Forest Forward Updates on Forest Theater Restoration

Forest Forward has raised $35 million toward its $75 million goal for the South Dallas cultural campus anchored by the historic Forest Theater on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the organization told neighbors at a community meeting last August.

The nonprofit held the gathering at its new headquarters, a former liquor store it purchased in 2022 directly across from the theater. The meeting was built for residents, not press or city officials. That distinction mattered to organizers, who used the evening to share construction timelines, introduce new leadership, and hear what the community actually wants from a project this size.

Elizabeth Wattley, Forest Forward’s president and CEO, walked attendees through the fundraising picture. The $35 million raised includes $8 million from the City of Dallas and $4 million in Housing and Urban Development funding. That’s real money. It’s also still $40 million short of the target.

Plans for the restored theater call for a 1,000-seat concert hall designed to host live performances, film screenings, and festivals. The layout includes a rooftop terrace overlooking downtown, a 13,000-square-foot café, and a 25,000-square-foot outdoor plaza. Wattley said the organization is sourcing high-quality projection equipment specifically to attract film festivals, not just touring acts.

The meeting also introduced Nijeul X as Forest Forward’s new artistic director, though details on programming direction were not shared publicly.

On the question of local economic benefit, Wattley said nearly $19 million in contracts have already gone to Black-owned firms, with 78 percent of the theater project awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses. She was direct about the intention behind that number.

“We want to work with the community,” Wattley said. “Everything from catering to balloons, we want to work together and support businesses in the neighborhood.”

A block away, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Arts Academy is undergoing a separate $20 million bond-funded expansion. The project adds 25,000 square feet of new space, including four science labs, a piano lab, and a 2,000-square-foot dance studio. The school, which runs pre-K through eighth grade with an arts focus, is the only Dallas ISD campus of its kind, according to Wattley.

She pointed to a stark statistic about the district’s Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts to make the case for building here.

“Out of the 1,100 students at Booker T., less than 1 percent came from this zip code,” Wattley said. “That’s not about talent, it’s about access and opportunity.”

Still, not every question in the room was about programming or construction timelines. Neighbors pressed Forest Forward on displacement. A multi-million dollar investment in a historically disinvested corridor tends to push property values up, and land around the theater will feel that pressure. Ashley Wilson, executive vice president at Forest Forward, fielded those questions directly, though the source material does not capture the full response.

It’s a real tension. South Dallas has watched other Dallas neighborhoods absorb capital and lose longtime residents in the process. The Forest Theater, which opened in 1949 as a segregated movie house before becoming a cornerstone of Black Dallas cultural life, carries enough history that the stakes of getting this wrong are higher than a typical real estate play.

Wattley’s numbers suggest Forest Forward understands the assignment. Whether the contracting commitments, the community meetings, and the school expansion hold together as a genuine anti-displacement strategy will become clearer as construction moves forward and property values respond.

Preston Hollow is a long drive from MLK Boulevard. But Dallas’s cultural and civic health runs through neighborhoods like South Dallas, and a $75 million investment anchored in historically Black cultural infrastructure is the kind of project that reshapes a city’s trajectory, not just a zip code’s.

Reporting from the Dallas Free Press contributed to this article.