El Padrino will close at the end of the year.
Lauren Drewes Daniels
On a recent Sunday afternoon, families lingered in front of the beloved restaurant Gonzales on Jefferson Boulevard, waiting for bowls of its famous cure-all menudo. Some families sat in their cars as the wait time reached 30 minutes.
Families also shuffled into Charco Broiler across the street, the steak restaurant with the giant cow on the roof. A small line also formed at the 37-year-old family-owned El Pandrino after word spread via social media that it would close at the end of the year due to a rent increase. The squat green building is small compared to its neighbors, seemingly an afterthought as the neighborhood grew after World War II.
Jefferson Boulevard was a thriving commercial strip in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s with a theater, restaurants, diners, shops and pharmacies. It has long been the heart of Oak Cliff.
Charco Brolier has a strong following for a reason.
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But in a city that loves shiny new things — even if it means tearing down beautiful older things — lease signs in windows and local businesses closing feel ominous. Especially with the Bishop Arts District just an easy walk down the street.
Broc Cordova’s family has owned Charco Broiler since 1963. They actually own the building, so he has no problem talking about rent and landlords, which is refreshing. We recently reviewed their offerings for an article about the best cheap steaks in Dallas and writer Lisa Petty loved it here. People come back for the 8-ounce strip, which comes with a salad, loaded baked potato and Texas Toast all for about $15. Cordova says they also own two adjacent parking lots.
He says local real estate firms leave notes on his door trying to buy his restaurant “for pennies on the dollar.” He sees how many local businesses have been outpriced over the years.
“So everyone who doesn’t fit the idea of what they want Jefferson to be, which is basically Bishop Arts — which is fine — want the old blood out instead of making it more of a traditional area,” says Cordova.
Cordova has noticed that many of his contemporaries, the kids he grew up with who are now supposed to run their family restaurants on Jefferson, aren’t doing so. “I’ve seen a lot of them have to [close] because the ones that don’t own their land don’t have a chance because they don’t want Quinceañera shops; they want bars and grills everywhere,” he adds.
Chase Hollingsworth is the fourth generation to run his family’s pawn shop.
Next door to Charco Brioler, Chase Hollingsworth sits behind the counter at LG’s Million Dollar Pawn and Gun on Tuesday, chatting with customers like they’re friends in his living room. The old building provides a steady stream of jazz to the sidewalk out front. His parents started this business almost 50 years ago.
“I’m the owner, operator, manager, janitor and everything else,” he says with a laugh. The place smells good.
Unfortunately, his family doesn’t own the property, and they’ve moved up and down the street multiple times to avoid big rent hikes.
“We actually started out across the street and then moved down here one block over and Jim Lake bought all those buildings and they jacked up the rent, priced us out.” His grandfather moved them to a spot in a building his friend Victor Ballas owned.
That put them in their current building, where they were able to expand into another section.
“So our rent was like $10,000 a month for the whole space,” Hollingsworth explains. “Then Victor Ballas dies. His son takes over, sells most of the properties to an investment group or to different investment groups, one of which is called Nayeb.”
When their lease was up, they wanted to renew the location, but Nayeb wanted $21,000.
“Well, we can’t do that. Almost nobody can do that,” he says. So they went back to a smaller space. Nayeb fixed up the neighboring, now-vacant property for potential new tenants. It’s sat empty since.
For El Pandrino, the clock is ticking. Their son, Juan Contreras, posted recently that “after a change in management, we were given until the end of the year. This was my dad’s first restaurant. His dream. He’s been feeding this neighborhood since 1989, almost 37 years.”
Contreras told The Dallas Morning News that in addition to the rent increase, they also needed to carry expanded insurance.
He brings up a more searing point in his post:
“… This has been building for years. Elected officials and interest groups sell you a beautiful picture of what a neighborhood can become. What they leave out is that the people who stayed and kept these neighborhoods alive when nobody else wanted them are usually the ones priced our pushed aside for “better” tenants.”
For now, aside from a few banks and mobile phone stores, a few locally owned restaurants and stores remain. But perhaps it’s on us to keep visiting these spots — or heading over more often — before they too announce they’ve been priced out of their home of so many decades.
