From Lawyer to Developer: Chad West on Building Dallas’ Future

When I was working on my lease with them, and he said, um, as a lawyer, he's like, you're gonna do fine. You'll, you'll make money. You might be happy, you might not. Uh, he said, but I will tell you, um, the people I know that are the happiest, um, they don't work that hard and they're not as stressed. They're in commercial real estate

We're shaping the future of North Texas. One story at a time. Welcome to

And you've been city council membership member in In district one for, it's been six years. Going

And when I, uh, started my law firm to hang out with my shingle, you know, I was a baby lawyer, I found these guys and, uh, and wanted to rent from Mark and he sat down and talked to me when I was working on my lease with them, and he said. Um, as a lawyer, he's like, you're gonna do fine. You'll, you'll make money. You might be happy, you might not. Uh, he said, but I will tell you, um, the people I know that are the happiest, um, they don't work that hard and they're not as stressed.

They're in commercial real estate, and, and he said, I'll teach you about triple net and how that works. If you ever wanna like. Sit down with me and do it. And I was kind of scared at the time because all I had were two residential rental properties and I had horrendous tenants. I had, it was partly my fault 'cause I didn't screen 'em right. And mm-hmm. Uh, it was constantly just drama all the time and they, and I would. One was in Lubbock.

I left my old house in Lubbock when I lived there for law school, and the other was back in my hometown in Illinois. And I was losing money on both properties, having handyman out there all the time. And I'm like, you know, I don't wanna be in the real estate business. It's, it's, it sounds awful. Yeah. And he said. He's like, just talk to me when you're ready to talk to me.

And over the next year we, we talked, and the first building I bought in Oak Cliff was the 900 West Davis Building, which is now, uh, it was my law firm for many years. Okay. And, uh, we, we went through an adaptive reuse of it. It was all boarded up, you know, you know what it is?

It's, uh, just down from Bebe Bop on that triangle by Starkey's Garage. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. One story. It's like a, an old, um, I think originally it was a gas station at Texaco. Wait,

But, um, that was my first building and then I had several after that. Eventually I got into a car wash deal. It was much more complicated financing, bigger deal. So, uh. We ended up, I ended up having to kind of focus on that. So I sold most of those, uh, smaller buildings.

Another phrase I had heard is that, uh, there's a finite amount of real estate. No one's. Creating more. It's what you've got is what you got. Mm-hmm. So the value over time is always gonna go up. Mm-hmm. And I just never had that kind of trust in the market. So I feel safer putting my investments in real estate.

so uh, so much, so high in demand that you just don't see it going south?

It worked for me initially in my first building was, I think I owned it two and a half years before I tried to do a second one. Okay. And, uh, it worked for me 'cause I was the owner occupant. I was already paying, you know, like 3,500 a month or something in rent and utilities and all that to mark, uh. I could shift most of that cost over to my, uh, mortgage to pay for my building.

So the numbers really worked for me to, to be a owner occupant and to, to put value into that asset as opposed to paying rent to somebody else. Yeah. So you mentioned

Um. Commercial property. What's different about that is most leases are written where the, uh, the insurance is paid for. The building is pa. The cost is passed along to the tenant uhhuh. The, um, the, uh, repairs and maintenance except for the roof, interestingly enough mm-hmm. Is passed along to the tenant. Landlords typically under most leases, maintain. The responsibility for the roof. But everything else, if a pipe burst, if a window breaks, somebody shoots it out. Mm-hmm.

Um, if there's flooding, a lot of times that falls on the tenant. And then the third thing is real estate taxes. If real estate taxes goes up on, on the house, you're renting to somebody. You gotta eat that cost, right? Or raise the rent on your tenant. However your lease is tracked. So if your real estate taxes go up $500 in the year, the tenant's gotta absorb. That kind of sucks to be a tenant in a lot of cases. Um, but if you've got the right building, they're willing to pay it.

'cause they're making so much more, you know, on, on, uh, their product or whatever they're selling, right? Mm-hmm. Right. But the beauty of that is. You're insulated as a landlord from a lot of the maintenance, uh, a lot of the cost escalations. Um, it's, it's riskier for tenants in the commercial world versus it's also easier to evict a commercial tenant. They don't have as many protections. Yeah. If they're a bad tenant, you know, as like a residential one has. Mm-hmm.

