Do you remember where you were the first time someone told you he was going to a restaurant in Lower Oak Lawn? Â Did you scratch your heard, wondering in what mysterious corner of the city this new Meddlesome Moth was located? Then someone else mentioned that it’s in the Design District and you thought, “well, then, why didn’t he just say that in the first place?”
No, of course none of that ever actually happened, because you’ve never heard anyone say “Lower Oak Lawn.” And as of today, you likely never will. LOL is no more.
“Lower Oak Lawn” was a branding term devised by real estate company Pegasus Ablon, which manages about a third of the properties in the Design District, according to Kendall Shiffler, who handles social media marketing for the company, until today at LowerOakLawn.com.
They dreamed up the sub-neighborhood in 2009 to differentiate their multifamily and restaurant projects from the rest of what sits just west of where Interstate 35 and Oak Lawn Avenue meet – namely the shops and showrooms that gave the Design District its name. Â For that reason, and because they felt that including “Oak Lawn” (a well-known neighborhood) in the area’s brand gave prospective patrons a better clue as to their location than did “Design District” (which they didn’t believe was as widely known). Â Also contributing to their strategy was the fact that someone else owned the domain name dallasdesigndistrict.com, and they were unable to purchase it.
But…the term never really caught on. It turns out that “Dallas Design District” gets way more searches online than does “Lower Oak Lawn.” When the previous owner let that long-coveted domain expire not long ago, they snapped it up. They’re changing all their branding and marketing efforts to reference the Design District. Â They’re giving up hope that Lower Oak Lawn becomes a thing.
Wait, excuse me, Shiffler says that’s not quite correct:
“It was not really giving up on it. It was a strategic switch.”