Cedar Springs "'institution' where Dallas gay rights movement started may be forced to close by end of year due to rising rent

Richard Longstaff

Crossroads Market, the store that's been a fixture on Cedar Springs Road in Oak Lawn for more than a quarter-century, may close by the end of the year.

Richard Longstaff, who's owned Crossroads for the last four years, said he's not renewing his lease, which expires Dec. 31, because the owners are asking too much money.

"It's a pity, really, that it's come to this," Longstaff said, adding that he believes Crossroads is the last independent bookstore in Dallas. "It's an institution on the street, and that's one of the reasons I bought it. I just didn't want to see it go."

Don Sheets, who has owned the coffee shop inside Crossroads Market for the last year, said he would like to keep it open and expand with a caf? in what is now the bookstore. However, the owner currently is asking $28 per square foot, up from $11, to lease the building, which Sheets says he can't afford. The bookstore and coffee shop occupy about 5,000 square feet.

"They're just not wanting us in here," Sheets said. "They're wanting a major chain."

Two representatives from Eagle Equity Management, which manages the property for owner the Sachs family, declined comment. The representatives also would not provide contact information for members of the Sachs family.

"'A multipurpose incubator'

Crossroads Market was started by legendary Dallas gay figures Terry Tebedo, Bill Nelson, William Waybourn, Craig Spaulding, Phil Johnson and several others in 1981. All of the original owners with the exception of Waybourn, Spaulding and Johnson are deceased, according to Waybourn.

Waybourn said Tebedo and Nelson, who frequently held garage sales at their home on Mission Street, had formed Oak Lawn Junk Co. and leased the space behind where Crossroads currently sits.

When the building at Cedar Springs Road and Throckmorton Street became vacant, Nelson and Tebedo asked their friends if they wanted to invest in the business and lease it.

Waybourn said Crossroads initially sold everything from books to candles to music to furniture.

"It was just a big mixture of gay-related merchandise," he said, adding that the owners also provided free coffee and copies to the public.

As Oak Lawn began to evolve into Dallas' "gayborhood," the store became a community center, Waybourn said.

Crossroads was open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, and Waybourn said the owners frequently had to kick people out at the end of the night.

Deb Elder

"It was really a gathering place that happened to be a retail store," Waybourn said. "I don't think you could replicate it anywhere else at any other time. You didn't say, "'I'm going down to Crossroads Market because I want to buy some candles.' You came to Crossroads Market because there were people there you wanted to be with."

The store burned in an accidental fire ignited by a light fixture in 1986, and the owners had little money to rebuild, Waybourn said. Within a few months, though, they had managed to reopen.

"After the fire, the community really put us back in business," he said.

Crossroads was the birthplace of the gay rights and HIV/AIDS advocacy movements in Dallas, Waybourn said. Nelson, the first openly gay candidate for Dallas City Council, ran his campaign out of the back of the store.

"Crossroads Market was the beginning of the [AIDS] food bank, it was the beginning of the Resource Center, it was the beginning of the really hard-core activism in the city of Dallas, and it launched a lot of political careers," Waybourn said.

Deb Elder opened a jewelry store called High Drama Goldware inside Crossroads Market in 1984. Both Elder and Waybourn would later serve as president of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

"You couldn't go in there every day and not become an activist," Elder said. "I give Crossroad Market the credit for just being a multipurpose incubator. It created community."

"'Totally up in the air'

Waybourn said he and Spaulding, longtime partners, finally sold Crossroads in 1991 because they could no longer cope with the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis on their customers. Waybourn and Spaulding have moved to Washington, and Elder now lives in Florida.

Thomas Kane, one of two partners who purchased Crossroads from Waybourn and Spaulding, said he remodeled several times and added the coffee shop in 1998. Kane also opened Crossroads Markets in Houston and Austin that since have closed.

"That was an era when gay and lesbian businesses, not just in Texas but around the country, were really prospering and doing well, and we tried to be a part of that as much as we could," Kane said.

Kane said Dallas Crossroads Market was still profitable when he sold it to Longstaff, but the environment has changed.

When Kane owned Crossroads, he was competing with outfits like Taylor's, a now-defunct bookstore chain that prohibited gay-oriented merchandise. Longstaff is competing against the likes of Borders in the West Village, which has made a deliberate effort to cater to LGBT customers.

"There's just a lot more competition from mainstream retailers, so maybe the novelty of gay and lesbian stores for gay and lesbian consumers has worn off a little bit," Kane said.

"You can just see that there's been a sea-change in the attitude of mainstream retailers in that time."

Longstaff said business dropped by about 20 percent when Borders opened. He also said the expansion of North Park Mall, along with a decline in daytime foot traffic on Cedar Springs, have hurt.

Two other nearby retail stores, an Occasional Piece and the Barking Frog, recently went under. But Longstaff said Union Jack, the clothing store he's owned on Cedar Springs for 37 years, is doing well.

"I think in Oak Lawn and especially on Cedar Springs, if you're not catering to bar customers, you're not going to make it," Longstaff said.

Longstaff said he considered downsizing the bookstore and moving to a new location but opted against it.

Sheets, meanwhile, said he met with representatives from Eagle Equity Management on Thursday, Nov. 8, but the parties were unable to come to an agreement about the lease. Sheets said he submitted his proposal for expanding the coffee shop and plans to meet with Eagle representatives again soon.

"They don't know what they're wanting to do," Sheets said. "As of now, it's day to day. It is totally up in the air."

E-mail wright@dallasvoice.com



This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition November 16, 2007