And, and for good reason.

That's where someone lives, you know? Right. No, of course. Yeah. Someone

You know, you have to be a very special kind of person to wanna do it your whole Yeah. Career. You gotta just kind of love the fight if you're litigator. Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of development going on over here. You know, is this the next big spot in

Just down commerce a little bit. Um. I, I feel like it's already here. I think like what's after West Dallas? I mean, I'm looking at Oak Cliff of course. Yeah. You know, you know it well. And um, we did as part of my role on city council. Yeah. Uh, the West Oak Cliff area plan. It took me three years, uh, to go through it. And we started during Covid, so that. It's part of the challenge, right? Yeah. Trying to get community engagement during Covid mm-hmm. Is pretty tough.

And, um, we found a lot of little areas that have, um, uh, that they're like little neighborhood centers that used to be really alive back in the, uh, days of the streetcar back Oh. When Dallas had street cars back until they were ripped out in the forties. And, uh, those areas, some are still alive. Um, some are completely dead. And I think over time those little areas. Could come back really? You know, downtown Elmwood I see is really happening right now. There's property trading there.

There's money in the bond too. Mm-hmm. To fix up their streets and make it a complete street. I'm excited for them.

And we just did a study, um, on what I'm calling for now, far West Oak Cliff, which is the area of Pinnacle Park with the Walmart over there off 30 Cockrell Hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a 200 acre city owned park that no one's touched. That's over there. Um, and then. Hundreds and hundreds of acres that need infrastructure, and they've just been neglected, you know, for, since the fifties. I mean, so we're gonna work on that. I, I take 30 to get to Cocke Hill.

It seems like, you know, I grew up having to drive all the way down to Tom Thumb, you know, um, so, you know, when we're developing this area, like, what, you know, what, what do you see as someone on city council? Like what, what are the plans to kind of solve those type of problems?

Okay. You know how construction delays work? Yeah. Uh, but it's at the corner of Fort Worth Avenue and, uh, Hampton and that project would not have happened if we hadn't had economic development dollars. Really, uh, thanks to, um. Well, partially the 2024 bond. I mean, we pretty much used most of it to close that gap on the, uh, financing for Sprouts because construction costs went up over time and it just wasn't gonna meet the, meet the threshold. Yeah. Neighbors tell me overwhelmingly.

Um, and it doesn't matter where they live in Oak, cliff, rich, poor, brown, black, white, um, they tell me they want more grocery store options. Yeah. And so we're working on it. What I'm hearing from the real estate professionals who do.

Site selection for Central Market, HEB and some of these higher end grocers. And then the small places like, uh, trader Joe's mm-hmm. Is that we, we just don't have the density and the demographics yet. Okay. So, um, you know, there's, there's pros and cons with, uh, bringing in more like, you know, higher income demographics, the gentrification that comes along with that. And it's, it's a real issue in our neighborhood. It's a real challenge.

Um. But on the density, that is something we can control. And it's something that is welcome if you do it in the right places. And so along 35, that whole corridor over there, um, 35, uh, uh, west of 35, south of 30. Mm-hmm. So if you think of Jefferson and Colorado, the Oak Farms development. Um, what's over there that everybody would probably think of? There's a dart service station for trucks over there. Hmm. Um, basically where the zoo is that area? North? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where the zoo is north along the highway. Mm-hmm. There's no residences on the west side there. It's, it's all like parking lots and car dealerships. That's a perfect area for density. Yeah. Um, to bring in the hundreds and hundreds and. Maybe thousands of new neighbors.

We need to bring in more retail.

There's that large apartment complex that's got coffee shop in it, it's called Novel. On the other side of that, just east of that down, Davis is a big vacant lot and HEB actually owns that. Um, we've met with them. We've tried to get them to do something with it. It's not on any plans right now to do construction there. At one point it was, they had told me we would be after the rebuild on the, on the McKinney site that they own. Mm-hmm. You know, they own the, the former Albertsons there.

