Developer AJ Ramler and his small team have graduated from rehabilitating old homes in Oak Cliff into ambitious overhauls of empty churches, warehouses, and schools.
When AJ Ramler first walked into the two-story atrium of what is now called the Oak Cliff Assembly, he found a gaping hole in the ceiling. More than a foot of water pooled on the floor. Reality set in. Rehabilitating this longtime house of worship in the Brentwood neighborhood of Oak Cliff would be a far more complicated project than the old homes and small apartment complexes his Proxy Properties had turned around in the last few years.
But he was ready to take on something more ambitious. After rehabbing his own home about a decade ago, Ramler became attracted to the many old residential buildings falling into disrepair around Oak Cliff. He’d fix them up and rent them out. But there were also churches, like this one with the hole in its roof, and old warehouses. These buildings are located near where people live, built in another era, but sit empty. Ramler believed they were more likely to be demolished than revitalized.
Just like the Oak Cliff Assembly, at the corner of Morrell Street and Harland Avenue. It is a two-story brick building whose walls shoot out from a lighthouse at its center, where for decades double doors led parishioners into the sanctuary for services. It took Proxy 18 months to make the building habitable, which required rezoning and extensive construction work as well as many hours spent speaking with neighbors to determine how they wanted the space reimagined.
Rev. James Whitaker of Zion Hill Missionary Baptist had for years preached from its pulpit. He told the Proxy team the history of the previous congregation. At its height, the church had 600 members. Its aging congregation had fallen to 10 by the time Ramler first saw it, and they felt it was time to sell before the roof caved in.
“We want to come in and say ‘This is who we are. This is what we want to do. And this is what we want to see for the building for years to come,” says Emily Cortez, the senior property manager at Proxy.
After the rehab, the Assembly could host events in the former sanctuary space. Ramler rented it out for school plays, nonprofit meetings, and live concerts. It hosted the Oak Cliff Film Festival’s opening night party earlier this year. Multiple small businesses and nonprofits based in the neighborhood now office here; rents range from $400 to $650 a month. In the future, this will also be the home of the community’s first coffee shop.
Cecil Armstrong, a small business owner who has lived in Oak Cliff for nearly 70 years, was thrilled when Proxy bought the building. He hated seeing it empty and feared it would be demolished—he knew about that massive hole in the ceiling. Armstrong had previously met with Rev. Whitaker, who said the building’s needs were too expensive for his congregation. He needed to sell. When Proxy came along, Armstrong shared his opinions with the team and later told the Dallas City Council he supported the zoning changes for the building.
“We all think gentrification. Those thoughts always come to your head. But AJ has got us involved in it,” Armstrong says. “You got a voice. Let’s organize. Let’s pull the resources. Let’s do what we need to do to make this community better. Some people want to participate. Some people don’t.”
The Assembly has led Ramler and his small team to other ambitious rehabilitation projects in Oak Cliff. East Dock is a 62,000 square foot warehouse on Clarendon Drive, a two-minute drive from the old church. Standing outside one recent afternoon, Ramler struggled to remember which of the 15 codes would open the lockbox attached to the rusted door. He passed the time by recalling that the original owner’s son was the founder of 7-Eleven.
“When I say I geek out about history, I mean I’ll spend dozens of hours on each property just understanding what it was like,” Ramler says.
After finally unlocking the door, Ramler walked in and began to dream: maybe a massive rock climbing wall could go on the left side wall, perhaps a shared art studio in a small corner room on the right. Things are difficult to imagine in the space considering the holes in the ceiling, the graffiti sprayed on the walls, and the broken glass and stray pieces of rotted lumber scattered across the floor.
Ramler sees past all this, just like he has in other buildings since he began his rehabilitation work in December 2012. He had recently graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in real estate. His goal was to find an affordable home in a walkable neighborhood that reminded him of Denton. He was willing to find something older, which he felt comfortable fixing up. His construction career began with renovating his own home, a manor-style residence built in 1920 on 10th Street.
He and his wife spent almost a year renovating the home, sleeping on a cot in the basement at night, squeezing in renovation work between full-time jobs. (Ramler worked in construction and his wife taught elementary school.) He saved as much as he could from the old home. He polished rusted cabinet handles and salvaged moldy toilets. He and his wife began attending neighborhood association meetings, getting to know their neighbors and learning what they wanted.
