| ninth street | and Green Street – needed visual improvement, David Jr. planted flowers and Japanese maples to go along with an external renovation, earning the company a beautification award. Originally, the elder Dickson had dreams of establishing a computer corridor along the block, but instead he wound up selling the business in 1994. Two years later, he and David Jr. and Glenn – CEO, VP of Medical Sales and VP of Customer Engineering, respectively – were amicably terminated from the new ownership. Soon after, David Sr. and Glenn were developing, buying and redeveloping the 800 block, which extended the commercial district. The combination of retail, office and multifamily transitions the commercial district with the residential neighborhood of Old West Durham. Meanwhile, David Sr. and Glenn were grappling with what they might do next with their properties. “Should we renovate [the existing properties] for $1 million, or tear them down and build more densely for $3 million?” remembers Glenn. Without any prospective tenants, they chose the second option. The result, which opened in 2003, was Ninth Street North, a compact retail-and-office building located where DataFlow had been. The Dicksons also redeveloped the nearby building where Vin Rouge and blu seafood and bar operate. But the family had a bigger vision. They already owned several properties fronting the east side of Ninth Street, and for the next seven years they gradually acquired seven other properties on that square. That included six mill houses on Iredell Street, a transmission shop and one giant oak tree, purportedly the third biggest in North Carolina. It was huge, 99 inches in diameter, and the Dicksons were determined to save it. “I’m a tree hugger,” says David Sr. “We spent [a lot of money] trying to work around it.” And then in 1999, a violent storm took it down, answering the question of how to preserve the tree. The result: Solis Ninth Street, a $40 million, 229unit, mixed-use complex at the end of the commercial district of the 800 block Ninth Street. Solis includes five ground-floor retail spaces. The residential piece opened in April, and the apartments are already 80% leased – “ahead of schedule,” Glenn says – and three tenants have signed leases for ground-floor units. All
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October/November 2016
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