Okay. Excuse me. Okay. On McKinney, uh. In West Village. Yep. And after that's built, we were supposedly next, but we're not on any construction planes now. Okay. Um, but there's an opportunity, I mean, you have the ho the Oak Farms development, which is over the right there looking at downtown, at the north northeast part of the district. Uh, there's a lot of land over by Methodist Hospital, um, just east of Beckley.

Um. And then, uh, there's, there's a couple of larger lots along Davis, just down by Encina. You know, Rick Garza owns a, a great piece of property there. Yeah. I would

Raise, you know, in this case, $1.25 billion, that money spent across the city on different things and then increase in, um, value, the value of land over time. Pays that back versus your, your average property tax dollar right now, um, goes to mostly pay for police and fire. You know, our largest bill in the city is, is public safety. Uh, sure. And, and. And it should be, it's a priority for our residents. Uh, pays for road repairs, stuff like that.

It's mm-hmm. Streets, sidewalks, and alleys, and then public safety. And then I believe it's parks after that.

And all of a sudden I'm like, I love this place. This is awesome. You know, I still haven't played, uh,

It's a, they're beautiful parks, but as we look 10, 15, 20 years down the road, um, we have to, um, we have to think about what's in the future. Yeah. It needs to be dredged. That lake hasn't been dredged from all the silt and stuff in it for, I don't know when it's been a long time. There's some historical elements that need to be fixed up.

And so, yeah, no, I mean, I would just say, you know, if I can put a plugin for people who, uh, do care about the park to come to the city's website, um, come to my page as a, as their city council person, you can follow my, um, my biweekly newsletter. We send out survey things through that and, uh, request and so people can actually provide input, uh, for us that we can take, take back and use it.

That's what drew me to the military. You know, I did military for four years, but I

Mm-hmm. And, um, when I, it was kind of a weird path, like when I, uh, when I, uh, first moved to Oak Cliff, um, I wanted to start meeting people. I wanted to, I, I also opened my law firm right after I moved to Oak Cliff. And, uh, I didn't, you know, I opened my law firm. I had no money, uh, because I'd, I'd left my big law firm job mm-hmm. And had every bit of dollars I made there. I'd paid off debt and all that stuff.

And, uh, started my law firm with, uh, $10,000 in credit card debt and one client. And, uh. And ended up like a lot of people in Oak Cliff, you know, it's a very entrepreneurial, uh, place to live. And that's one of the things I love about our neighborhood. But I got involved in the Oak Cliff Chamber, uh, of commerce. Mm-hmm. Which was a great move for me because we help each other entrepreneurs. Definitely support each other.

No, cliff, I mean, you guys used to be down at wax space for a while, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh, you just know how many startups down there support each other. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And help each other. That's very cool. Um, and then the second thing I did is I actually started the dash for the beads. You did? I started that. Oh yeah. On a 15 years ago. Uh, uh, sitting at what used to be Jack's backyard down the street from here, which is now Henry's Majestic. Yeah. Isn't it now? Yeah. It used to be chicken

And, um, you know, fortunately now more responsible people have taken it over. It's, it's a lot more successful than it was in those early years. But, uh, it was the combination of the chamber and the dash for the beads. I met a lot of people in the neighborhood and. Ended up meeting our former council member, uh, Scott Griggs.

Yeah. And, uh, worked with him on some chamber stuff and, uh, saw through his work just how much more you could do for the community, how your, your, your ability to serve, uh, could really be expanded upon. Mm-hmm. I also love new urbanism. I, I love activating as, as you know, from what I told you a few minutes ago, I love seeing. Old spaces come back to life. Oh, yeah. And, and the preservation aspect too.

