After 12 years of promises and setbacks, it was revealed that all 110 acres of the property of the neglected Valley View Mall, now known as Midtown, are up for sale.

This news may signal a new chapter for the site, which has been a source of frustration for residents and officials alike, plagued by issues like homelessness and environmental concerns.

The property owners, including the Beck family, Seritage, and Life Time Inc., have united to market the land as a single offering, which has generated significant interest from potential buyers, reported Candy’sDirt.

The site has had an identity crisis over the years, transitioning from a shopping mall to various rebranding efforts, but there is now a renewed sense of possibility for its development in a city that desperately seeks to utilize its prime real estate effectively.

Here is more of the story from Candy’sDirt:

The news came from the man who has written even more than I have on this topic: the demise of the former Valley View Mall renamed Midtown and promised, promised, promised to be delivered for at least 12 years. Twelve long years.

That man is Robert Wilonsky, who recently returned to the Dallas Morning News, and the first thing the veteran reporter did was listen to a Dallas City Council Economic Development Committee meeting on Monday.

During the meeting, the interim director of the city’s Office of Economic Development, Kevin Spath, “let it slip” that all 110 acres where Valley View Shopping Mall once stood… are for sale.

I would have fainted.

It’s Baaaaack

“Valley View or Midtown Dallas or the International District or whatever it’s called now only got bumped to the top of my to-do list because it was back at Dallas City Hall on Monday, wrapped up like a housewarming present that could yet turn out to be a gag gift,” Wilonsky wrote in his return column to the Morning News.

More than a decade after former Dallas City Councilwoman for District 11 Linda Koop urged the Beck family of developers to buy the land at Preston and LBJ, there may yet be hope for something to happen there — besides homeless camping out, urinating in front of carpooling moms, or starting fires, and just leaving the land to be ravaged by time.

I have run for Dallas City Council in this district now three times, two of those specifically because I could not stand to see the waste of 125 acres in the heart of the city’s most thriving, beautiful neighborhoods. I’m in real estate: I like to see land put to its best and highest use.

The Long Wait

I’ve interviewed the owners and understand, somewhat, their frustrations and setbacks with the city for years. And years. I’ve talked to countless neighbors in the vicinity blockwalking and hearing, for years, “Can you get this mall going? What will it take? What is wrong with the Becks? Whose fault is it?”

Social media has even suggested the city take the land from the Becks by eminent domain — this uttered by people who have no idea how eminent domain works. We certainly got some comments on our story and podcast with Scott Beck last year.

That was February 2024…

I understand why it took so long to tear down the last part of the mall: asbestos remediation, which has to be done skillfully to protect the environment. I understand how the last two city council representatives offered the Becks the city’s help and currency in exchange for having affordable housing in the gameplan, which the Becks did not like. I understand how the various owners spent years in litigation suing each other for mishaps and what have you, tearing down the wrong walls, all of it.

My favorite new saying is that when nobody can get along, you get Preston Center West.

So yes, this was nirvana! Mana from heaven. And I’m probably more pumped than Wilonsky.

First of all, wow —

“But at the end of 2024, the three owners of the Valley View property — the Becks, Seritage and health-club operator Life Time Inc. — which partnered with Beck on announced then abandoned plans for a 400-unit luxury high-rise – banded together to sell out. Michael Swaldi, a senior managing director at JLL, told me on Monday that the trio “put the entire property together as a single offering,” and then JLL began shopping the whole shebang.”

Dallas Morning News

This is huge. Do you know how hard it is to get three major freaking estate players to agree to where to go for lunch?

“We’ve been quietly marketing it to the best of the best,” Swaldi said.

Beck Is Positive

And there has been response, a lot of positive response, Scott Beck told me in an interview this week.

“We made the decision to partner and market the property as one piece,” Beck told CandysDirt.com. But he couldn’t tell me, dang it, WHO was interested.

“It’s exciting that there is actually a tremendous amount of interest in the property — all 110 acres!”

