Community leaders oppose return of New York nonprofit’s home showcase to Preston Hollow

North Dallas community leaders are voicing opposition to the return of a New York nonprofit’s interior design event to Preston Hollow, citing traffic concerns.

The annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House charity event, where designers from around the country collaborate to transform prestigious Dallas homes, will offer just two weeks of public tours in a five-bedroom home at 9446 Hathaway St. in Preston Hollow, beginning Nov. 3.

Dallas City Council member Gay Donnell Willis, who represents District 13, and the Inwood-Northwest Homeowners Association say they’re concerned the single-family neighborhood can’t accommodate the event’s parking and traffic.

“It’s a shame that one or two people are trying to get in the way of three charities impacting thousands of people,” Dan Quintero, executive director of the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, which organizes the event, said in an interview. “We follow the rules, we’re sensitive to people’s property and plight, and guess what, if something is not done correctly, we will correct it.”

The event is a fundraiser for the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, which provides educational and developmental programs for New York City children. The nonprofit, based in the Bronx, launched the fundraiser in Dallas for the first time in 2020 as an extension of its show house events in New York and Palm Beach, Fla. The organization held its first event in Manhattan in 1973.

Last year, the Dallas event was shortened to just four days after the nonprofit faced city permitting hurdles and complaints from the local homeowners association. At two weeks, this year’s event will still be shorter than the monthlong run the group hosted in Preston Hollow in 2020 and 2021, in part due to community concerns, Quintero said.

Quintero said the organization met with about five city departments in November to avoid the obstacles it ran into last year.

“We did a lot of prep work and forward thinking so that we wouldn’t run into some of the mishaps we ran into last year,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of due diligence here.”

Kips Bay was instructed by the city to get approval from 10 neighboring homeowners, and nine were in favor, Quintero said. He expects at least 5,000 people to tour the home during the two weeks.

“We’re moving along very strategic and very conscious of the neighborhood that we’re in and how we can better do this,” Quintero said.

About six miles north of downtown Dallas, Preston Hollow is known for its gated estates and is referred to as the Golden Corridor for its wealth. Some of the most notable names in Dallas — including Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and President George W. Bush — live in the area.

Traffic concerns

Kips Bay said it would require all guests to park in the Lovers Lane United Methodist Church parking lot at Northwest Highway and Meadowbrook Drive, and that shuttles will run from the church to the show house. (On Aug. 30, however, Kips Bay and the church said the event would no longer use the parking lot. Kips Bay said it is working to find a new solution.)

Off-duty police officers will be on site to limit event traffic in the neighborhood, the organization said.

“Towing around the neighborhood and show house will be strictly enforced with no exceptions,” the organization said. “If guests park their vehicle on any neighborhood street, it will be towed.”

In a letter to the city’s special events office, which handles special event permits, council member Willis wrote that Hathaway Street and Park Lane are too narrow for the high volume of visitors and buses and that other Dallas neighborhoods have wider streets better suited to handle the traffic.

Kips Bay has received permits for construction, but its special event permit is still under review by the city.

“It seems like a far less disruptive plan to consider street structure and the concerns of neighbors before planning this event,” Willis wrote.

In the letter, she said the neighborhood has many people who walk with pets, that the streets have no sidewalks and that there are roadside ditches along the lanes. “This makes adding a volume of traffic, and especially large vehicles like shuttles, very dangerous for neighborhood residents and vehicles alike,” she wrote.

She also raised concerns over the use of rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft at the event. Organizers clarified that they would be “strictly prohibited” at the house, and the event’s website directs people using these services to the church so they can take shuttles to the home.

Willis still believes people will call rideshare services to get to the home, “despite everyone’s best intentions,” creating congestion on the narrow street, she wrote.

Leland Burk, president of the Inwood-Northwest Homeowners Association, said he has not heard from organizers in regards to his group’s concerns, even though Kips Bay said it had been working with both the city and the homeowners association. Burk’s organization is opposed to any form of the event, including a shortened one, in the neighborhood.

“It is extremely disappointing that Kips Bay would say they are working with the local homeowners association when, in fact, we have actually heard nothing from them,” Burk said in a statement. “The way show organizers have managed their event, with a lack of care for the residents of our community, is alarming.”

In response to Burk’s statement, event organizers said they applied feedback from conversations last year with the homeowners association to planning for this year’s event.

“The neighborhood association last year was very difficult, very obstinate, and unfortunately the lines of communication were not great, so we made sure this year that we went right through the city,” Quintero said.

Burk said he doesn’t see it that way. In response to Quintero, he said organizers last year “announced the event but had not reached out to us to partner or the city of Dallas to get proper construction permits or check on proper land use ordinances.” Quintero said the property owner did meet with Burk to discuss the event and logistics.

“I would not characterize the interaction with the homeowner as a meeting at all,” Burk said, adding that he dropped by unannounced to let them know his organization would not support the event.

Burk said his organization believes the show house is a commercial event prohibited from taking place in a residential neighborhood. The event, however, is a charity event to benefit Kips Bay, a nonprofit, as well as local charities Dwell With Dignity, which furnishes homes for families facing homelessness and poverty, and the Crystal Charity Ball, which supports Dallas County children’s charities.

“There’s a narrative out there that we are a for-profit organization, nothing could be further from the truth,” Quintero said, adding that other charitable events take place in Preston Hollow. “These are three organizations that are trying to do great work, and it’s unfortunate that a couple of folks in the neighborhood have issues with it when all organizations are abiding by all permits and all rules that have to be abided by.”

Quintero said the organization is open to moving the event to other parts of Dallas-Fort Worth, even outside of the city of Dallas, but that this was the only house available in the right period of time.

“We’re open to a lot of different communities, but we’ve been fortunate enough to find the right house in Preston Hollow the last couple of years,” he said.

Continued opposition

During the construction process at last year’s home on Meadowbrook Drive, Kips Bay got an order from the city to stop work for around two weeks because it did not have the proper electrical and plumbing permits, The News reported. That order was lifted later in the month.

Separately, one of the organizers, Nazira Handal, said she received an email from the Dallas city attorney’s office saying the event was considered a commercial event and an improper land use for the single-family home. Because it’s a nonprofit charity fundraiser, she did not consider it to be a commercial event.

Those events followed complaints from the Inwood-Northwest Homeowners Association. Last year, Burk said that during the 2021 event, neighbors living near the show house reported unmanaged trash, traffic and parking congestion on a daily basis throughout the show’s 30-plus-day run that made access difficult for emergency vehicles and mail trucks.

He said attendees the previous year ignored the parking shuttle and parked throughout the neighborhood, causing damage to property and irrigation systems. Organizers said last year that they were aware of people parking throughout the neighborhood rather than in the designated lot, but not of delays with emergency vehicles.

“Listen, no one’s perfect,” Quintero said. “Traffic is traffic. Sometimes the general public wants to do what they do. It’s our job to try to maneuver them in the right direction. Last year, the event went with no mishaps, and we intend to do the same this year.”