And so through good planning, uh, and through good ordinances and good zoning, um, how you can bring places back to life. And so that really was what inspired me to run early on. Yeah. I mean, I know

I mean, it's just, it's, it's so cool when you go to that, that area and Oak Cliff has so many of these old buildings. I mean, you've got, you know, even Gloria's is an old firehouse. Oh, that's awesome. They turned into a restaurant that's really awesome. You have all Bishop Arts and we know what, you know, Jim Lake, Dave Spence do over there. So there's so much rich history in Dallas, especially around bishop arts. People love it. They

Yeah, it was, it had to do with, with Oak Cliff, I think it went around. Uh, Bishop, it went to Bishop Arch, maybe around it. Well, I don't know. You may be thinking about the

Arts at the corner of Davis. And, uh, uh, Zane. Right there. Yeah. And so it's, uh, there's a bunch of Alamo Manhattan apartments right there. Um, and you can get off and go into Bishop Arts or, you know, wherever you wanna go. Mm-hmm. Um, the streetcar master plan, uh, proposes to take the northern part around the convention center and go up through downtown. I don't know exactly where it's gonna go. Okay. I think that's up for negotiation and then make some kind of meaningful connection.

To the M line trolley, which is in on McKinney. You know that, that troll? Oh yeah, yeah. Okay. Now those two lines are, the tracks are different, the train types are different, and neither one is gonna be changed. So they're gonna have to be, there's a, a, some kind of stop. Hmm. And where people don't mind getting off and hanging out for a minute to switch trains. Right. 'cause otherwise it's gonna kind of suck if you think about it. Yeah. So they.

It'll probably be something like, you know, Clyde Warren Park, uh, like a logical place to, to have them meet up the other end. On our end. Uh, the proposal is to go down Zang till you hit Jefferson, hang a right and go to the zoo. Okay.

I mean, and so, and so, it's interesting to see, okay, here's the problems we're facing, which is, well, this area of town developed tracks like this and this area developed 'em this way, and now they just don't. It'll match up. So it's interesting to see what we're up against and the dreams that, you know, people, citizens might have and even the council members might have and, and what kind of gets in their way. Uh,

Mm-hmm. It was privately run. Interestingly, our bus lines and our, our streetcar lines were privately run. I have a map in my house, um, that I. I had printed, and you can get it online and it's, it's the old streetcar map. Uh, it's, it's really awesome. Those were all ripped up. And of course, as you know, like, uh, you know, we are a very car-centric city now. Yeah. And so it's, we're designed by, by people who are engineers who wanna move cars as fast as possible. Mm-hmm.

And most of the engineers in the county and in the city, you know, they're great people. Very smart. They have that focus on moving cars as fast as possible. Right. To the detriment of cyclists, pedestrians, other kinds of people. So any win we can get with, um, with, uh, streetcar, uh, public transit, we gotta take it. You know, it's, it's, parking reform is a big thing, which we could go into that on its own podcast probably.

But yeah, it's, uh, we open, I open that actually, uh, back in August of 2019 because. The, the fact that we are such a car-centric society, um, has driven us to create all these parking spaces everywhere, which just perpetuates the problem. Yeah. The driving mentality. Yeah. And parking is so expensive to. To, to be able to, to provide that. It drives up the cost of housing, which is a problem that we're facing in the city.

Um, and it help, it prevents small businesses in a lot of cases from opening. I have, I've had two coffee shops in downtown Elmwood that couldn't open despite. Ample street parking because they didn't have the parking spaces in their 1920s houses that they wanted to open the coffee shops in. Wow. So it's, it's hurting our small businesses doing this. So, parking reform right now as we film this is at the plan commission,

and it will be coming to city Council, hopefully, hopefully next month.

So it's kind of the more established business owners that need to come in to try to help make, you know, something happen. I mean. How are, are there ways for people to donate to these causes? I mean, I mean, you think this is a massive scale operations. I mean,

worked out at the permit office. Or you hear of someone saying, I tried to open a, uh, beauty salon and I didn't have the parking, so I, I couldn't do it in Oak Cliff. I had to go to Plano. You hear those kinds of stories Okay. Which are real stories. Yeah. Uh. Then you at this point, the best thing you can do is let your city council person know, or tell that person who's complaining to you or sharing you know, their story. Mm-hmm.

To actually go share that story with the media or go to share that story with city council, like we need to hear that because a lot of decisions are made in a vacuum without talking to people, most council members and most. Commissioners that are making these decisions mm-hmm. Are not business owners, they're school teachers or, um, you know, they're, we have a, a, a cook on city council, we have lawyers and it's great people with great life experience.

