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Pastor Austin Anetekhai, among the leaders of The Winners Assembly on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard<\/a>, requested a meeting via text. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is a new thinking to our previously proposed 25 story initiative in line with a majority voice of the community,\u201d he wrote, referring to those renderings of the big, shiny tower topped with a helipad<\/a> recently flattened with ruthless expediency by the City Plan Commission. <\/p>\n Over coffee Wednesday, Anetekhai wanted to discuss what\u2019s next for the 21-year-old church and its Winners Complex, which includes the Abounding Prosperity<\/a> clinic and pharmacy, at the corner of MLK and Colonial Avenue. We would get to that, eventually, only after we discussed at great length what went very wrong with a plan for a garish high-rise that would have swallowed blocks of South Dallas, including neighborhood anchor Cornerstone Baptist Church.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter some reflection,\u201d the Nigerian native said with some understatement, \u201cit looks like maybe we were not communicating our intent very well.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is how that ill-conceived concept of an idea of a proposal stuffed with everything from a luxury hotel to a grocery store to a bank to a cancer clinic became a punchline and a cautionary tale: How To Guarantee Your Project Tanks at City Hall.<\/p>\n Opinion<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Anetekhai wanted to meet at Ruthie\u2019s on MLK, across from The Winners Assembly, because he\u2019s the head of communications, and the church\u2019s reputation took a walloping in recent months. They\u2019ve been in that community for more than two decades \u2014 \u201cdoing wonderful things in South Dallas for the homeless, for the helpless,\u201d Anetekhai said \u2014 only to have emerged as estranged from their neighbors. <\/p>\n Winners Tower, the 25-story high-rise that The Winners Assembly once hoped to build at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Colonial Avenue<\/p>\n Winners Development Corporation<\/p>\n That was never more evident than when St. Phillip\u2019s School and Community Center Headmaster Terry Flowers walked into Ruthie\u2019s. Flowers and Anetekhai had never met even though there\u2019d been a tense community meeting earlier this year at St. Phillip\u2019s about the 25-story tower. <\/p>\n I made awkward introductions. Anetekhai told Flowers it had become clear \u201cWe didn\u2019t communicate well,\u201d and said they \u201cshould have consulted the community\u201d before going to the plan commission. The pastor said he wanted to meet with Flowers, who said only, \u201cLet\u2019s make it happen,\u201d before returning to his table.<\/p>\n It should have happened a long, long time ago.<\/p>\n Though the proposed rezoning had been lingering at City Hall for two years, nearly every single business owner and community leader with whom I spoke over the summer knew nothing of the project until a segment ran on WFAA-TV (Channel 8), which presented the project as a nearly done deal<\/a>. Pastor Chris Simmons at Cornerstone Baptist Church, TWA\u2019s next-door neighbors, laughed it off: \u201cThis isn\u2019t going to happen.\u201d Flowers at the time politely called it \u201cunlikely,\u201d but said it should serve as a warning that developers were targeting South Dallas.<\/p>\n Winners Assembly Pastor Raphael Adebayo had hoped to replace the church’s complex on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard with a 25-story high-rise “because God gave the vision” for such a structure.<\/p>\n Shafkat Anowar \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Anetekhai had tried to get meetings with leadership at Cornerstone, Forest Forward and St. Phillip\u2019s, but the nonprofits responded only with emails full of questions about, among other things, who was investing in the $240 million project, and why TWA was trying to plant a 25-story tower along a stretch zoned for nothing higher than three stories. All went unanswered.<\/p>\n Making matters worse was the man who told me he was behind the project all along: once-frequent mayoral candidate Edward Okpa. <\/p>\n When we spoke in July, I asked Okpa why a small street-corner church now needed such a garish tower lording over the neighborhood. He said he conceived of it years ago, and that it had to be a luxury hotel with all the amenities rather than apartments for the neighborhood \u201cbecause you\u2019d wind up with Section 8 and low-income housing, and it would become run-down.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Okpa if he was sure that disparaging description was the best way to sell the project to a community finally beginning to see development after years of disinvestment and neglect.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only people who are supposed to be concerned are the people within 200 feet of the church,\u201d said the man who received 2% of the vote when he ran for mayor in 2011.<\/p>\n Anetekhai told me he\u2019d been a banker in Nigeria and left a \u201cthriving oil-and-gas business\u201d when he moved to Dallas more than 20 years ago, following a girlfriend who\u2019d come here first. I asked why someone with his knowhow didn\u2019t bring in a zoning consultant with experience navigating City Hall. He said he\u2019d hired Okpa believing that \u201che had connections to the people that can make things happen,\u201d referring to Gov. Greg Abbott, who in 2021 appointed Okpa to a six-year term on the State Securities Board<\/a>. <\/p>\n Pastor Chris Simmons (left) attended The Dallas Morning News’ discussion about the future of South Dallas held at his church, Cornerstone Baptist Church, earlier this month.<\/p>\n Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n But on Oct. 9, after hearing from Okpa and other supporters of the church, the Plan Commission took about seven harshly worded minutes to dispatch<\/a> what had been called \u2014 ironically, as it turns out \u2014 The Winners Tower.<\/p>\n \u201cThe community does not trust the leadership,\u201d said Tabitha Wheeler-Reagan, the neighborhood\u2019s commissioner and co-chair of the task force that helped create the recently adopted South Dallas\/Fair Park Area Plan<\/a> meant to purposefully continue MLK\u2019s makeover. \u201cI cannot support this project because this project is not for South Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am not against growth,\u201d added commissioner Darrell Herbert, council member Zarin Gracey\u2019s appointee. \u201cI believe growth must be rooted in respect, accountability and community. The structure \u2026 threatens to overshadow not just physically but symbolically the homes, families and culture that define South Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n Anetekhai told me Wednesday that Okpa is no longer associated with the project. But there is still a project.<\/p>\n Except this one is going to be shorter \u2014 could be 13 stories, could be five. Hard to say just yet. And it\u2019s going to be housing, market rate and affordable. How much of each, hard to say just yet. It\u2019s all still very tentative as church leaders retreat and reassess.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just went quiet. We just want the noise to be over,\u201d Anetekhai said. \u201cThere was too much bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Supporters of The Winners Assembly’s plans for a 25-story high-rise in South Dallas pointed to the Dallas Housing Authority’s 13-story Park Manor, built in the late 1960s, as proof towers were allowed in South Dallas.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n![\"Winners](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/42RHNKVOMVEDVDCBOWZW2KMS5A.jpg\")
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