It had been a long while since I had a reason — professional, always — to pull into the Million Dollar Saloon parking lot. But never, ever on a Tuesday morning.
Except earlier this week I stumbled across an ever-thickening stack of legal documents tied to the Greenville Avenue building, which in 1982 became home to what D called “the first upscale topless club in Dallas and, perhaps, the first of its kind in the country.” When the Million Dollar Saloon shuttered on July 31, 2009, after years of wrestling with City Hall over Dallas’ sexually oriented business ordinance, it was the last of its kind, too, at least along that dilapidated stretch of Upper Greenville.
I’ve always figured the building’s longtime owner and the strip club’s former president, Nick Mehmeti, was hanging on to the Million Dollar Saloon out of spite, shoving that old building in the city’s face after Dallas deemed it “non-conforming” and forced it to get dressed and get out. That building once generated a fortune in tax revenue as a “trailblazer in the world of erotic dancing,” in the parlance of Joe Bob Briggs. Then, after years of litigation and regulation, it got run off Greenville for good.
Roger Albright, Mehmeti’s attorney and a perpetual thorn in the side of many a city attorney, told me this week it was nothing so nefarious. Long and short of it, the lawyer said: The building is for sale — yours for the low, low price of $3.5 million — and one potential buyer has submitted a letter of intent. Albright said the building, occasionally a dumping ground and taggers’ canvas, has a new coat of paint and a new roof, and that the interior has been stripped to the steel and concrete.
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“A tornado could come across the thing,” he told me, “and it would still be standing.”
At right is the drainage ditch the city dug beneath the Greenville Avenue property in 1963. According to litigation filed in Dallas County, this is how people are getting into and damaging the old Million Dollar Saloon on Greenville Avenue.
Robert Wilonsky
Which, so happens, is the last thing City Hall wants for that surviving monument to Dallas’ days as the nation’s busiest skin city.
For the second time in five years, the city is at war with the owners of the Million Dollar Saloon. Long story short, Dallas wants to finish today what it started more than two decades ago: “Due to the lack of repairs and maintenance the building is dilapidated, unfit for occupancy and should be demolished.”
That’s from a lawsuit the city filed last year, which alleges that “vagrants continue to gain access to the building and use it for shelter and assault persons attempting to remove them.” The city also alleged that “several vagrants live under the building starting fires and leaving solid waste materials.”
A trial is set for November. But it has become plainly clear, according to documents filed in recent months, that the Million Dollar Saloon still isn’t ready to exit the main stage.
The building’s owner countersued the city earlier this summer, insisting that the only reason people live beneath and around the building is because the city once carved out sewers, mains and a stormwater drainage channel beneath the building in 1963. That’s when then-property owner George Steele agreed to let the city have the land beneath his for one whole dollar.
The most amazing thing is that someone hasn’t stolen the Million Dollar Saloon’s historic (or not) and iconic (or not) fountains.
Robert Wilonsky
In exchange, according to agreements signed by the city in February and June of ’63, Steele kept “the right to construct buildings over, under and around said sanitary sewer mains.” Mehmeti contends that as a result of that 62-year-old agreement with his predecessor, the city should bear the blame for failing to maintain its stormwater facilities, which is “apparently allowing fires, rubbish, debris, vagrants, and others to access and inhabit the sanitary sewer.”
Mehmeti’s countersuit was filed with an eye on the recently added charter amendment that makes it much easier for citizens to sue the city. As far as he’s concerned, if someone really did damage the building by setting a fire beneath it, then he wants the city to pay to fix — or demolish — the building.
“It’s the only place in the city where they allowed a building to be built on top of a drainage ditch,” Albright said. “It’s the weirdest thing.”
The city’s not commenting on the pending litigation. But sure enough, along Twin Hills Avenue — which separates the old club from the Costco and was surely named by someone with a sense of humor — there’s a long, lush thicket of greenery, complete with palm fronds, lining that concrete storm-water drainage channel upon which the Million Dollar Saloon was built. Cue “Welcome to the Jungle.”
At top right is the back of the Million Dollar Saloon, which still stands, along with this verdant drainage ditch, in the shadow of The Shops at Park Lane.
Robert Wilonsky
Dallas Central Appraisal District records show the easement is owned by Oncor. The verdant channel stretches southward, behind a car wash and the fire station. This week, the water was high and the current was strong after the long weekend’s heavy rains, which might have explained why I didn’t see anyone back there Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. But there were some old camp chairs set up along Twin Hills, and some couches and belongings along the sidewalk closer to the Half Price Books mothership off Northwest Highway. Old aerial maps show scattered remnants of the occasional visitor.
Tuesday morning I saw a man pushing a shopping cart through the Million Dollar Saloon parking lot. He said he collects and refurbishes discarded trash. I asked if he’d ever seen anyone living in the building, as the city alleges in its complaints. He said he hasn’t seen anyone lately, “but you know empty buildings.” The next morning, a couple of men emerged from behind the building — one, in a wheelchair — and cut through the fallen chain link to reach a stretch of Greenville that, for as long as I can remember, has been stagnant and dreary.
Structure Commercial partner Troy Morgan, one of the brokers working the Saloon’s sale, thinks razing it might be more practical than selling the building. Morgan wrote in an assessment included in the litigation that the drainage ditch likely limits development and that the building could be demolished and replaced with a restaurant or retail, since the main value is the land.
Albright’s convinced the Million Dollar Saloon is still a $3.5 Million Sale waiting to happen. And if not, the last thing he’s about to do is let the city win again.
“This has been a huge waste of city resources, and it has been a constant battle,” Albright said. “I know there are folks who drive by all the time and call their City Council person and ask, ‘Why hasn’t this gone away?’ I think the city is extra-pissed at Nick because they thought they shut down Million Dollar Saloon. Well, they did. But they can’t get rid of it.”