Um, but on this side of it, when you're talking real estate and zoning and planning, right. Um. They need to hear these real life stories. Mm-hmm.

So I'm sure the businesses have those same hurdles, which then deters, you know, these boutique shops that really have historically don't Cliff. Look at Bishop Bar, you know, Jefferson and places like this that have really made us unique. You know,

We've got the federal, state, and local. Everyone's lined up on doing the trench idea what kind of like what 75 is, so,

God forbid on during rush hour, uh, you're in traffic all the time. Yeah. You know, you're in traffic all the time. And expanding highways is just gonna add to more of it. I think we need to, we need to be more creative about, well, I think you be more thoughtful about expanding highways just encourages people to live further out of the city and drive in to do things versus.

Make it harder to do that and take back some of this space for our residents and build more housing and more opportunities for the people who live here. Mm-hmm. Rethink our transportation grid to focus on Dallas instead of. You know, um, far north Dallas Right. You know, uh, uh, Plano and, and Mesquite and Arlington like, you know, great. That, that is, understand that TxDOT wants to move cars around more fast. Mm-hmm.

But we as a city want to also have streets that are safe for our residents. We want to have more green space. And frankly, the I 3 45, here's what, here's what it's, yeah. I 3 45 is a one mile highway mm-hmm. That connects. Mm-hmm. 45 to 75. It's, it's, it's the completion of the, the noose around downtown that strangles downtown all the time. Mm-hmm. You, if, if that went away, let's just pretend it went away.

The street grid would be reconnected and you could have a completely open highway free experience walking to Deep Ellum from downtown Dallas, completely reactivating, um, dozens of acres of land underneath the highway. Mm. That is not something supported by, Hmm, everybody I mentioned earlier. Yeah. Uh, it was proposed. There were three proposals because the highway's ending the near and ending the coming to the end of its useful life, it has something has to be done with it.

The first, uh, proposal was to rebuild it as it is elevated highway. Second proposal was the other extreme. Which is what I've supported, which is you take it out entirely and you boulevard everything.

I mean, is, is the Dallas, you know, traffic, uh, scape gonna be a hundred, a hundred miles north to south? I mean, you know, or, or, or do, or is it okay to have. Smaller communities within Dallas as a whole, you know, and, and how do we, how do we encourage that? And if, you know Dallas, you know, I guess it probably comes down to money, you know, it does. I mean, on, on, on some, some things it's like, yeah, well, you know, if we. You know, get people down here.

Then Dallas gets more money to do other things. But then what else are we doing? We're just spending more money to fix all the highways we're building and all the bottles that all this traffic is causing. So it's like this double-edged sword. I mean, this seems like how do we win

Like we would just bury everything and the highways just go above us, like mm-hmm. At some point you've gotta say, enough is enough. Right. And we are gonna reclaim some of the space for ourselves, for our city. Yeah. And. If y'all wanna come here and we want you to, like, it's gonna take a little longer, enjoy things. Mm-hmm. Just stop at this business along the way and, and pick up breakfast there or what have you.

We have a say in what, what our community's gonna look like, especially in district one. You know, you still get to vote on things for dos and as a whole.

So, you know, this is, this is I think a discourse that needs to happen more often. And I, and so, and I know you were a proponent of having y'all's meetings, your monthly meetings still in the afternoon or still in the evening so that people can. Still hear kind of what's going on is mm-hmm. You know, when, when is that, and when can people come to those meetings to voice any of their concerns?

Okay. So I think the best thing a, a, a resident trying to figure out what's going on in the city could do is follow their council member for sure. Mm-hmm. On, on their official city page. Um, and then figure out what your passion is. If it's, if it's land use and uh, transportation and stuff like that, then figure out. You know what's happening by through your council member's office.

Yeah. And then you can start following, following that if your passion's parks and you follow what the parks board is doing. Um, you know, we have a ton of things going on in parks. I don't even know what's happening in all of our parks in Oak Cliff. Sure. Because. I mean, our people who are into parks, they're, they're wild about it, and I love it. Yeah. You know, my kids, my kids love going to our parks and, um, and I have to like go look it up to find out what's going on there.

