Dallas landmark bites the dust

12:23 PM CDT on Saturday, September 30, 2006

By AARON CHIMBEL / WFAA.com Mobile Journalist

Standing on what was the foundation of Baby Doe's Matchless Mine, Roy White, Jr. remembers the night he took his wife there for a surprise dinner.

The lifelong Dallas resident made just one trip to the restaurant that sat atop Goat Hill for more than 30 years, but he says it had a special place in Dallas. "It’s a landmark and it’s a very unique location and the intimacy of it when it was here," said White, who was there working for Dallas Water Utilities.

This week, Baby Doe's was bulldozed. It had been closed for more than a year. The owners of the five-acre property at the intersection of Interstate 35E and the Dallas North Tollway, Cienda Partners, bought out the remaining 25 years on the restaurant's lease and decided the site would be easier to sell if the boarded-up and graffiti-laced wooden building was gone.

"It was not a hard decision," said Cienda’s Phil Wise. "The site is five acres and has been under-utilized for years."

David Glasscock, an executive vice president at Colliers International, was hired to market the property, He said the restaurant had outlived it economic use. The land was simply too valuable to be home to just one restaurant.

"It's the most prominent site in the city," he said.

Cienda bought Goat Hill, the slice of raised land wedged between Harry Hines Boulevard and Interstate 35E and Oak Lawn and Victory Park, two years ago with the intention to sell it to developers. Wise said they have already received offers, and the site will probably be a mixed-use high rise with a hotel, condos, offices, shopping and restaurants all possibilities.

Both Wise and Glasscock said the proximity to downtown, uptown, Victory Park, Oak Lawn, The Katy Trail, American Airlines Center and several local highways—in addition to the elevated terrain—make Goat Hill attractive to developers.

Wise said just because the property is for sale, it doesn’t mean they will take any offer. "We’ve owned it for two years, and would be happy to own it for 25," he said.

But Glasscock is still pushing the property, and said it would take at least two years to complete any new development. He predicts that whatever materializes on Goat Hill will have the iconic status Baby Doe's did.

"Whatever is there will be a landmark," he said.