While the development vacuum hovers above, another movement rises from the bottom up. This chapter is not just about improving walk-ability, but about moving past the top-down economic thinking that enabled car-dependent growth. Creating places around the pedestrian also provides an opportunity to evolve the economy around the community. Through two tales in very different cities, we’ll see a new type of real-estate mogul—one who tends to the garden of local wealth.

Monte Anderson (no relation to John Anderson) grew up in Dallas on the south side of the river, “the side of the river where the have-nots lived, or the wrong side of the railroad tracks,” as he put it. It was a lower- to lower-middle-income area that experienced a lot of “white flight” in the 1970s and ‘80s and became a racially mixed neighborhood. “I was one of the guys that stayed and continued to work there even when my friends moved away.”

Monte entered real estate through construction, cutting sheetrock for his Dad’s contracting company. Eventually, Monte would take on his own development project. He bought a rundown motel with big plans to fix it up all at once. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get the financing to renovate the building. Rather than trying to redo the whole thing, he and the staff decided to fix up just one bedroom. Quickly, they saw the occupancy of that room rise to 90 percent, and from there, used the revenue and experience to remake the rest of the motel. Monte realized that success came from pouring love into one little thing at a time and watching it grow.

A DeSoto restaurant that has perfected the fried chicken sandwich has launched a new sibling which promises to do the same for burgers.

Called 2 Neighbors Burgers and Shakes, it’s a spinoff of 2 Neighbors Chicken, which has been doing the hot chicken thing since 2017.

2 Neighbors is a mother-and-daughter venture from Carlonda Marshall, a former DeSoto High School teacher, and her daughter, who originally opened 2 Neighbors Chicken in Cedar Hill, the relocated to the Grow DeSoto Market Place at 324 E. Belt Line Rd. in 2020.

They’ve prospered at the marketplace, even despite the pandemic — with business brisk enough to warrant branching off into something new.

“We were originally doing wings and soul food, but we slimmed down the menu once we moved,” Carlonda says. “I’m from Nashville, which is known for hot chicken, but we do it in more of a natural style. We’re known for our chicken sandwich with chicken breast, we fry it and then dip it in the seasoning — like Popeye’s, but it’s bigger than Popeye’s.”

For their new burger venture, they took over the space next door that was previously home to Shelley’s, a Chicago-style hot dog spot.

“We knew we wanted to do burgers and shakes, but we only had so much working space use at 2 Neighbors Chicken,” she says. “We use all the fryers for our chicken and we had no place to put a grill for cooking the burgers.”

They’re still working up their online presence, but their menu includes burgers, which can be ordered regular or plant-based. “I’m doing a vegan version with Impossible burgers,” she says.

They do a thin patty which you can stack with multiples, and top it with melty cheese. It’s served on a brioche bun with pickles and special sauce.

They also do sliders, milkshakes, and vegan cupcakes — and as a backup, you can always order hot chicken from 2 Neighbors Chicken, right next door.

From the streets of Mexico City, through a home kitchen in Dallas and then a food truck, Tacos La Gloria has landed a permanent home in Oak Cliff’s Tyler Station after getting off to a chilly start.

The owners of the former food truck opened the location Feb. 6 only to be shut down a week later when Winter Storm Uri coated North Texas in ice, snow and darkness. Now it’s going full-steam serving taco lovers dishes crafted by Maria Gloria Serrato, the business’ namesake and head of the family behind it.

Serrato started selling food in the streets of Mexico City in the 1980s to provide for her family. When she came to the U.S. in 1986, she worked various jobs in restaurants and the food industry, preparing items for food trucks and catering events on weekends. Tacos La Gloria started when the family began selling dishes made by Serrata in her kitchen. The business soon outgrew her home, and the family moved operations to a truck.

“When she wasn’t working in the kitchen at her job, she was in our kitchen at home preparing our dinner,” said daughter Daisy Wall, the restaurant’s operations manager. 

“Her dream has always been to own her own business, and as her children, there are five of us, we’ve always recognized how hard she’s worked to be able to provide for us. We all have one goal in common — make her dreams come true. My brother Mingo called me one day about three years ago and came up with the idea of buying a food truck for our mom.”

