LAKEWOOD SHOPPING CENTER

The legendary Doc Harrell opened his drugstore at the southwest corner of Abrams and Gaston in 1924, when Abrams was still a dirt road. The following year, investor Leo Corrigan partnered with developers Dines and Kraft to buy part of Lakewood Country Club’s property and build a shopping village on the former 18th hole, to the chagrin of nearby residents who preferred their pastoral setting.

Thus the Lakewood Shopping Center, as we call it today, was born. The old Lakewood library, now the Diener-Mills building on La Vista and old Abrams, operated as an ice cream parlor before the city bought it in 1937. The Lakewood Theater opened in 1938 followed by the erstwhile Lakewood Hotel across the street. Corrigan leased space to grocery stores at both ends of the property, and over time all the spaces in between filled with retail and service shops. The neighborhood grew up around it.

Tenants have come and gone, buildings have been renovated, remodeled and replaced. Urban decay hit, followed by urban renewal. Nine decades have passed, yet Lakewood’s shopping village still stands. A scant few of the original tenants remain, but new life fills the shells of some historic buildings — a winery in an old post office, an orthodontist and boutique in an old library, a title company in the fire-ravaged remains of Doc Harrell’s drugstore.

“This is our inheritance from our Dallas ancestors. They gifted these to us,” says Brandon Castillo, president of the Dallas Homeowners League.

He’s referring to both Lakewood Shopping Center and other pre-World War II retail districts such as Bishop Arts, Deep Ellum and Lowest Greenville, which were “built when cars were not our main source of transportation,” Castillo says. These older retail centers are more expensive to maintain, but they produce more, he says.

Castillo is part owner of an economic development firm, Ash+Lime, that focuses on neighborhood improvements. When he crunched the numbers, he found that the