Dallas Blog

that's the weakest, piece of shit flash mob in the history of weak, piece of shit flash mobs.

Do they not realize that the city is the metaphoric "machine" in band name Rage Against the Machine?

Do they think that taxpayers are said "machine"?

I hope that Rage reunites in a courtroom to sue the shit out of them.

This is just awful...

Who's the creative/marketing team responsible for this again? Or was it, as I recall, some "grassroots" effort or some such? Right...

This is a prime example of "not doing their homework" - Trust me, I know, coming from having worked in advertising at national agencies and small shops here in town for about 8 years prior to where I am now, I saw it all the time... But this, sheesh...

But you want to know the really sad thing about all this is? There are people who think this is "ground-breaking" and "edgy" - and they are just so proud of it...

...

Wow, you are some angry people.

I support the hotel but this is not a good way to get votes.

Does anyone have a place where I can crash for awhile? After a late night partying Friday, I came home, only to be given the 5th degree by my parents.... wanting to know where I had been, etc?

It was really none of their business!

Anyway, one of my friends ratted me out... told pops that I was working on trying to get "a really cool" convention center hotel built, because, like, we need that economic engine, you dig?

Well, pops kicked me out... so, like I said, I'm lookin' for a place to stay... at least 'til my check from The Richards Group shows up in the mail.

Pops shoulda never crossed me-- I'd take a bullet for my main man, Tom Leppert!

Do these people have any idea how much it costs to license a RATM song for use in any advertising campaign?

I can't imagine these people would spend the quarter of million dollars just to procure a mechanical license for something like this.

If this gets backs to RATM's publishing company, somebody is going to be on the hook for a VERY large sum of money.

Think taxpayers will eventually end up paying the settlement?

Red umbrellas.

How appropriate for a bunch of kids too young to remember the lessons of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Albania, Czechoslovakia and all those other places where the government owned everything.

You know -- the countries that don't exist any more.

LOL - this is some funny shit...

It's cool brah - It's totally grassroots yo!

I still do not know why a bunch of 20-somethings, who probably don't pay County taxes directly(renting), care about a hotel built for people who do not live in this city. I'm being serious on this one. What's in it for them? Grass-roots for what?

@lemurskin
I think the answer to your question is that Leppert and Co. have managed to convince a lot of people of different ages, some who pay direct property taxes and some who don't (absolutely irrelevant...) that this hotel is part of the overall continuing effort to reshape Dallas along the lines laid out in the "Forward Dallas" plan and other urban design initiatives.

This is probably particularly appealing to a younger generation of Americans with starkly different core values (that are NOT disappearing as they get older so save your condescension and opinion that everyone will transform into YOU as they age lol). This is a generation that holds urban living as a higher form of life than boomers and even X'ers raised to love suburbia. Younger generations also are more comfortable with and desiring of diversity. This is more common in dense urban environments. There are a whole host of reasons but what it boils down to is that they see this as a way for the city to move forward towards greater urbanization/urban diversity. Of course the whole argument is crap and there are better ways to accomplish this in my opinion, but I think that sums up their support and the support of many. And you can hear it in their language and the language of Leppert and others, the idea that Dallas has to keep "moving forward." Again I disagree but being condescending to younger people simply because they're younger and have a different point of view than you is immature and unproductive.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, younger workers are necessary for our city to continue to thrive, (unless you wanna all the bad parts of Pittsburgh without the Universities/natural splendor...) If anyone as a Dallasite wants the city to move forward not being able to attract young workers is not going to be a plus. Of course I don't think that means we need a hotel but this issue is a lot more complex than screaming with your mouth frothing "you don't pay no darn taxes shut the hell up" or lame and totally inaccurate satirical depictions of youth using slang from the 70's lol.

@Jay

Well said. We may have different opinions on the hotel but at least you have a firm grasp on what is going on. It's nice to read comments that are informative instead of people attacking other people.

It's unfathomable to me that young people would be in favor of such a retrograde idea as a convention center hotel. That's how we tried to grow cities in the 1980s and it did nothing to spur development. Turns out you revitalize downtowns by building cool and affordable housing, expanding your parks, offering incentives to small businesses and eschewing big box development.

@Massengil

Nope, that wasn't me but thanks for proving my point. Why do you have to resort to name calling? Is that the best you can do? Douchebag? I guess it's my own fault for reading these comments.

