In this three part series, LH Today examines the retail environment of the Walnut Hill & Audelia intersection.

Specifically, what challenges face the property owners, which key players are influencing change and what the right formula is for the surrounding neighborhoods.

In Part Two, with the help of Lake Highlands resident Tipton Housewright, LH Today offers readers a glimpse of what this intersection might resemble after future redevelopment.


In case you missed it, you can read yesterday's installment here.

Change: A vision for Walnut Hill & Audelia

Tipton “Tip” Housewright grew up in Lake Highlands and has lived in this community for most of his life.

He is a Principal at the Dallas-based Architecture firm, Omniplan. In addition to his day job, Housewright also spends time serving the Lake Highlands community by volunteering as a member of the LHAIA’s Land Use Committee (LUC).

Tipton is very familiar with the Walnut Hill-Audelia intersection and even remembers what it looked like before any buildings went up around the intersection in the early 1960’s.

“Hard to imagine it now," he says. "But I can remember when old farm roads and a bridge defined this intersection."

"Having grown up in Lake Highlands and even having attended Lake Highlands Elementary, I am very motivated to see the intersection redeveloped, which will in turn help strengthen the surrounding neighborhoods.”

Housewright, along with other members of the LHAIA’s LUC, has thought long and hard about what changes are necessary at the intersection - changes that would create a sustainable platform for both the retail and residential community.

With research and input from his LUC colleagues in hand, Tipton went to work to create a vision of what the redeveloped footprint of this intersection might resemble.

Housewright comments, “All of us on the LUC were in agreement that one critical aspect of the redevelopment was to incorporate the new residential properties as seamlessly as possible with the existing neighborhoods on both sides of Audelia.”

As previously discussed in Part One of the series, recommendations call for roughly half of the current retail square footage to be eliminated.