Vickery is an ethnically-diverse neighborhood consisting almost exclusively of apartment complexes in Northeast Dallas, Texas, United States. The Midtown Improvement District states the neighborhood is bounded by Northwest Highway, Royal Lane, Central Expressway, and Abrams. The City of Dallas Office of Economic Development states that the boundaries of the Vickery Meadow Tax Increment Financing district, which was established in 2005, are “the east side of the intersection of US 75 (Central Expressway) and Park Lane and extends eastward along Park Lane to the ‘Five Points’ intersection at Park Lane, Fair Oaks Avenue and Ridgecrest Road.” Leslie Minora of the Dallas Observer described it as "a dense swath of about 100 apartment complexes cradled by NorthPark Center and Whole Foods to the west and Half Price books to the south. It's an overlooked anthill, population 25,000, packed with people here by circumstance."
The area is one of the most densely populated areas of Dallas and is home to many immigrants and refugees. The area was originally developed to provide housing for childless, upper-income people in the mid-1970s. The area was built out in the early 1980s. With the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the demographics shifted to a mostly low income, immigrant population from Latin America and other countries around the world. During that time, area public schools began to become overcrowded. The school district responded by opening new schools in the area, including one high school, one middle school, and several elementary schools; some apartment complexes were razed to make room for new schools. The Midtown Improvement District (MID), a public improvement district, serves the Vickery area.
In 2014 the Dallas City Council member representing Vickery, Jennifer Staubach Gates, referred to it as "kind of the melting pot of America".
History
Vickery was at a site that is now on Loop 12, State Highway 75, Interstate Highway 635, the Southern Pacific line, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line in north central Dallas County. It was located on the original land grants of W. Jenkins, D. Barrow, N. McGraney, and W. P. Wyche. The area was originally settled by John J. and William Jenkins in the 1850s, and a small settlement began to develop around the Jenkins homes. The Houston and Texas Central Railway built through the community in 1873, but by 1900 it was still a small settlement of a few scattered houses. In the early 1900s before World War I, John E. Vickery laid out and promoted a townsite, which received a post office in 1912. Ten years later the community had 200 residents, six food and drug stores, four automobile repair shops, three churches, a bank, a cotton gin, a dining hall, and a public school. It had no water or fire department facilities. The population of Vickery fluctuated between a high of 800 in 1927 to a low of 200 in 1933. By 1939 the number of residents had increased to 650, and by 1941, to 1,000. Dallas annexed the community in March 1945. (Source: Texas State History On Line)
The area was developed as multifamily residences that provided housing for an influx of people to the Dallas area that began in the 1970s. When it was fully built out, Vickery had 15,500 apartments and 2,300 condos in an area of 2.86 square miles.
Many of these residents were described by Michael E. Young of The Dallas Morning News as "young, hip, and reasonably well off." They reportedly planned to stay in Vickery for a short time before buying houses in the Dallas suburbs.
In 1988, the U.S. federal government passed the Fair Housing Act, which, under most circumstances, prohibits any policy that excludes families with children from living in an apartment complex. The passage of the act— which forced the complexes to admit children— and a rental market recession, caused a decrease in rent prices and a shift in the area's demographics throughout the 1990s. Immigrants and refugees from Mexico, Central America, Bosnia, Burma, Bhutan, and parts of Africa moved into the apartment complexes. The infrastructure that existed was largely not designed for families. The Midtown Improvement District, a coalition of the property owners, opened in 1993 to improve the quality of life of area residents and stabilize the area real property and real property investments. In 2004, Casie Pierce, the executive director of the Vickery Meadow Public Improvement District, argued in an editorial in The Dallas Morning News that Vickery ought to be redeveloped into modern urban renewal.