They purchased the food truck in 2019, and things were clicking along until the pandemic hit last March, forcing it to close for several months. The family reopened in October doing pop-ups and event catering before settling in Oak Cliff Brewing’s beer garden, which offers plenty of outdoor seating with tables set up for social distancing.

Serrato prepares all the food, though the entire family decides what goes on the menu. Most items are what Serrato cooked for her kids when they were growing up. They offer street-style tacos ($1.85), quesadillas $4.75/$7.75), sopes ($4.50), gorditas ($3.50), huaraches ($7.25), flautas ($8) and menudo ($12/$20). The proteins available are fajitas (beef and chicken), birria, pastor and chicharron (pork skin). They also offer breakfast tacos ($2.50), burritos ($3) and breakfast plates like chilaquiles verde or rojo ($9.50).

On my visit, we ordered the quesabirria, a beef taco with cheese added, which Wall says was put on the menu when they started seeing it trending on social media. The quesabirria tacos had great flavor and just the right char or crunch. We also tried the gordita, available soft or fried; we choose soft, and the masa was cooked just right so it didn’t break apart when bitten. The well-seasoned tacos de pastor came on a handmade corn tortilla. The star of the show was the carne asada fries, served hot and crispy topped with your choice of protein, a mound of cheese and pico de gallo.

Tacos La Gloria does not have any veggie/vegan options now, but it‘s set up next to OG Vegan, another truck that operates at Oak Cliff Brewing. Also on the menu are homemade aguas: horchata, limon, pina, sandia and Jamaica.

You can find Taco La Gloria on Instagram (@tacoslagloria), Facebook (Tacos La Gloria), and Snapchat (@Tacoslagloria)

Tacos La Gloria, 1330 S Polk St (Oak Cliff). Open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday.

However, business incubators shouldn’t only focus on high tech. Too often the “innovation economy” privileges large corporations that can afford robots, and patent attorneys. Lower-tech food and farming businesses tend to be highly local and compete well against e-commerce. For example, cannabis production and sales have dramatically reduced vacancies in strip malls and warehouses in states where marijuana has been legalized. As such businesses grow more corporate, communities should consider subdividing large retail spaces into “mercados” that provide launching pads for smaller entrepreneurs.

That’s been the case at Grow Desoto Marketplace, a business incubator in a Texas strip mall. When the only retailer interested in occupying the vacant space was 99 Cents Only Stores, the mayor asked the owner, Monte Anderson, “Is there anything better we can do?” Together, they came up with ways to lower the barriers to entry and kick-start locally owned start-ups, many of which are eateries and most of which are Black-owned businesses. At “Pitch Mondays” entrepreneurs pitch their proposals to earn one of the 60 spots with reasonable rents, build-out construction costs included, and access to a marketing consultant. In 2019 it was 80% leased. Anderson said, “What I find in the African American community is an extreme amount of creativity and a lack of experience when it comes to access to practice business. I think it’s so important that we figure out how to build wealth for local people, bottom line.”‘

In 1919, Busse Baking company built a new, modern bakery on Portage Avenue in the heart of the Near Northwest neighborhood. The South Bend Tribune avidly documented its opening and early days:

Among the institutions in which South Bend takes special pride is the Busse Baking Company, located at 906 Portage Avenue. The new plant shown in the above illustration was erected a year ago at a cost of $90,000. The plant is the most modern that expert bakery designers could devise and has been pronounced one of the finest bread plants in the central west. Housewives in and around South Bend keep this big plant taxed to capacity supplying bread for their tables and the growth of the business has been little short of marvelous.

It represented a leap forward in bakery design. But even so, the company would be taken over just three years later by Ward Baking Company, marking an end to the “South Bend Bread War”—a story we’ll surely tell another day.

Suffice it to say, the building has lived a curious 102 years of life (81 years for the addition on the North end), but that might only be the beginning of its story.

After sitting vacant for a decade in which the Near Northwest Neighborhood was six times denied tax credit funding to turn it into affordable housing, a new plan is emerging from a team of incremental developers, including local Mike Keen and Texas-based Monte Anderson. Monte discussed their plans with WVPE in October:

Instead of housing, the current plan being considered would turn the building into a neighborhood hub for business, arts and retail.  

