What was once a community asset in central Oak Cliff will likely become just another missed opportunity for Dallas.

The asset is a 12-acre tract of parking lots and dormant lawn anchored by a vacant hospital building. The city of Dallas bought the property in 2022 with $6.5 million in bond funds meant to provide housing and services to homeless people.

Three years later, it sits idle, generating mostly rancor and frustration.

It could be so much more. It’s in a convenient location. Twelve acres is nine football fields. That’s enough room for townhomes — for purchase or rent — and perhaps a modest amount of co-working or office or retail space.

There is even enough space for the empty hospital to fulfill its intended, though highly controversial, purpose as permanent supportive housing. The building’s upper floors could be repurposed into small but functional studio apartments for formerly homeless individuals. Residents would be screened before they’re offered a lease, and supervised once they move in.

With a thoughtful site plan as one safeguard, the renovated hospital could co-exist with other uses on the property. More important, it could co-exist safely and peacefully with the surrounding residential neighborhood and nearby library and Brashear Elementary school.

District 3 Dallas City Council member Zarin Gracey, who represents the area, wants to sell the property. He suggests the city could use the proceeds to renovate a vacant hotel in his district that the city also bought with homeless facility bond funds. But that wood-frame building near Interstate 20 is in worse shape than the concrete hospital, and in a much worse location. The hospital property will provide a better return on taxpayers’ investment.

In happier times, the property at Hampton Road and Perryton Drive bustled with activity.

Dallas Family Hospital, owned by a company in Pennsylvania, opened in 1985. It had 104 patient rooms, all private, eight ICU beds and a 24-hour emergency room. A Dallas ISD janitor who was struck by lightning at work was treated there, as were accident victims. Dallas high school students interested in health care careers completed short-term operating room internships at the hospital.

The campus also housed the offices of Dallas Southwest Osteopathic Physicians Inc., and its affiliated foundation, and a satellite learning center for Mountain View college. A medical building provided offices for doctors. Those buildings remain on the campus.

In the mid-2000s, Dallas ISD and the city of Dallas collaborated to build a new elementary school and branch library across Perryton Drive from the hospital. The library is closest to the hospital and connects to the school via an enclosed walkway.

Apartments for tenants over 55 were built on land behind the hospital. On the southeast corner of Hampton Road and Perryton Drive, Kiest Park sprawls south and east for 263 acres. It’s well-loved and well-used by residents of all ages.

Dallas Family Hospital changed names and changed ownership multiple times and eventually closed in 2014. The property’s ownership reverted to the osteopathic physicians’ group.

A few years later, a local developer and a nonprofit organization attempted to work with the owner on a mixed-use project that would have included affordable housing. The owners never signed off and the plan fell apart. Then the city bought the property.

To say that city leaders, both elected and professional, mishandled initial community outreach is like saying Hurricane Harvey was a bit damp: A gross understatement.

In news stories, residents said they knew nothing about the deal to buy the hospital and were angry when they learned it might be used for housing and services for homeless people. The city didn’t return calls or emails for comment for this editorial.

Two people interviewed for this editorial said an early community meeting grew so tense they were afraid it would devolve into a physical fight. Those poisonous interactions undermined the chance of developing a project that answered neighbors’ concerns and helped alleviate the city’s homeless crisis.

As challenging as it may be, we need to keep trying.

Critics have valid concerns. The vacant hospital is near an elementary school. It is not an appropriate location for a year-round homeless shelter, an inclement weather shelter, or walk-up or drop-off crisis intervention services. That said, landscaping and new construction, such as townhomes, could serve as attractive, multipurpose buffers between the hospital property and the library.

They also note that District 3 has two sites intended for homeless facilities, while a few districts have none. Small wonder some Oak Cliff residents feel their community is being asked to do more than its fair share. The city should offload District 3’s second site, the hotel near I-20, and lagging council districts need to step up.

Some District 3 residents say, as Gracey did at a recent housing committee meeting, that “right in that particular area, there isn’t a homeless problem.” That’s not what we saw.

On a recent weekday afternoon, as parents waiting to pick up their children from Brashear Elementary backed up traffic along Hampton Road, a sunburned, shirtless man pushed a grocery cart with a jumble of possessions along the sidewalk next to the school. Inside the library, another apparently homeless man sat quietly near a window, surrounded by a collection of plastic grocery bags.

Homelessness is a citywide problem.

At Gracey’s behest, the city will develop a request for information, a way to test whether there is a market for the hospital property. It’s a complicated property. Almost any redevelopment would require zoning changes, and at least one of the ancillary buildings onsite has multiple owners, according to appraisal district records.

Permanent supportive housing could succeed at the site, but only if neighbors are partners in the planning for it, and only if a different entity, perhaps a nonprofit organization, leads the process. The property has space for other uses, too. It could become a community asset again.

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