6 July 25 - 31, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The Future of the Past Will the Belmont Hotel, the jewel of West Dallas, ever shine again? By Emma Ruby I t was a humid, overcast Wednesday in July when, for the second time in five years, it appeared the clock on efforts to preserve the historic Belmont Hotel was running out. The West Dallas motor inn was the only item on the agenda for the city’s Landmark Designation Committee meeting last week. Holed up in the windowless auditorium of the Lakewood Branch Library, advocates for the building’s preservation, committee members, city staff and the hotel’s owner, Jordan Ford, met to parse through a 20- page landmark nomination form and pres- ervation ordinance that took two years to come to fruition. Ford, flanked by two lawyers wearing wire-rimmed glasses that matched his own, claimed the meeting was the first opportu- nity he has had to participate in efforts to pre- serve the Belmont. The son of Dallas billionaire Gerald Ford, Jordan Ford — alongside hospitality moguls Matt Comfort and Jeff Burns — purchased the Belmont from Monte Anderson, an Oak Cliff developer, in 2015. The cozy hotel had fallen into disrepair in the latter half of the 20th century, and Anderson had painstak- ingly nursed it back to health for over a de- cade. It wasn’t for sale when Ford, Comfort and Burns came along, but the trio said “all the right things,” Anderson said. By early 2019, Ford, Comfort and Burns had a falling out, and the hotel was left with Ford. In the time since, the five-building complex was shuttered because of CO- VID-19 and has yet to reopen. And though COVID played a significant part in the Bel- mont’s initial closing, many blame Ford for the building’s current dilapidated condi- tion. “I had hoped that they would be better than us, but I saw very quickly that I had made a mistake,” Anderson told the Ob- server. “These guys, they don’t care. They have plenty of money to do a good job. To do something special here. And they just don’t care.” A Remnant of Dallas Past B efore the completion of Interstate 30 in 1957, it was Fort Worth Avenue that served as the road to the west. Capitalizing on the traffic coming into Dallas from Fort Worth, hotel proprietors began investing in motor inns — hotels where rooms sat adjacent to carports or parking areas — along the only corridor con- necting the two cities. The Belmont was part of that trend. Designed by the iconic Dallas architect Charles Dilbeck, it had managed to maintain its cultural relevance well past the days of the drive-up hotel. Dilbeck’s name being attached to the Belmont would be reason enough for some dedicated Dallasites to support it. The ar- chitect originated his residential design business in Tulsa before moving to the Park Cities in 1932. Today, he is revered with a “mythic, cult-like” following, said Willis Winters, the president of Preservation Texas and a board member of the Dilbeck Architecture Conservancy. Groups like the conservancy are dedi- cated to promoting and preserving Dilbeck’s work, which is sprinkled across the country and concentrated in Dallas. His style is known for being quirky and whimsical, something he especially honed after World War II when he graduated out of the resi- dential market and into commercial archi- tecture. “[Dilbeck] could have done six or seven different motor hotels in Dallas, and unfor- tunately they’re all being demolished over the years,” Winters said. “I would describe the Belmont as majorly at risk, because it’s been allowed to deteriorate substantially.” The Belmont, which opened in 1947, is made up of five white, single-story buildings that bubble and bulge as if stucco had been erroneously dropped from the sky. The number of rooms has drifted between the mid-60s and mid-70s over the hotel’s 77- year history. A restaurant, bar and trendy pool helped the hotel develop its here-for-a- good-time reputation early on, and Christopher Durbin | UNFAIR PARK | The Belmont Hotel in its current state of disrepair. >> p8