There’s a sign planted in the front yard of 2606 52nd St., if you can spot it behind the weeds and wildflowers swallowing the property. “Jesus Lives,” it says, though probably not here, beneath a collapsing roof, behind caved-in walls. Just wouldn’t be safe. And, surely, he can find better options.
The building is just off East Ledbetter Drive, 10 minutes from downtown, along a stretch of street that runs into Harry Stone Montessori and Dr. Frederick Douglass Todd Sr. Middle School. It used to be the Alpha Omega Church of God in Christ; then, Bread of Life COGIC. There were Sunday services here for years; funerals, too, including one in March 1991 for a 22-year-old barber and South Oak Cliff High School grad who was “apparently a homicide victim,” the Dallas Times Herald reported.
Ninety-year-old Hughey P. Samuel Sr. and his wife have lived across the street for 63 years in an immaculately maintained home with a well-manicured front yard. The couple remembers when it was a vibrant house of worship, but Samuel said it hasn’t been a church for 20 years.
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“Now it’s just an eyesore,” Samuel said. “You walk out the door every day and there’s that old church up there. And it gets worse and worse every year. I don’t know why they won’t do anything about it.”
The city is trying, at long last: Earlier this month the city filed a case in municipal court in the hopes of bulldozing that old church. There’s a court date next month, but best I can tell, looking at old deeds and liens and court records, the city’s been wringing its hands over this problematic property since 2017.
That was just a year after the city sold the old church to the very same man with whom city attorneys are now in court.
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The former Sunnyvale Church of Christ along 52nd Street has been empty and abandoned for nearly three decades. It was supposed to have been demolished by now, but it remains on the market for $699,000.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Yes. You read that correctly. Somewhere between this building’s former life and its current state, 2606 52nd St. spent two years in Dallas City Hall’s inventory thanks to a foreclosure. Eventually the city sold it in July 2016 to a DeSoto man named Anthony Boyd for $9,999.99. The Dallas Central Appraisal District estimates its value at $246,700.
I couldn’t reach Boyd to tell you why he bought it or what he intends to do with it, as he didn’t return messages left on his cell; city attorneys say he also hasn’t responded to their calls. But in 2019 he transferred the deed to his Cedar Hill-based American Dream Custom Home Builder.
A year later, from the looks of Google Maps, someone painted and planted that “Jesus Lives” sign in the front yard. Maybe they were hoping the property would come back to life, too.
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Residents in this part of Oak Cliff aren’t strangers to the city coming in and demolishing bad things on their block. They’re also used to it taking a long time. Too long.
Like the old 389-unit TP Town Plaza Apartments that were just a few yards away from that abandoned church. The complex was built in 1974 and slowly evolved into a place overwhelmed by drug dealers and prostitutes and arsonists who kept setting it ablaze. By 1997 it was abandoned and looked like hell. Like actual, literal hell. City officials said 68 fires had been set there since 1983.
Dallas sold the former Bread of Life COGIC on 52nd Street in Oak Cliff to a DeSoto man for $9,999.99.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Yet it still took five years to bulldoze the apartments: In January 2002, City Hall got a court order to raze the complex, now buried beneath tall grass behind chain link. It’s among numerous vacant lots that have turned what used to be a neighborhood into something more rustic than urban, where sometimes you hear only chirping birds and crowing roosters.
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That will begin changing in the coming days. DCAD shows those seven acres are owned by NDP Homes on Forest Lane, a subsidiary of the Catholic Housing Initiative that converted several motels into housing for the formerly homeless and is now building infill residential homes. Joe Dingman, CHI’s co-founder, said they’re “days away” from resurrecting the land with the infrastructure needed for 14 duplex units and 43 townhomes.
“Ownership housing is good for the neighborhood and good for the city,” Dingman said. “It gives people an incentive to build equity and take care of it.”
He’s very familiar with that church on the corner hidden behind the weeds.
“There are so many code violations all over that part of town,” Dingman said, “without either the will or manpower to address them.”
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Which brings me to what I guess is the punchline of this piece.
I walked from that old church past the fenced-in field down to Sunnyvale Street, where 52nd Street runs into the old Elisha M. Pease Elementary School that Dallas ISD is now using as a police training facility. And on the corner, across from a packed Dollar General, sits another abandoned church — this one, the former Sunnyvale Church of Christ and then New Testament Church of Christ, a sprawling complex that first appeared in this paper in 1954 and closed nearly 30 years ago.
The back of the former the former Sunnyvale Church of Christ, which remains on the market despite a demolition order agreed to by the city’s attorneys and a lawyer representing the East Dallas property owner.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
That abandoned church, whose 2000 sale to John Collins’ Sunnyvale Limited Partnership became a federal court case that stretched into 2013, has been in municipal court since September. On Feb. 9, attorneys representing the city and the property owner agreed to a demolition within 90 days.
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That deadline has come and gone. Which means Dallas’s attorneys will now seek a final court order that allows the city to demolish the old church at the owner’s expense.
“It’s been abandoned ever since I’ve been here, and that’s been 28 years,” said the Rev. Joe Moore of Calvary Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church, about a block away on Sunnyvale.
He saw me walking around the old church parking lot and pulled over to ask if I owned the freshly mowed property. Moore said he’s been trying to buy it for years. “Except the owner wants $1 million for it.” I told him recent listings have it at $699,000, despite the demo order.
“That’s still too much,” he said. “That thing has to be full of mold. And asbestos. And who knows what else.”
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Don’t be fooled by the barbed wire. The former Sunnyvale Church of Christ is easily accessible.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Moore said he also tried to buy the old Bread of Life COGIC, back when it was still a church, but the owner at the time refused to sell. Old Google Maps street views show a sign used to be posted in front of 2606 52nd St.: “Not 4 Sale Nor Lease.”
Moore complained about both buildings, where “kids are breaking in, smoking dope,” he said. “It’s sad. The city gets on our church if the grass gets too high or if something’s wrong with the parking lot. But here, they don’t care. It’s hard to get help in this neighborhood.”
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He looked at the old Sunnyvale church — all boarded up, its back buildings swallowed by vines and vandalized with graffiti.
“That church looks bad, real bad,” Moore said before driving off. Maybe Jesus lives next door.