STAY IN THE LOOP

Oak Cliff's annual Earth Day celebration was April 13th, and it was a blast. Lake Cliff Park was full of neighbors and friends, and the Heritage Oak Cliff booth had a lot of activity. We sold out of our book, The Hidden City, by Bill Minutaglio and Holly Williams. Many visitors signed up for a free one-year HOC membership. We had lots of great discussions about our community, the history and the future. And everyone loved playing our new Get a Clue trivia game. 

How did the game work? We gave out clues and asked visitors to guess the neighborhood by putting a pin in our gameboard/map. We gave away Koozies to all participants and shared a lot of information about our member neighborhoods. There was a lot of trivia, a lot of interaction and a lot of fun. We even had a visit from Dallas City District 1 Councilman Chad West. Want to see a few more photos from our fun Earth Day? Just click here.

Thanks to all who put our booth together and greeted our visitors. Until next year...please take care of our planet!

Welcome to the first of our monthly(ish) feature spotlighting one of our member neighborhoods. Today, we focus on Elmwood, fresh from celebrating its 100th birthday. 

Elmwood is situated in the center of Oak Cliff. Originally the old Tennessee Dairy Farm, this neighborhood is now 1,500 Tudor homes and cottages, a downtown district with pizza and coffee shops, and a 16-acre greenbelt dedicated in 1945 as a City of Dallas linear park. More than that, Elmwood is a tight-knit community that hosts a variety of events that support local businesses and create more opportunities for neighbors to just hang out together.

HOC Neighborhood Rep Elizabeth Mellott was able to experience Elmwood in a unique way. After living there for 10 years, she moved away for 5, but, "didn't know a single neighbor and moved right back." To Elizabeth, a few key advantages of living in this neighborhood are the green space (creeks and parks), the growing downtown area and Oak Cliff Brewery at Tyler Station. She's also proud of all the events, including Music in the Meadow in the spring and cookie decorationg and the cake walk in the fall. And she had to point out that Elmwood had the first dog park in Oak Cliff (thanks to partial funding by HOC).

She also loves Elmwood Farm, especially now that it has moved to a better space. They sell local eggs, offer produce in season and have their own events, like Music Passing Through.

For more on the history of this neighborhood, check out the Elmwood page on this website. For more on its 100th birthday, look at this article in the Advocate.

The 2025 Oak Cliff Mardi Gras parade March 2nd was a huge success and was the biggest parade in recent years. One HOC Executive Committee member told us, "we threw out more than 30 gross of beads! Our arms were getting tired!" An HOC Board Member said, "I just loved seeing my neighbors enjoying the parade so much."

The HOC float – a retro green Ford pickup decked out with four HOC Mardi Gras flags – was a crowd favorite. We had a great group of 15 volunteers, all wearing their free matching Mardi Gras long-sleeve shirts, that represented our organization well and had more fun than the onlookers. 

Much thanks to Trudy Newton, T.J. Edmond and Ron Veech for putting a lot of this together, George Roberts for the Ford pickup and Brian Gross for the flag and shirt designs. 

Hope you can join us next year!

The 2024 Heritage Oak Cliff Holiday Celebration held on December 5th was simply AWESOME! 47 people really enjoyed the evening; hopefully, you were one of them. The food was fabulous; everyone raved about how delicious it was. The raffle prizes were over the top, including two tickets and a parking pass to the Byron Nelson Golf Tournament (donated by Brad Perry of Schwab) and a $619 Platinum Pass to Snap Clean Car Wash (donated by City Councilman Chad West). $730 was raised just from additional ticket sales for the raffle. One company, Creative Planning, didn’t have anything for the raffle, so they donated $1,000 to HOC (thank you to Ed Brownstein and Christy Watson)!

The Oak Cliff Assembly space was as tasty as the food – great layout and beautiful decorations. Thank you AJ Rambler and Proxy Property for allowing HOC to use the venue.

During the event, the following special people were recognized: 1.) Ryan Stepp received the 2024 Neighborhood Champion award for his outstanding work on the super successful 2024 Home Tour. 2.) Cynthia Michaels received the Executive Board Champion award for her willingness to go go the extra mile leading events and managing the grant program. And 3.) AJ Rambler and Proxy Property received the 2024 Ruth Chenoweth award for their significant role in the restoration of properties in Oak Cliff.

If you’d like to see more photos from our year-end celebration, check out the photo album here (photos by 2nd2Nunn Photography).

All of us at HOC thank all of you for giving us a year worth celebrating. What amazing things will we do together in 2025?

To all our HOC members, family and friends, thank you for making our Giving Day!

We reached 79% of our $10,000 goal – $7,866 – with the donations broken down as follows:

• 42 Individual Donors: $2,866
• Ray Scott (State Farm) Matching Funds: $2,500
• Mike Matthews (HOC) Matching Funds: $2,500

In addition to funds from our NTX Giving Day campaign, we've also received:

• $1,800 from 16 donors in April through the Communities Foundation of Texas
• $2,000 from a private family foundation

We can't thank you enough for all your support, and we look forward to future grants going towards neighborhood improvements, beautification, events and more. HOC Fundraising Chair Mike Matthews (and matching donor) was overjoyed with the results. “I thank everyone" he said, "for their charitable contributions that encourage HOC to move forward with initiatives to help Oak Cliff neighborhoods.”

The Giving Day Celebration

The Giving Day celebration at La Calle Doce Restaurante was also a success. 21 donors from Brentwood, Brettonwoods, Kiest Forest, North Cliff, Stevens Park Village and Wynnewood North celebrated the results and had a lot of fun doing so.

You Can Still Give

Although NTX Giving Day has come and gone, donations are still being accepted. So if you want to give local, you still can. Just click below to go to our page on the NTX Giving Day website.

Thank you again!

The 2024 HOC Grant Awards Celebration held on June 27th was a big success, and not only for the grant recipients. Overheard comments from some of the 37 guests (not made up by the writer of this article) include: "Wow!" "Fabulous food!" "Knocked it out of the park!" "So much positive energy and laughter!" "Truly a magical evening!" "The best HOC party I've been to in a while – or ever!"

Congratulations to all ten neighborhood association recipients, and many thanks to our VP of Grants, Cynthia Michaels (shown handing out the awards above – if you want to see more photos of the event – including the food – click here).

Curious about the results? Out of 34 grant applications submitted and reviewed, 30 were approved. All ten neighborhoods that applied will receive grant funds, totaling $24,042! Here's the neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown:

• Beckley Club Estates: $554
• Brettonwoods: $1,154
• Elmwood: $469
• El Tivoli: $1,098
• Kiestwood: $811
• Stevens Park Estates: $1,680
• Stevens Park Village: $5,787
• West Kessler: $1,177
• Winnetka Heights: $3,000
• Wynnewood North: $8,312

We look forward to seeing all the improvements and attending all the events funded by HOC grants in the coming months. We also look forward to your grant applications for 2025, so start thinking and planning now. How can we help you?

What a success!!

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for the Fall Home Tour and a big thank you to all of our amazing homeowners who opened their doors to us and all of the wonderful house sponsors, advertisers, and partners of the event! The proceeds from the tour have been distributed in the form of grants to help neighborhoods across Oak Cliff!