For the second time in four months, Preston Center office buildings Sterling Plaza and Preston Commons have been sold to CB Richard Ellis Investors, according to the DBJ, which puts the sale price at $130 million. It is the second time the buildings have been sold since March, when Chicago-based real estate investment firm Capri Capital Partners LLC purchased the more than 700,000 square feet of office space. DBJ portrays this as a sign of an improving real estate market. Fingers crossed.

Way out on the very southwestern tip of our coverage area, on Northwest Highway just east of its intersection with Lemmon Avenue, there is a mixed-use, residential/retail development I’ve been curious about for a long time, mainly because, well, it’s empty.

Not quite empty–a State Farm agent has an office upstairs, there is a place called DFW MRI tucked away in a corner, and the stalwart Bugatti Ristorante tucked into another corner–but the vast, vast majority of the 43,000-square-foot retail and office space is vacant.

It’s certainly emptier than it was in November, when Eco Cleaners, which has since moved to Hillcrest Crossing, was starting to set up shop. But then, according to a lawsuit filed by property owner Archstone Bluffview LP (a subsidiary of Archstone-Smith, which was taken over by Lehman Brothers in 2007), the owners skipped out on their lease.

According to the suit, filed last week in county district court, Pushpa and Chatankumar Patel signed a lease on April 13, 2009. But they never opened, racked up quite a bit in unpaid rent, and failed to maintain the property, which is why they were locked out of the space in December. All this even after Archstone had paid for that Eco Cleaners sign for them.

The suit seeks more than $175,000 in unpaid rent between when the lease was signed in April and its expiration five years later, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.

I’ll link to a digital copy of the suit when I can get one.

Hmm, while Swoozie’s in Preston Center announced it was closing all of its stores this spring, it now seems its Dallas store will reopen late this summer in the same spot.

It’s one of seven Swoozie’s locations that will reopen, and it will be the only one in Texas. We’re still waiting on word from the popular gift store as to why it’s bringing back these particular seven. But whatever the reason, we’ll be happy to have it with us again!

I was driving down Northaven yesterday and couldn’t help but notice that there were a couple of ginormous, brightly colored contraptions occupying the parking lot, which was otherwise deserted. I couldn’t resist a couple of gos on the slides (kidding!) before I snapped the above picture.

A bit of internet sluething (and the yard signs blanketing the property) informed me that the setup is courtesy of Pine Cove Base Camp, a traveling offshoot of Pine Cove, a Christian summer camp with locations near Tyler and Houston.

The parking lot yesterday was devoid of kids or people of any kind, likely driven inside by yesterday’s on-and-off rain storms. It’s probably too late to sign up for the camp, since it will leave Grace Bible on Friday, but if you want to take a trip down the slides while no one’s looking, my lips are sealed.

Just across Meaders Lane from the gate seperating Daria Drive (and President George W. Bush’s home) from the rest of the world, there are renovations underway at Pershing Elementary, at least according to the sign posted out front and the handful of construction workers milling about on their lunch break yesterday. The redo is part of the $1.35 billion bond package approved by voters in 2008.

That’s about all I can tell you. I tried, at first, to call the DISD communications folks to see if they could get me some details on the project, but, according to the outgoing message on their voicemail, they are out of the office until July 12.

So, I called around and eventually found the voicemail for the project manager. He returned my call this morning. He acknowledged that, yes, Pershing Elementary is undergoing renovations but no, he couldn’t give me any more details. For that, I would need to talk to DISD’s communications department. Um, the one’s who are out of the office for the next two weeks? Yes. But couldn’t he, as person in charge of the project, give me some basic details? No.

I guess it makes sense, from DISD’s perspective, to control the information that gets out. But why prohibit a contractor from answering those probing, hard-hitting questions like “How long will this take?” and “What exactly do you mean by ‘renovation’?” while all three media relations folks take a vacay?

Oh well. From the magic of Google, I’ve cobbled together a few details. According to this chart, the construction phase of Pershing’s redo lasts from November 2009 to November 2010. And this PDF pegs the cost at a hair over $400,000.

