And while the King was looking down ...
Here's what you need to know about Dean Fearing's departure from The Mansion on Turtle Creek kitchen in the historic Sheppard King mansion. It's no accident that Dean is partnering with real estate titan Denny Alberts, president of Crescent Real Estate, to open a restaurant less than a mile from the Mansion at Pearl and McKinney.
In the late '80s, Denny was chairman and CEO of Rosewood Property, the sprawling real estate arm of oilwoman Caroline Hunt's trust estate. The Rosewood portfolio included the Mansion, Hotel Crescent Court and the Crescent office building.
But when real estate got bumpy in the early '90s, Rosewood restructured and Denny left the family-run company. In 2004, the Crescent offices were scooped up by Fort Worth dealmaker Richard Rainwater and his newly formed Crescent Real Estate. Denny became Crescent's president in 2000.
So now Denny Alberts is building the luxury Ritz-Carlton project on the Mansion's rear stoop, and he just partnered with the Mansion's golden boy Dean Fearing to put in a restaurant.
"It is going to be the social gathering spot of the city," Denny says of the Ritz-Carlton complex, which includes 70 high-rise condos and a 217-room hotel. "Crescent Real Estate is the 100 percent owner of the project, and Ritz is the manager," Denny explains. Look for an August 2007 opening.
After Denny and Dean inked their deal on Thursday, the Chef Fearing took the wife and kids to Hibiscus to celebrate. But there were other celebrants, too. Plenty are gambling millions that the Arts District/Victory/Uptown golden triangle will be the new social and economic nexus for Dallas. Now that Dean Fearing has cast his lot with them, it gives a boost to folks like developers John Sughrue and Dan Boeckmann, who are building the residential Museum Tower between the Meyerson and the Nasher; Gabriel Barbier-Mueller who is adding the Azure residential building to his holdings in the area; Ross Perot Jr., who is overseeing the Victory project; and Dean's friend and sometime rival Stephan Pyles, who just opened his eatery in the Arts District.
Raised in Rome, Goss Gallery director Filippo Tattoni-Marcozzi arrived in Dallas last year as the first part of a Roman invasion. On Friday night, Stanley Korshak store owner Crawford Brock hosted a dinner at Crescent shop to honor Filippo's cousin, fellow Roman Giorgio Cazzaniga, of the Cazzaniga of Rome jewelry family. The evening doubled as a trunk show of the "family jewels."
Filippo co-hosted the dinner to show off the Cazzaniga jewelry, a favorite of international jet-set types for decades.
Among those dining and checking out the sparklers were VIP shoppers like Muffin Lemak, Nancy Marcus and Joyce Goss.
Alan Peppard
