A post on a local list serv notes that Decatur’s Dairy Queen on East Trinity Place – one of the oldest, continuously operated restaurants in the city – has a sign posted announcing that they are closing this month.  The poster goes on to ask if DQ has a space in the new Trinity Triangle development or whether they are closing for good.

According to Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne, though nothing is finalized yet, the design plans for Trinity Triangle include space for the Dairy Queen.

Stay tuned.

Photo courtesy of Google Streetview

After years and years of false starts, the Trinity Triangle construction project has a vague start date.  In case you missed this blurb in the latest Decatur Focus…

The Trinity Triangle, at the intersection of E. Trinity and E. Howard and including the Dairy Queen, is moving into the permitting phase. The project includes 200 upscale apartment units with retail fronting along E. Trinity. It is being coordinated with planned streetscape improvements along the Trinity corridor as well as the upcoming intersection improvement at the railroad crossing. Dairy Queen will remain as a tenant in the project. Construction should begin around the middle of 2014.

Did you catch this in the latest Decatur Focus?

Development along the Trinity Place corridor will be anchored on the west by the city’s Beacon project, which will include a new police station, the administrative offices for City Schools  of Decatur and a renovated gym and recreation facility. To the east along Trinity, the Trinity  Triangle project is finally moving forward. This project was approved as an apartment development with retail fronting E. Trinity Place.

The developers, a joint venture between Texas firms Cypress Realty and Centro Development, plan to move forward with the approved plan. However, they are currently negotiating  with the owner of Dairy Queen to relocate him into a new space in the development to allow  the project to incorporate the triangle area into the project. We anticipate that this project will  begin construction in 2014.

At Tuesday’s Decatur city commisison meeting, there was a brief conversation about the Trinity Triangle project (think the Dairy Queen and the accompanying rubble-y parking area), which has been on hold since the housing market tanked in 2008.

The conversation between Mayor Baskett, City Manager Merriss and Planning Director Amanda Thompson was a bit vague, so I followed up with Ms. Thompson and she clarified things.

I don’t have a date on when the project will break ground, but the site plan has been updated to incorporate the Dairy Queen in a newly built space as part of the overall building. The last adopted plan still kept Dairy Queen as a separate building. The total number of dwelling units, building height, garage location, entrances etc. have not changed so they do not need to go through a public hearing process again for this plan. They are still under the zoning ordinance adopted in 2009.

So in short, there’s no date yet on a ground-breaking, but the city has received an updated site plan, so that may be a sign of things to come.

Since taking this pic nearly a week ago, I’ve been trying to get details on what in fact this leasing sign out front of 315 West Ponce means.  Everything I had heard ’til now pointed to the Trinity Triangle property being developed before 315 West Ponce, so it’s sort of surprising to see this on the site.

Is this sign up just to gauge interest in some unapproved retail strip of this development or has a construction date been set?

I don’t know, because the gentleman on the sign has not responded to my multiple attempts to contact him.

Easlan Capital’s website doesn’t provide any leads either, though it does show that they’re involved in development all over the metro.