“I like to call it a collaborator village,” said Texas developer Monte Anderson. “You know, somebody does graphic design, somebody’s got a restaurant, somebody might make cupcakes for the restaurant, all of these things. You begin to work together and it becomes this cultural hub.”

Anderson has teamed up with local developers Mike Keen, Greg Kil and Dwayne Borkholder to refurbish the building and fill it with tenants whose business the neighborhood would likely value.

“What matters is what the neighborhood and the market say to put in here,” Anderson said. “We’re going to create the environment where the neighborhood can express itself.”

So in the late afternoon of Thursday, December 31st, I, along with Camille Zyniewicz and Mike, spent a couple of hours making photographs of the building and filming what we saw on a makeshift chest-mounted GoPro.

You can call it Portage Place now. Here is what I saw.

The Ward Baking Company building has been abandoned in South Bend’s Near Northwest neighborhood for 12 years.

The building has new ownership and new plans for the future. The developers are turning it into a “collaborative village” for the neighborhood

The building is now going to be called Portage Place. The goal is to create an open space where professional and creative services can work alongside one another.

Built more than100 years ago the Ward Baking Company Building is standing on the outside, but crumbling on the inside.

Bakery Group President Mike Keen has lived blocks away from this building for 20 years. After clearing out clutter and asbestos for the past month, Keen says the building wouldn’t have made it another year.

“For many years this has been sitting here, beautiful old building but totally falling apart and really scaring everyone out of the neighborhood. People see this and if you’re not used to it, it just frightens them.”

The Near Northwest Neighborhood Organization wanted to turn the building into affordable senior apartments, but wasn’t successful.

Keen says they needed to renovate or demolish the space.

Project Partner Monte Anderson is based out of Dallas. He encouraged the group to keep the building and turn it into Portage Place.

“When I first saw this building, I said look at this.. this is a jewel. right now, you have a diamond in the neighborhood, and it will be.”

The framework for Portage Place was based off Anderson’s Tyler Station in Dallas.

Tyler Station was an old wax paper manufacturer before Anderson turned it into a collaborative community for the Dallas area.

Keen and Anderson say this new space will help revitalize the Near Northwest Neighborhood.

“You give people a place where they can be inspired and they can be creative,” said Anderson.

“We think it’s going be the place to be, the place for you to come and create your dreamscreate your future and help us build our neighborhood and build our community,” said Keen.

Keen says they’re working on the brochure and rent prices for the different spaces. They’re hoping for a wide range of services from a beauty shop to a café and even insurance workers to make it a well-rounded hub for the neighborhood.

SOUTH BEND — Mike Keen’s vision for what he calls Portage Midtown continues to move closer to reality.

An attempt to reclaim tired and vacant spaces on a 3-acre spread of Portage Avenue, the project now includes two renovated houses, the groundbreaking Wednesday for two 600-square-foot tiny houses in the 900 block and, as of two weeks ago, the long-vacant, brick Ward Baking Co. building, which is across the street from the renovated houses and the lot for the tiny houses.

“We’re trying to build it up for everybody,” said Keen, a long-time resident, living on Riverside Drive, as he talks about a collective process that involves and supports the neighbors.

He and three other individuals bought the Ward building with plans to renovate and open the two-story, 30,000-square-foot space this summer, said one partner, Dwayne Borkholder, owner of Borkholder Buildings in Nappanee.

The group gained ownership two weeks ago and since then have gutted it, he said. Work began this week to repair the roof on the building, built in 1919.

They will be seeking shops, businesses, artists and other tenants to share space inside.

Other partners in the Ward building include local architect Greg Kil and Texas developer Monte Anderson, who Keen said has worked on other local projects.

The Near Northwest Neighborhood Inc. had aimed to convert the Ward structure into housing, but, after six attempts, it couldn’t secure the highly competitive low-income tax credits that it needed for financing, NNN Executive Directory Kathy Schuth said.

But, she said, as she listens to what neighbors want, “There’s a stronger interest in retail and gathering places.”

Neighbors have called for an eatery, bakery and artist spaces, she said, noting hope for perhaps some shared spaces: “It’s difficult for artists to rent small offices.”

“We will let the local market dictate what goes in there,” Borkholder said. “We have no preconceived ideas.”

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