Construction is underway on Starbucks at Red Bird Mall, which officially launches the long-awaited redevelopment of the only mall in Dallas’ southern half.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Starbucks’ Red Bird site is one of 15 locations nationwide that the coffee shop chose to open in low-to-middle-income neighborhoods to help revitalize business districts.

While the northern half of Dallas contains around 50 Starbucks stores, Red Bird will be just the third Starbucks in the entire southern sector, which already includes one at Interstate-30 and Cockrell Hill Road and another inside a Tom Thumb supermarket on South Hampton Road in Oak Cliff. 

Rendering Courtesy of Omni Plan

But Starbucks’ image is an ideal fit with the plan that Red Bird’s new owner, Peter Brodsky, has for the 120-acre mixed-use redevelopment that he envisions as the new heart of southern Dallas. His blueprint calls for a dense mixture of retail, restaurants, office space, multi-family housing, and a 124-room hotel with 7,300 square feet of meeting space as well as an open lawn for a gathering place and community events. 

“This is an opportunity to turn the page and have a fresh start,” Brodsky said on his website.

The Starbucks building is slated to be complete and finished-out by mid-2018, and construction on the remainder of the project is also expected to begin next year.

In addition to transforming Red Bird Mall into a walkable urban development, Brodsky’s goal is to provide “a high-quality place where people in southern Dallas can dine and shop.”