Last Night's Meeting Brought Bar Owners Out To Fight Charter School In Deep Ellum

The short of it: Uplift Education is all but ready-set to open a charter school in the former Baylor offices. Fine, whatever, right? Not quite. For those unfamiliar with this 900-student school, the location is on Elm Street. In Deep Ellum. Directly across from Anvil Pub and within stone-throwing distance of many other bars and establishments which serve alcohol.

The main issue? Not just that they're bars, or that kids don't usually belong near them, but that the bars were there first, and that because of city laws, codes, permitting regs and the like, the bars (definitely future bars) could be negatively affected by the new school.

Last night, the Deep Ellum Foundation hosted a meeting in its offices, with DEF president Barry Annino, city representatives and many, many bar and business owners in attendance.

As Anna Merlan reports over on Unfair Park, other concerns brought up at the meeting included students after-school, parking spaces and general concerns of the again-thriving neighborhood being overrun, it's buzz once-again silenced.

Uplift doesn't, so much, identify with Deep Ellum business owners' concerns. As CBS' Jay Gormley offers in an interview with Uplift CEO Yasmin Bhatia, other Uplift charters are located near even more "adult" businesses -- like, strip clubs. So, you know, there's that.

The fight continues, as does, it appears, the possibility of the school's moving in.

· Deep Ellum Is "No Place to Put These Kids in the Afternoon After They Get Outta School" [Unfair Park]
· Bar Owners Fight To Keep School Out Of Deep Ellum [CBS DFW]
· All Deep Ellum Coverage on Eater Dallas [-EDFW-]

Anvil Pub in Deep Ellum. [Photo: Andrea Grimes/EDFW]