Source: Google Street View.Staycation Coffee's current home
Catalyst: "a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction"
Example usage: "I'll be honest, I think this is a catalyst type project that will spur on to bigger, better things." — Mayor Bob Dubey, speaking of Polk Street Apartments.
City leaders have a fondness for the term "catalyst project." It's a buzzword that makes them sound knowledgable about the future. Do they ever go back and measure the performance of past catalyst projects?
In December, one of the few businesses remaining in the soon-to-be-cleared super-block on Polk Street in downtown Richardson, the beloved Staycation Coffee (pictured above), announced they expected to be forced out of their converted single-family house by future construction of that super-block apartment project. They said they planned to move to a new location.
On Monday, February 24, 2025, the City Council approved a rezoning request (ZF 25-02) to allow Staycation Coffee to move and turn an old business (with a lawn) into a brand new site.
The new location is at Floyd Rd and James Dr. behind Restaurant Row on US 75. You remember Restaurant Row. It's the development on a block that the City of Richardson envisioned way back in 2010 as a "catalyst project" for the revitalization of the West Spring Valley Corridor. There's that word again. Here's what I wrote about it five years later in 2015:
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," [Mayor Laura] Maczka told The Dallas Morning News. Everyone knows this. Still, it's been over four years and all we have to show in the West Spring Valley corridor is a plan to repave the street and rezoning of a catalyst site to allow for a 1980s-style restaurant row. I'd feel better running a marathon if I thought we were at least running in the right direction.Source: The Wheel.
Now ten years farther on, Mayor Laura Maczka's marathon is over (is it ever), and her baton is now passed to Mayor Bob Dubey. The former might have been a crook and the latter not, but with regards to urban planning practices, there's not much difference in how the two think. More cheerleading than strategic planning. Restaurant Row ended up a failure at being a catalyst for redevelopment of the area. Restaurant Row wasn't even a good catalyst for its own buildout. It's still only half built out ten years later.
Ironically, Mayor Dubey's prediction of Polk Street Apartments serving as a catalyst is proving true, just not for downtown Richardson. Polk Street Apartments may obliterate businesses downtown, but unintentionally it is leading to a revitalizing of the area around Restaurant Row, no thanks to Restaurant Row itself. Mayor Dubey's blunder for downtown is a boon for somewhere else, thanks to Staycation Coffee.
Source: Google Street View.Staycation Coffee's new home
"Dubey’s call misfired.
Beloved coffeehouse migrates,
brewing irony."
—h/t ChatGPT
1 comment:
For too long, Richardson’s old-guard leadership has prioritized developer deals over thoughtful city planning, leading to an overabundance of apartments with no real vision for balanced growth. If you search Depositphotos for stock images of Richardson, all you’ll find are pictures of apartment buildings or their construction. Richardson has become a city of apartments and data centers—hardly the sign of a thriving, dynamic future. Talk about a ‘staycation’—nobody is thinking of Richardson as an exciting place to spend one. It’s time for bold leadership that puts residents first and gives citizens a real say in shaping the city’s future.
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