If someone moves to Dallas from a big city on the East Coast, it can be easy for them to feel out of place – DART can’t quite compare to WMATA, the Trinity isn’t exactly the Hudson, and the heat isn’t fully understood until you experience it. (But that doesn’t matter to us; we love our city anyway.)
“I moved to Dallas in 2015 from the East Coast. My husband and I hadn’t owned a car in 10 years, so it was culture shock for us,” Stephanie Keller Hudiburg says. “I remember kind of getting our feet wet and learning the city – there were neat things in Dallas, like Klyde Warren Park. But it was neighborhoods like Deep Ellum that made us feel like Dallas could be home.”
Stephanie has been the executive director of the Deep Ellum Foundation since 2018. As the organization that manages the Public Improvement District, DEF has a critical role in nearly every part of the neighborhood’s day-to-day life. It’s about supporting businesses, welcoming neighbors, maintaining cleanliness, keeping things safe, preserving history, and responsibly shepherding progress. To name a few examples, anyway.
“It’s a good combo of thinking about a place holistically and its trajectory and its development and where it comes from, but first and foremost, it’s about community,” she says.
Leading the organization and its growing team is no small job, but Stephanie is built for it.
“I caught the public service bug when I was in Boston. I love cities, everything about how they work, what makes them tick, but particularly communities,” she says.
She studied community and economic development and later cut her teeth working in the Massachusetts State House, where her work involved traveling across the state for various business organizations.
When her family made Dallas home, she worked at The Real Estate Council as its director of programs and partnerships. When Jessica Burnham stepped down from leading the Foundation, Stephanie earned the position and dove in fully.
She sees the organization’s larger purpose as charting a sustainable and inclusive growth trajectory for the neighborhood, while the daily work functions as a connection point – a hub for understanding, synthesizing, and advocating for what the community wants and needs as a whole.
One way, generally, you can know you’re in a Public Improvement District (or a Business Improvement District, as they’re known as outside of Texas) is by looking at the details – trash cans branded with the Public Improvement District’s logo, extra attention to keeping sidewalks clean, enhanced landscaping, and added efforts to maintain a safe environment.
“Most people see the external impacts of what an organization like ours does, but if you ask a lot of our stakeholders what they think the most important thing we do is, it’s advocate for what they value most, because we really do serve as a voice on behalf of the neighborhood,” she says. “It’s about what you care about, and then we do our diligence every single day to make sure that’s translated to city hall, TXDOT, and other agencies that impact the district.”
An example of that is in our parking meters. It’s no secret that there’s a perceived parking issue in the neighborhood (perception is reality, AND the parking garages usually have space), but did you know it’s cheaper to park at meters in the neighborhood than elsewhere where there’s metered parking?
“Parking meters across the city went to a dollar, except in Deep Ellum. Thinking about parking has to be holistic, and a one-size-fits-all approach for the city often doesn’t fit Deep Ellum,” she says.
Another example involves major transportation infrastructure projects. DEF was involved in originally advocating for improvements on Commerce and Elm streets. The staff and board also served as advocates for transportation improvements, from advocating for reshaping I-345 to championing the redoing of small alleyways that flood adjacent businesses.
On the ongoing Commerce Street project, Stephanie worked closely with the City and its design consultant to ensure the look and feel match the needs and wants of business owners and property owners.
“We walked the blocks of Commerce, held meetings, sat down one-on-one to explain the proposed designs to every single stakeholder that we could reach, which was the vast majority.
“We relayed to the City individual design preferences, such as for landscaping or wider sidewalks, on behalf of each storefront, based on the input we gathered, but also synthesized what the community was looking for on the whole in the new design.”
For years, DEF has continued this work into the construction phase, providing an outlet for communication between contractors and businesses, connecting people, and helping troubleshoot issues as they arise. Just this month, DEF’s transportation committee conducted a walk-through with Stephanie to assess how to improve downspouts as a final detail, as repaving interacts with old buildings.
If you live or work in the neighborhood, odds are you’ve come across Stephanie, who not only works there but also spends time in every business, especially the ones offering a good meal. On the weekends, her little kids are in tow, too.
“I became a mom while working in Deep Ellum. My kids go to school right down the street. I will never be caught picking a favorite, but my kids’ favorite spot is Dot’s [Hop House & Cocktail Courtyard], but because it’s a community,” she says. “My kids have had the great fortune of being very young and being part of the community in Deep Ellum.”
Her 3-year-old’s first concert was in the neighborhood, naturally, and they’ve eaten more at St. Pete’s Dancing Marlin or AllGood Cafe “than is probably reasonable for a small person to have consumed,” she says.
Her family has grown in Deep Ellum, and the staff she manages has grown, too, from four to nine staff members. In her time, Deep Ellum has gained its own neighborhood-dedicated Dallas Police Department unit, and six new programs have been launched – including homeless outreach, first-in-the-nation designated rideshare zones for an entertainment district, and the Deep Ellum History Archive. Deep Ellum was designated a Texas Cultural District in 2020 and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2023.
Stephanie also spearheaded the creation of three annual signature events and the yearlong sesquicentennial anniversary celebrations for the neighborhood. The latter is where, in part, this Deep Ellum People series of personal profiles came to be.
DEF started the #DeepEllumpeople campaign when Stephanie started as executive director, first featuring Chris Lewellyn.
“In true Deep Ellum and Chris fashion, he had us feature his whole team versus just himself. Because Deep Ellum is first and foremost a community,” she says. “The idea came to me because I feel strongly that it is the people that make Deep Ellum special, it is the people that make it vital, and I thought DEF would be uniquely positioned to invest in and help tell those incredible stories that inspire me daily.”
She had been dreaming of featuring people on the street pole banners for a few years. When they finally went up for the 150th, she was even more excited to have the invested community more visible to people who live in and visit Deep Ellum.
“We want people to come down for shows, and food, and history, and new and shiny things, too, but we know what truly makes Deep Ellum tick is the people. There is an energy that is palpable, where even though it is the premier entertainment district in the region, you get the sense walking down the street that it is a community, almost like a small town of its own,” she says.
“Deep Ellum isn’t a given. It is blood, sweat, tears, commitment, innovation, creativity, and the dedication of a truly motley crew of fascinating characters that make Deep Ellum what it is and a place that is truly unparalleled around the world. We are so honored to uplift their stories.”
