Oak Cliff shopping center files bankruptcy citing code violations

The owner of an Oak Cliff shopping center where a nonprofit grocery store was once planned is seeking bankruptcy protection for the property, and it’s not an unfamiliar position.

Silver Creek, the ownership LLC for Glendale Shopping Center, at 4410 South Marsalis Avenue, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Northern District Court of Texas last month. Alfred Herron, a real estate agent with Frisco-based Monument Realty, is the director of the LLC. His lawyer couldn’t be reached for comment.

The property needed immediate attention for code violations including parking lot potholes and a leaking roof, the bankruptcy filing states.

The business also filed bankruptcies for the property in December 2016 and December 2022, seeking court approval to use its cash collateral for repayments to its creditors, including the Bank of DeSoto and the Texas Mezzanine Fund.

The property’s tenants include Pan African Connection bookstore and Family Dollar. The nonprofit For Oak Cliff previously had its office in the shopping center, but it moved after buying a former YMCA property nearby in 2021. 

The shopping center was home to a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in the 1960s, when Glendale was an overwhelmingly white neighborhood. But by the time Dallas schools were desegregated in the 1970s, it had become a predominantly Black neighborhood, where lenders were unlikely to provide real estate loans.

Now the area is in a food desert with few options for groceries. For Oak Cliff and another local nonprofit, CitySquare, had planned to open a nonprofit grocery store in the old Piggly Wiggly space in 2019, but the plan fizzled out just before the onset of the pandemic.

Retail real estate is one of the hottest asset classes in Dallas-Fort Worth because of high tenant demand. Investors poured $1.3 billion into the asset class over nine months last year, and major players are getting into the game. Crow Holdings launched a $2.8 billion fund to buy retail and community-services real estate earlier this year.

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