“Will this time be different for South Dallas and the Forest Theater?”
Those words, printed in large type above the fold of the Dallas Morning News on November 10, 2021, “haunted” Elizabeth Wattley for “a long time.” Wattley is the president of Forest Forward, the nonprofit tasked with bringing the historic Forest Theater back to life. Which, in a way, means it is also tasked with the future of South Dallas.
Considering the scope and ambition of that statement, you can understand why that headline hounded Wattley. The 75-year-old theater, adorned with a green tower that once glowed like a beacon on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., has for the last 15 years sat empty among a derelict block of liquor stores and shuttered shops. Erykah Badu rented the theater to book acts like The Roots and Dave Chappelle, but that was the last bit of energy in the room. Wattley recently discovered that one of the businesses it acquired last received a certificate of occupancy in 1982, but still sold booze around the clock. There remains a lot of work to do before the tower glows again, but people are finally paying attention to this historic corner.
But on a Thursday afternoon in April, Forest Forward took a moment to celebrate what it has accomplished. Hundreds of people sat in a parking lot behind the building under a clear sky, the nickname Sunny South Dallas becoming too literal. Southern Dallas’ elected leadership celebrated Forest Forward’s milestone of fundraising, generating $75.215 million in public and private dollars—branded for the ZIP code in which it sits—and marked the beginning of renovations here.
“Along this stretch of MLK, it used to be dormant,” said state Sen. Royce West. “Everything was closed.”
What’s different this time around is Wattley’s strategy. A couple from North Dallas named Linda and Jon Halbert paired with the nonprofit CitySquare in 2017 and bought the theater. Wattley, who was working at CitySquare at the time, was appointed to lead the project. She has grown the operation into an independent nonprofit. She’d taken on big projects before, like helping turn Paul Quinn College’s football field into an urban farm. She spent months gathering community input that informed the new plans for the theater. She kept hearing about the need for housing and education programming, particularly with a focus in the arts.
“The best part of buying a building first and not having a 100 percent plan set together is we kind of get to start from scratch,” Wattley told our Peter Simek in 2017. “I think what was exciting was the possibility of having a facility that could answer a lot of needs at one time for the community.”
In the time since, Forest Forward has acquired about 20 lots and properties around the venue, vacant land and liquor stores and long-empty retail spaces. It has plans to turn some of these contiguous properties into mixed-income housing; Wattley estimates it could bring at least 150 units, which could be even more if the organization chooses to pursue multifamily.
It has partnered with Dallas ISD to transform the Martin Luther King Jr. Learning Center into the MLK Arts Academy, which graduated its first 8th grade class in May. Four students from that class were accepted into Booker T. High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and another was on the waitlist.
That’s a big deal. Booker T. last year counted about 1,100 students across its four grades, and only 10 lived in 75215. Local heavyweight architecture firm HKS is designing the overhaul, which will include a 1,000-seat concert hall in the old building and a 200-seat theater, dance studio, and broadcast and audio recording facilities in a new structure. The Forest will also add a rooftop patio, a café, and a coffee shop that won’t be a certain national chain. In April, it received a zoning change from the City Council to make its plans legal. It is on track to receive the construction permits it needs.
All of this is happening in tandem with the removal of U.S. 175, the highway that, like so many other urban freeways, created a gash through South Dallas that has taken decades to overcome. The land where that road was will soon be a boulevard, connecting the theater with the rest of the community. Kids will be able to walk free of traffic between the Forest and the school.
After the party in the parking lot, Wattley took a short vacation. “It did nothing,” she says. “I thought it was gonna be like, ‘oh, we’re done, let me go and relax.’ That did not happen. We came back and got at it.”
In late June, Wattley and two Forest coworkers sat in the second floor of a coworking space not far from the theater. The groundbreaking marked the beginning of construction. The team had just finished the asbestos abatement, a key progress marker in renovations for old buildings. They’re improving the foundation so it can eventually hold the coveted rooftop patio, providing clear views to downtown. September will mark when construction on the new building begins and the completion of the structural and foundational improvements in the old theater. It turned 75 years old with a gutted interior, a missing roof, and a hole in the wall created by the foundation work.
“I absolutely acknowledge how far we’ve come because we can’t turn back now,” she says. “We have the opportunity to really keep pushing, a rhythm. Can you believe we’re on schedule? We can actually do this, but funding is critical.”
On schedule means a soft opening in late 2025 with its full completion by the summer of 2026. And about that $75.215 million—that’s a combination of public and private funding, the amount needed for the renovation of the theater, land acquisition, and supporting educational programming. It also included money allotted for infrastructure from the Texas Department of Transportation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The latter of which will pay to create about 300 parking spaces for the theater under nearby Interstate 45, allowing Forest Forward to not have to waste any of its space housing cars. The project was always going to need more than $75.215 million.
Wattley says the cost of the theater and the new building is up to $80 million. They’ve raised nearly $60 million so far. Construction is ongoing.
“It’s no longer about capability. It’s no longer, are we smart enough to do this? Is this going to work? This is now down to money. And in the city of Dallas, we shouldn’t be here,” Wattley says. “As complex as this project is, the things that I’ve learned, the boxes that we’ve been able to check—the fact that it comes down to dollars? Not in the city of Dallas.”
The story of South Dallas extends along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the Forest north to Fair Park. The theater is trying to meet the needs of all the people who live in the blocks between them, focusing on access to education, arts, economic development, and housing. At the northern end of the street, there’s Fair Park and the push to tear down its fences and transform parking lots into a community park. And at the other end, there’s the Forest and its ambitions.
Wattley and her team believe they know the ending. She has a story about why she thinks this. In the days after the groundbreaking, some legacy residents had logged into Facebook and found something to critique. During the groundbreaking, Wattley hadn’t mentioned the old black-and-white checkered floors in the theater’s lobby. “That’s people’s snapshot memory, their core memories of the theater,” she says.
The floors are still there, but she didn’t include that detail in her presentation. It bugged her. But she realized something important: “If we’re down to debating black and white floors, we’re doing okay.”
Author
