In 2015, the Dallas City Council spent $2.5 million to move the Argos plant three miles away. City staff gave the impression time was of the essence.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
A couple of Saturdays back, I was driving through those worn-out West Dallas warehouses slathered in graffiti — Fabrication Yard, it’s called, so named for the street that runs through it. One left turn and one right later, I wound up back in the old Argos concrete plant across from Trinity Groves on Singleton Boulevard. Someone had rammed through the gate meant to keep cars off the property.
Which was surprising — not really — seeing as how exactly one year ago, a city spokesperson told me that Code Compliance was about to sic the City Attorney’s Office on the property owners, who include the men behind Trinity Groves, if they didn’t secure the 7.4-acre site. But I just pulled right in and parked alongside a couple of other cars whose occupants were busy spraypainting what few naked surfaces were left after all these years.
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Not that the gate was ever a deterrent, seeing as how there’s no fence on either side of it. Anyone can just walk right in. I counted three access points upon returning Wednesday morning, then found a fourth after watching two teenage boys drop out of one of the silos and hustle off the property.
“It’s a constant battle,” West Dallas Investments’ Larry “Butch” McGregor said Thursday morning when asked about the 19-year-old who fell to his death there in 2024, and the 48 complaints filed with 311 in just the last five years.
Two weeks ago someone plowed through the gate that’s supposed to keep people off the old Argos plant on Singleton Boulevard. This is the new one. Without a fence.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
This week’s return was prompted by the discovery that the old Argos site is no closer to redevelopment today than it was in 2015, when the City Council coughed up $2.5 million in economic development dollars to move the original concrete plant — deemed an “eyesore” even then — three miles west, to West Commerce Street, near a neighborhood and middle school now called West Dallas Junior High.
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Back then, according to a City Council presentation, West Dallas Investments — owners of Trinity Groves — promised redevelopment of the Trinity Groves site, which could include a mixture of hotel, office and or residential uses with a total estimated investment of somewhere between $175 million and $225 million. Which never came to fruition, even after Nebraska-based Goldenrod Companies bought some 90 properties in and around Trinity Groves in May 2023 and partnered with West Dallas Investments on the Argos site under the moniker Golden Trinity LLC.
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And now there’s no rush at all to develop — or even clean — the damnable hellscape near the foot of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
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At least, that’s the message I got from Dallas City Hall this week.
On Wednesday, a city spokesperson shared a statement from Robin Bentley, the assistant city manager responsible for economic development, who said Goldenrod actually went to the city in November 2024. The company requested funding from the Sports Arena TIF District, which was created in 1998 to help build the American Airlines Center and eventually expanded to help fund the creation of Trinity Groves.
Nebraska-based Goldenrod Companies told Dallas City Hall that the hotels and apartment complexes planned for the Argos complex and adjacent land would cost around $575 million. The city says it has $100 million to contribute from the Sports Arena TIF District.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Bentley said the city did its due diligence, and in November of last year, the Office of Economic Development “issued a letter of intent for a proposed development.” Bentley said Goldenrod told the city the proposed Argos development, which would include a hotel, two residential towers and other mixed uses, would cost $575 million, and that the city committed “up to $100 million from the Sports Arena TIF District.”
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Goldenrod “acknowledged receipt but did not formally respond,” Bentley said.
McGregor said I’d have to ask Goldenrod where things stood, as he and his partners — including Stuart Fitts and restaurateur Phil Romano, whose Saint Rocco’s in Trinity Groves closed earlier this year — aren’t developers.
“I am not privy to what they’re doing,” McGregor said. “We just do our thing. I don’t know anything about what they’re doing. Sorry I can’t help you.”
Before we hung up, I asked if he was frustrated by the absence of action on the Argos site they were in such a hurry to acquire in 2015.
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“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he said, then laughed. “So …” His voice trailed off.
I left messages for Goldenrod’s board chairman and CEO, Zach Wiegert, a former All-American at the University of Nebraska who played 12 seasons in the National Football League. I never heard back. The local PR firm that was working with Goldenrod last year isn’t anymore. And the Dallas-based Goldenrod chief operating officer with whom I spoke about the Argos mess last year has since left the company.
A homeless man was living in the old Argos offices on Singleton Boulevard, which resulted in numerous calls to Dallas Fire-Rescue.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“Spending real time in places like West Dallas, listening to community leaders, and building trust before talking about transactions is the work I’m interested in now,” Joe Zylka, the former COO, said via email. “Goldenrod is a serious firm with a serious portfolio. My read was that I’d be more useful building something focused on this region, with the people who live and work here.”
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Which leaves the residents of West Dallas — the folk living in the apartments next door, the residents of La Bajada, the transplants and lifers alike — with the wreckage the city was in such a hurry to get rid of more than a decade ago.
“They needed to get rid of it, and they didn’t,” said Debbie Orozco Solis, the activist and third-generation West Dallasite who in 2015 was among the loudest voices in City Council chambers opposing the city’s handout. “It’s like everything else the city does. It’s so important they move, and then they just leave the mess. That’s what is so amazing. And when you ask about it, no one knows anything.”
West Dallas only became part of this city in 1954, and it has seemingly spent nearly every second of those 72 years fending off the polluters and the developers who want the land — even now, with the rezoning fight farther down Singleton. The Argos plant, towering over neighborhoods once underserved and now overdeveloped, stands at West Dallas’ very gateway, like a punishment for those who’ve suffered the most.
“I’m trying to keep people involved,” Solis said this week. “This is how they get us: If they don’t know the history, it sounds like a great idea to give them more money. It’s crazy.”
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One of the old warehouses that makes up Fabrication Alley, which is part of the West Dallas land owned by West Dallas Investments. It’s also referred to as Tin Alley.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
She then told me to call her niece, which I’d planned to anyway, as she’s Laura Cadena, West Dallas’ council member.
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Cadena, whose first appearance in council chambers came during that 2015 fight over moving the concrete plant, said she hasn’t spoken with Goldenrod — can’t really, she said, given their economic development ask. But, yes, she’s frustrated, too, as are the residents who keep calling her to complain about having to live near and drive past the sprawling, apocalyptic blight.
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In fact, when I called Thursday afternoon, Cadena said she was waiting on a response from city staff about the troubled site. She called back a little later to say that “code has an open case to address substandard structures and open and vacant issues and will refer to the City Attorney’s Office if not resolved.”
Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s a constant battle. West Dallas doesn’t need the reminder.