I don't have all that information. Mm-hmm. So I, I think that's the best thing to do. Like the city puts out information, but usually it's very hyperlocal if you follow your council member. Um, as well. I also find like for good citywide. Big, big stuff going on, like 3 45, for example. Mm-hmm. Like I really read D Magazine a lot and I follow some of their writers, um, because they deep dive more than other publications on the big issues.

Um, I. I know, you know, we are a, you know, um, democratic republic and we, we elect people that then go make decisions for us. And it's like, okay, that, is that where, that's just where it starts? I mean, how do we feel like we have equity in the decisions that are being made and the, and the ideas that are even being brought to the table in Dallas? Is it, is it.

Too out of reach for a guy like me or, or, you know, um, is it just come down to demanding that the, our elected officials platform on something that we care about?

Like we have in district one, 90,000 residents, and we've got, um, you know, like. Our Zo, our, our voting docket agenda is, is a hundred to 150 items any given Wednesday. Mm-hmm. And so it's impossible to like. I wish I could like lay everything out for everybody at all times and get collective feedback, but that's, that's a really hard thing to do.

So on big issues, for example, the Sprouts issue, whether we were going to approve the zoning, the zoning got denied for that even though everybody in No Cliff was, was says they want a grocery store. The zoning got denied, um, to, which would've prevented it by the plan commission because some of the commissioners did not like. The fact that we, that it was, they were gonna have to go outside the zoning overlay, um, for that issue.

I knew it was gonna be a huge community, um, uh, issue for them. Yeah. You know, it was gonna be, everybody's gonna be in an uproar like, okay, this grocery store is gonna be prevented because of some technicalities and the zoning language. However, there was some very vocal neighbors who do show up all the time and they let me know what they think and That's great. I, I appreciate that. Um. Who were truist purists to the zoning, they didn't want it changed.

Hmm. So I, I knew I needed, um, extensive neighborhood feedback on that. I did a community-wide survey that included not just my neighborhoods, but it was one mile radius around where Sprouts was gonna be. And we did a two mile and a three mile radius. And, and that included West Dallas too, even though it's not my district. Right. And so, um. I think on those, for me, the way I've tried to capture community feedback is on big issues that I know are gonna be controversial.

Um, I, I, I'll do a survey, I'll do a community meetings. Uh, I'll do more if asked. Um, but on your typical contract, like, are we gonna use vendor A or vendor B to pave this road? Like, I just assume there's, nobody's gonna have an input on that.

If we have a public hearing, every, everything we do is public. Mm-hmm. All of our meetings are public. Sure. And so, um. Those kinds of things. I don't hear from the public on. Yeah. I'm always, but with that all is being said, I am mm-hmm. Very open to constructive feedback on what we could be doing better. Sure. On outreach, because, you know, I know I'm not perfect. I know the city's not perfect. Mm-hmm. You know, but I think what's. What I like about is that we try to be,

Yeah. But, but I wanna, let's pick it back up. Yeah. I want to give you an opportunity. Is there anything you want to tell anybody watching, you know, anything you wanna leave them with, um, today?

Yeah. Like what we're doing talking today and me just kind of answering some, some questions for you like. I'm open to do that with anybody and I have a really good relationship with the builder community. I'm the only person who develops, who is on council. I get attacked for that a lot. Yeah. Being a developer.

Uh, but I think it's good to have that skill set on council because I understand what people are going through in the permit office and having done my own GC for projects, uh, two commercial projects. Which I was complete disastrous, by the way. Uh, I would never do that again. Uh, I understand the, the difficulties. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, Oak Cliff is a, uh, just like the rest of Dallas.

Um, it's very special and we have a spirit, especially in Oak Cliff of, uh, like I said, entrepreneurism being a little different than everybody else and being cool about that. And I think our diversity makes us really special, so, yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm happy to, happy to talk with anyone. Mm-hmm. And continue. Um. Figuring out how to make Dallas a better place to live. Yeah. Awesome.