South Dallas’ Bonton Farms is expanding its community impact.
The nonprofit is opening a wellness center, mental health resource center, and Bonton Gardens, a 36-unit multi-income apartment complex. The initiatives aim to address long-standing challenges in the Bonton neighborhood, from health care to housing.
Bonton Farms was founded in 2020 as a community garden to address the lack of food access in the neighborhood. But president Gabe Madison said they recognized the neighborhood needed more than just food resources.
“There's a lot of other deserts,” he said. “We knew that we had to become the resource.”
The wellness center, launched with support from Methodist Health System and Baylor Scott & White and set to open early next year, will offer a range of services, including dental care, exercise classes and health education for residents of all ages. The resource center will feature counseling rooms and co-working spaces for local businesses. Local entrepreneurs, called “Bonton-preneurs”, will have the opportunity to sell their products and services there.
Both centers will be available to anyone but are primarily focused on the Bonton community.
“What we hope is that we can be a model to be replicated in other communities,” Madison said. “Showcasing that through solutions and with various partners, we can create the transformation that's needed.”
Bonton Farms on Thursday broke ground on both the resource center and its new apartment complex. Madison said housing is one of the many underlying issues residents were asking to be addressed.
“This is Bonton being reflected in the ways Bonton wants to be reflected,” said Madison.
Bonton Farms health and wellness manager Daris Lee has lived in the neighborhood his entire life. The new development represented a chance to transform and heal the community from within, he said.
“A lot of people felt like we have been pushed back as far as we could go,” Lee said. “We didn't want people like outsiders coming in and trying to take what little that we had established already.”
After meeting the founder of Bonton Farms several years ago, he felt like there was an opportunity to change and help in the neighborhood.
“It’s just been a need to me for a neighborhood to be healthy,” Lee said. “And all because of Bonton Farms, all that stuff is happening here.”
Construction on the resource center will start immediately, and the apartment complex will start construction in January.
Zara Amaechi is KERA’s Marjorie Welch Fitts Louis fellow covering race and social justice. Got a tip? Email Zara at zamaechi@kera.org. You can follow her on X @amaechizara.
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