Dallas slaps Valley View Center owners with habitual criminal property designation

Dallas just swung its biggest battering ram yet to try to smash Beck Ventures’ obstinacy on The Mall That Will Not Die.

The rotting remains of Valley View Center were designated Wednesday as a habitual criminal property.

That’s a legal label used by cops and community prosecutors to hold property owners accountable for tolerating ongoing crime. The ensuing fines, investigations and mandated improvements create mightily uncomfortable pressure cookers for out-of-compliance parties.

Could this be the play that will finally build a future for this site — a mass of urban blight that obscures a gold mine of a location?

Each time I consider that question, I can’t shake the meme of Lucy pulling the football away, yet again, as Charlie Brown kicks.

The decade-long slog between Beck and City Hall has brought only broken promises, lawsuits, unpaid bills, misdirection plays and accusations and counter-accusations.

At the least, it’s good to see the city turning the screws tighter on this prime and pricey gravesite at the corner of LBJ Freeway and Preston Road.

City Council member Jaynie Schultz, who inherited this dinosaur carcass when she was elected to District 11 in 2021, told me the habitual criminal property designation means “the city is locked and loaded now — using every tool we have.”

The notice, signed off on by Dallas police Chief Eddie García and dated Feb. 22, cites ongoing criminal activity on the 30 acres of the old mall site owned by Jeff Beck and his son Scott.

The document lists five cases of criminal trespass and five of criminal mischief. In one incident, an unlawful firearm was involved; several also included drug use. Six of the 10 incidents occurred in the last year, one more than what’s required to trigger the habitual criminal property designation.

The police department is allowed to take actions like this under the city’s criminal and nuisance abatement ordinance, passed in 2017.

I contacted the Becks via email Thursday morning to get their reaction to the letter, which I secured through an open records request with the city. They have not yet responded.

The notice orders them to a March 6 meeting at the Dallas Police North Central substation. There they will get the opportunity to rebut the habitual criminal property designation and present any crime-prevention measures they put in place prior to the Wednesday action.

García’s letter also demands at least two security guards be hired to continuously patrol the property anytime contractors aren’t at work there.

Also required are a perimeter fence around the remaining structure, bright exterior lighting and security cameras installed and monitored by an onsite team.

The immediate penalties probably won’t keep the Becks up at night. If they can’t prove they are in compliance, they’ll have to pay a monthly fee of $949 and erect a placard notifying the public their site is a habitual criminal property.

The sign would be nothing more than sad irony. Anyone who passes by this dead zone — and thousands do every day — is all too aware this is a grim place where bad things can happen.

Even as pockets of progress have taken root here and there around Valley View — many under new “International District” branding — there’s no overlooking what’s not happening on the Beck Ventures property.

The habitual criminal property designation came less than two weeks after several fires broke out in the mall’s remains on the chilly night of Feb. 11.

Dallas Fire-Rescue’s investigation of the two-alarm blaze turned up no definitive evidence of how the fire began, and the cause remains undetermined, pending any new information.

Investigators did find evidence of homeless folks living in the three-story piece of Valley View still anchored by the decaying AMC theater. Among the debris were makeshift beds, remnants of warming and cooking fires — and cigarette butts tossed throughout the structure.

Firefighters rescued a homeless man from the roof, but he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Executive Assistant City Attorney Jill Haning told me the fire made it clear more security measures had to be put in place. The Dallas Police Department followed up and determined the property met the criteria to be designated a habitual criminal property.

Since Dec. 15, Haning said, asbestos abatement has been taking place at the old Valley View and contractors are regularly at the site.

The abatement work is in response to the city attorney’s Nov. 18 letter demanding the remaining mall pieces be razed by June 1. The demolition contractor subsequently set out a schedule that showed the project couldn’t be completed until July 28.

That timeline was part of filings to the Department of State Health Services, which requires documentation of asbestos removal.

The city never officially responded to the later date provided by the contractor, but Schultz shared it with me in December. “The ground will be flat by the end of July, and we are very pleased with that,” she said at the time.

Haning said Thursday if the property owner is unable to meet the June 1 deadline, “we will determine whether escalated enforcement is appropriate.”

When I asked Schultz about why wiggle room on that original June 1 date appears to have vanished for Beck Ventures, she said, “The trust of the city was theirs to lose, and they lost it.”

She pointed again, as she does every time we talk about The Mall That Will Not Die, to the lack of corporate responsibility on the Becks’ part.

“I want to make sure we use every tool at the city’s disposal to hold them accountable for the status of the property and move this demolition forward,” she said.

If I could just get that image of a flat-on-his-back Charlie Brown out of my head.