So unless I can find someone who can talk to me before then, I guess I’ll keep banging my head against a wall until July 12. [Sigh]

Have plans for lunch? Let me suggest you patronize Extreme Pizza in Preston Center, and not just because they’ve advertised with us. No, my suggestion stems from the fact that the joint was robbed of $900 early Monday morning.

If you’ll recall, back in May, in the before-time of the Lamplighter suit, another prestigous North Dallas private school was sued. The Episcopal School of Dallas was sued by parents of a former student who accused the school of not doing enough to stop a 7-month-long sexual relationship between history teacher J. Nathan Campbell and their underage daughter, then kicking the daughter out once the affair was discovered.

Two weeks ago (June 11, to be exact), ESD filed a response to the suit. Not surprisingly, the school “denies each and every, all and singular, the allegations,” according to the court filing, arguing that Campbell’s alleged actions were “outside the scope and course of Campbell’s employement.” You can read the entire response here.

Also of note: ESD has a new attorney. Chrysta Castaneda of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell replaced Don Godwin about a month ago. She said in an e-mail that she was enlisted by the school’s insurer. I don’t have the legal acumen to know how significant this is (if it is indeed significant). But it did happen.

Landing in my inbox just moments ago, a missive from Dallas Police with may be the awesomest  subject line I’ve seen in a while: “Loud Crashing noise leads Dallas Police to North Park Mall”. Classic.

So what was the commotion that so mobilized Dallas Police that they sent out a press release? Were the hammering men in that one foyer somehow sabotaged? Did a Justin Bieber sighting end in some sort of grisly chaos?

No and no. Turns out it was someone who drove a white or light-colored Ford truck through an exterior door on the south side of the mall, then smack into a Dillard’s security door at 2:43 this morning. Detectives believe they were going after two ATMs. Mall employees apparently scared them off.

No one was hurt except for NorthPark’s $10,000 glass security door.

This no doubt will not be the end of the Lamplighter saga with the ongoing lawsuit and what not, but it certainly has a ring of finality: The school’s board of trustees issued a statement last night announcing the termination, effective immediately, of Headmaster Arnold Cohen. The vote was unanimous. From my inbox at 8:41 p.m. last night:

On June 25, 2010 the Lamplighter School Board of Trustees notified Dr. Cohen of his termination as Head of School effective immediately.  The vote to terminate Dr. Cohen was unanimous.  We are disappointed that Dr. Cohen’s repeated breaches of his employment contract forced this action to be taken to protect the School, its students and its Community. The Board has initiated the process to identify an interim head for the upcoming school year and expects that process to conclude soon.

Love Field concession deals, the wet/dry petition, and a certain tense zoning battle weren’t the only things on the City Council’s agenda on Wednesday. No. 18 on the addendum was an item abandoning 10,581 square feet of unused Campbell Street (just west of Central Expressway off Cavalry Street) to Temple Emanu-El in exchange for the dedication to the city of more than six times as much land a few yards away.

What’s Temple Emanu-El doing swapping small parcels of Uptown real estate with the city? The temple wants the abandoned stub of Campbell Street for the adjacent Emanu-El Cemetery, which was established in 1884 and inters many famous Dallasites. The plans for the teensy bit of land aren’t huge, says Mike Lowenberg, chair of Temple Emanu-El’s Cemetery Committee. Most likely, there will just be security office for night watch. A picture of the street:

The much larger portion Emanu-El gave away (the temple will continue to maintain the land–mowing, trash clean-up, etc.) wasn’t used by the cemetery. An archeological survey at the beginning of the decade indicated it is already the resting place for 800 to 1,200 bodies–ex-slaves.

Fittingly, the parcel will become part of the adjacent Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery, uncovered when an archeological survey carried out prior to the reconstruction of Central Expressway uncovered the Civil War-era remains of former slaves. The 1.4 acres is actually included in the historic area dedicated to Freedman’s Cemetery when it still belonged to Emanu-El.

“We can’t use that land and it really should appropriately be attached to the Freedman’s Memorial,” Lowenberg said.

The proposal was rejected by the Park Board in 2002, but Lowenberg said that was because it was still in its nascent stage and too many details had to be worked out. Wednesday’s approval of the land swap represents the better part of a decade of working with the Park Board, city staff, the Landmark Commission, the Texas Historical Commission, and others.