The leaders of the Deep Ellum Foundation appear to think so. We’ve scanned an article that appeared in the June 2006 issue of Eclipse Magazine named, “The Deep Ellum Dilemma.” The article focused very heavily on Barry Annino and John Tatum, both board members of the Deep Ellum Foundation. In the article they speak about their ideas of how to clean up the neighborhood. If you read the second quote on the image below it becomes a little bit frightening just how they want to clean it up;”[Annino] thinks that he can round up about 350,000 square feet of space for any developer wanting to make a big splash for a cost of about $30 million.” They want to sell it to large developers who will undoubtedly create the next West Village or Downtown Plano. With only three buildings in Deep Ellum protected as historical landmarks (Union Bankers, Sons of Herman Hall, and Boyd Hotel) it is ripe for any developer come in, demolish, and create another homogeneous ‘just out of downtown’ neighborhood. The people in charge of maintaining Deep Ellum show absolutely no interest in truly revitalizing the neighborhood, or even maintaining it’s history.

The Deep Ellum Enrichment Project (D.E.E.P.) will be hosting a petition to have several of the buildings in Deep Ellum added to the list of Historic Landmarks. Make sure to sign this because Deep Ellum needs everything it can get to protect it’s heritage. We will post more information on the petition as well as the rest of the Eclipse article soon.