at all, not even before the purchase or anything. They had one community meeting, I think, where it got really heated there, and then that was it,” he said.
The focus was always on making the former hospital for homelessness solutions, so upon Gracey’s council term, he changed the approach. He mentioned four community meetings that focused on looking at other possibilities for the property, with one held for neighborhood association leaders, one for seniors, one in Spanish and then another open to anyone.
Then, it was time to convince his colleagues that the change could happen. There were concerns raised that with 2017 bond money already used to purchase the property and that the city would lose money by selling.
“They didn’t think we were going to be able to get the money back that we paid for the building, which I thought was important, because again, that let me know the value that they see of southern Dallas,” Gracey said. “So you can see southern Dallas to be a solution for all of the other districts’ issues, homelessness, and things like that. That can be done down here, but up there we can do really nice developments and things like that.”
After what he describes as “all these fights,” eventually 2929 South Hampton was added to the City’s surplus property list.
“Once we did that, then we can start the solicitation process, and that’s when you just hold your breath and wait, and hope that you’re not wrong on these things, and we put it out there,” he said. “And again, I think at one point there were nine developers that were interested.”
Two ended up contacting his office. Gracey shared with them what he would like to see there, but said those interested should really talk to the community.
Anderson was one of those that did. His previous Oak Cliff projects include the revitalization of Texas Theatre and Tyler Station.
“So I’ve got a pretty good reputation with neighbors of not doing bad projects, but what we’re going to do here is going to be kind of simple. It’s going to be a mixed-use development. We’re going to keep the building, the hospital rooms on the top floors will be turned into apartments or flats,” Anderson said. “And then the bottom floor of it, where the hospital used to be, will be a mixture of retail, office, medical, just multiple commercial type uses, and then in the parking lot, around the parking lot, we will build for sale town homes.”
He said that the vision is to “create a little village” surrounding the hospital.
“We’re trying to make it look as cool as we can, and use good urban form, and decent architecture, and lots of opportunity for smaller entrepreneurs,” Anderson said.
He added that they really want to work with Gracey to make the development like a front door to the Oak Cliff Nature Preserve and connect the park to the project.
Gracey describes this project and the process leading to it as an example for southern Dallas development.
“You just got to find the right developments and the right resolve and the right vision, and all those things came together to get us where we are,” he said. “And I think, I pray, we don’t have to fight these fights every single time, but this is truly a case study of I told you so as far as I’m concerned. We know the value. We just have to fight to show it, and hopefully we can get other developers that follow Monte’s lead.”