That’s Becks’ land, plus Seritage’s land (the real estate division of what was Sears Roebuck), plus health-club operator Life Time Inc.’s land, equalling 110 acres.

Plus, since 2022, 17 acres of Valley View land along the northwest corner of Preston and LBJ has been for sale, rebranded I guess as “Vista Commons,” to further the area’s identity crisis. If Valley View were a teenager, it would need every shrink in the country to help it move forward from the years of brand marketing confusion.

Identity Crisis and How We Got Here

First, it was Valley View Shopping Mall until it shut down and the Becks purchased the largest parcel and rebranded it as Midtown. But the City of Dallas and the Becks got crosswise, and former city councilman Lee Kleinman did — actually, I don’t know what he did. Re-draw the plans, Beck once told me.

Then Jaynie Schultz was elected as Kleinman ushered her in. She seemed to ignore 110 acres of potentially prosperous land in a city begging for revenue and then tried to rename it the International District, based on an informal survey she took of strangers at DFW Airport, she said during one of our campaign meetings.

The International District ended up having some fun parties in the parking lot of her North Dallas office in the Prism Building, which the city bought in 2021. The building was a “hub for international trade offices,” including the French Trade Office, the European Chamber of Commerce, and the Tanzanian American Chamber of Commerce. It is also the District 11 City Council person’s office and the last time I was there, a lot of square footage was available to be leased.

Ultimately, the city bought the Prism Building as a placeholder for a future park. Dallas ISD is set to build a K-12 school beside the Target store on Montfort, which is right now a dreary strip shopping center with a couple of newer tasty restaurants. The surrounding apartments are Class C, until you get closer to the Galleria, which is undergoing major change, too, in this zone of zombie retail shopping centers.

But the City of Dallas needed more land before the park could sprout — like five acres of mall land, which the Becks told me countless times they offered to donate, IF the city would help them demolish the mall. Or build the sewers under LBJ. City also needs to buy and flatten a couple of apartment complexes, this when affordable housing is so “desperately needed,” city leaders tell us. And donations have not been flowing in.

Plans have been drawn up for the park with a price tag of $25,000, apparently covered privately. The park itself will cost at least $160 million in yesterday’s dollars. Where will it come from? The Dallas Midtown Park Foundation will ask the park board for $15 million in bond money, and, in return, offer an additional $15 million in matching funds not yet raised by Friends of The Commons. Bond money was voted on for this area in the 2024 bond election, which I assume has been set aside since not used. Many of the funds are interdependent on what another entity is raising or committing to.

A park, a school, and a thriving live-work-play community of high-rises and mid-rises — Think Legacy West or Uptown with shops and restaurants, office buildings, and condos all interacting.

There’d be new streets, parking, and promises of a “people mover”— a high-tech way to move large groups from the Galleria to Midtown (Valley View) that I learned about years ago that looks cool but probably costs a fortune. Who will foot that bill?

I’m still very positive. I think the purchase of TBarM by Brady Wood is incredibly important. This is 450 acres of land in total, a swath north of LBJ to Montford to Alpha where Herb Weisman still owns some strip malls. The Dallas City Council’s Economic Development Committee is pondering $11 million to buy one of those strip malls along Montfort Road for a part of the future park. Hopefully they can lease it till the end.

District 11 and North Dallas are in desperate need of more trees and greenspace. And I think that we should also find a way to knit the neighborhoods that are separated by LBJ together, somehow, like a Klyde Warren Park. Talk about a division, the highway sliced right through complete residential neighborhoods.

Speaking of Klyde Warren, the Midtown park, which will be named The Commons, is promising to be even bigger than Klyde Warren. The homeowners who have lived next to this eyesore and driven by it daily deserve at least that.

Beck is positive. I don’t think I have ever heard him so positive. There has been an incredible amount of interest, he kept saying; the bidding is still happening — in fact, with so much interest, it will take some time to get through them all, he said. Time and real estate.

“This used to be a mall with five owners,” Beck told me. “Now it’s three owners, all in agreement, wanting to work with the city and new owners to take it to the next chapter.”