“Some people want to see stuff fixed; some people want to see stuff to say the same. Especially for people that have experienced bad change, they’ve become very gun-shy about any change,” Ramler says. “You have to earn their respect.”
Proxy Properties grew out of rehabilitating their manor house. David Cervantes, a contractor and longtime friend, joined in 2019. He’s the founder of Elyse Build, a contracting company that specializes in older homes. Cortez joined after Leavitt, becoming one of Proxy’s property managers once the company got into the rental business. “With us being a small team, I think we all wear a lot of different hats, and that’s something I love about working at Proxy,” Leavitt says.
This small team handles the grunt work of cleaning and clearing the properties themselves. “When you put so much heart into a building you feel for it and want it to succeed,” Cortez says.
Ramler believes each building’s structure is irreplaceable. Something like the Assembly, made of steel and masonry with towering ceilings and colorfully stained-glass windows, would cost too much to replicate today. This is one of the reasons why many new builds look so similar. “I don’t know anyone doing historic rehab work because they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna make zillions of dollars,’ People do historic rehab work because they love it,” Ramler says.
David Preziosi, the former executive director of Preservation Dallas, says preserving older buildings means old materials don’t wind up in growing landfills. Tax credits and other incentives make the projects more affordable, which means the landlord can charge lower rents to entrepreneurs and lower-income residents. “The greatest building is the one that’s already built,” Preziosi says.
Much of Ramler and Proxy Properties’ work is in City Council District 4, a rock-shaped swath that includes much of southeast Oak Cliff. District 4 is a community of majority Black and Latino residents. It has one of the lowest median incomes and the highest unemployment rates in the city. Many homes are occupied by multigenerational families.
Proxy also manages over 100 affordable apartments for people at risk of becoming homeless, each going for as low as $50 per month. Ramler has realized he can move much faster than the city of Dallas, which struggles to stand up similar operations for the populations he rents to.
“The city of Dallas is just so far behind…Are we frustrated with the city’s lack of patience and lack of funding? Yeah, we see it every day. So it’s irritating to me to know that things can be fixed in one [Council] district in an instant and then they’ll take days, if not weeks, or multiple follow-ups to get it done in other districts,” Cortez says.
Phyllis Lee, District 4’s appointee to the Senior Affairs Commission, says she appreciates the programming that Proxy Properties has delivered to the neighborhood. “I was able to go and witness some of the drama classes that they brought to the community, and the children were elementary age… at the end, their parents were able to come and see the progress, introducing us to something that wasn’t introduced to them in local schools.
“That’s what living is about. Getting people involved and living your best life while you’re here,” Lee says. “Proxy has brought a big change to the community.”
He hasn’t stopped working. This summer, Proxy opened a new 27-room hotel called The Madison in an old inn near Colorado Boulevard and Beckley Avenue. It got its name after Ramler found documentation in FBI files suggesting Lee Harvey Oswald may have stayed here before assassinating President John F. Kennedy. The building, which dates back to 1926, had caught on fire at some point and had never been renovated. A few miles south, at the corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Marsalis Avenue at the edge of North Oak Cliff, the old United Methodist Church was set to be demolished despite its status as a historical landmark. There was fire damage and evidence of squatters. It, too, had flooded at some point. Ramler said the community asked him to create something like the Oak Cliff Assembly. Over the summer, he received permission from the City Plan Commission to change its zoning from retail to mixed use with a historical district overlay, allowing for different types of tenants to eventually occupy the space.
While the Proxy team finished its work at the Assembly, Leavitt and Ramler thought about ways to get people to visit. They came up with the idea of an art walk. They’d saved some of the wood from the church pews that had been submerged in water when the atrium flooded. They asked community artists to pick one up. Each had 30 days to create something with the pews. Proxy planned to show, and potentially sell, the finished products at the Assembly during the art walk.
They hoped for 200 attendees. Nearly 1,000 people came—despite the older pews still needing to be replaced, the walls still being reconstructed, and no air conditioning.
It validated the team’s vision. Proxy Properties brought an old building back to life and the people were showing up. Now they’re onto the next project. It’s time to think about that rock climbing wall at the East Dock. Ramler knows more people are waiting.