@Really?

I guess it comes down to these young people want to see downtown grow and the hope is that the hotel will help bring people and businesses in. If the hotel isn't the answer then what is? How are we going to make downtown a destination? Expensive condos and high priced restaurants aren't working.

I just watched channel 8's "Hotel Debate" from Saturday and found the answer to my RIP question. Leppert is attempting to distance himself as "the face" of the issue. He said: "Its not about me, it's about those young people that stood up". He refers to RIP as a group of young professionals who took it upon themselves to study the issue and realized how important it was to their future to have the hotel built.

I was recently downtown visiting my 20 year-old son, and he said to me, "You know, Dad. What would really make this downtown great was if it had a lot more conventioneers running around because conventioneers are the coolest of the cool and all the new development that will be built to entertain some 45 year-old plumber will clearly appeal to me, too, as a soon-to-be 21 year-old urban dweller."

This is quite a change from when I was in my 20s and seeking out an urban lifestyle (before giving up and moving to the suburbs). I tended to not think conventioneers as being on the cutting edge.

My choice of music for this ad would be:

"Leper(t) Messiah" by Metallica from the Master of Puppets album.

BOW TO LEPPERT MESSIAH!

@ Chris

"I guess it comes down to these young people want to see downtown grow and the hope is that the hotel will help bring people and businesses in. If the hotel isn't the answer then what is? How are we going to make downtown a destination? Expensive condos and high priced restaurants aren't working."

I'd debate that yes it is working, but then again most of the residential units aren't high-priced condos, but rental units. A bit of economics, the most expensive land will always be downtown, in any city in any country. So naturally it will be more expensive. Some city's use rent controls or other devices to contain market-value rent. But, the plain truth is that now, downtown is more vibrant than when I moved in 3 years ago.

As for the restaurants, I agree, there are too-many high priced eateries and a lower priced points would do well, but that is an urban design issue. We put those things in the tunnels and no hotel will fix that.

As for your claims that the hotel will revitalize downtown because it will bring in conventions, when will it actually work? That claim was used to build the arena (the circular roof near the CC), then build the CC, then expand it, then expand it, then expand it and then remodel it. Everyone of those were done with the promise of revitalizing downtown. When will it work? When will downtown be revitalized.

Now add to that the shinking industry that is conventions and the fact that other cities have spent billions to attract conventions and what does that give us? A waste of money. Chicago built a CCH in 1998. Five years later they had seen less conventions than before. St. Louis has defaulted on theirs as the promise that "users would pay back the bond debt" proved not to be true. New York is still a top destination for conventiions and doesn't have an attached hotel. What does it all mean? That a hotel is not a needed as claimed and would be a frivolous waste of money.

@ cp

You should be troubled that the idea of "grooming" one's children for a life of civic leadership was the term and concept used by the aristocracy of Europe. You trained your children to understand and give lip service to the poor ("charity work"), while profiting off them in a life that was completely disconnected from their plight.

I'm not one for conspiracies, but it's a fact that inter-generational transfer of wealth is a roadblock to true capitalism, where the hardest working people with the best ideas prosper. It removes the incentive to work and create value in society. Instead, time and money are spent protecting the status quo and existing vested interests.

Many Dallas natives are just a few generations removed from East Texas so you can hardly compare them to any aristocracy. Maybe a few lived the "Tara" lifestyle way back when.

I don't know the Scovells well but they actually attended DISD schools (gasp!) and take pride and interest in their city.

I don't agree with them on this (I think we should use such funds for streetcars and Fair Park) but I don't begrudge them their position nor any monetary interest they may have. I feel the same about the family of my personal real estate hero, Trammell Crow.

The Gaylord Texan is just an souped-up Embassy Suites. Why not give visitors something real by holding conventions and building a hotel at Fair Park? With a streetcar coming down Haskell, connecting to DART Fair Park and the Santa Fe Trail over a day-lighted Mill Creek? This is the way I would spend money...

We really should all get together and discuss this rationally at the Windmill or the Landing ;)

Nobody does anything for free. Not even poor poeple or middle-class poeple. Yeah wealthy poeple (as well as many middle class folks, I might add) give to charity because of tax reasons. You act as if people in this country don't have a right to attain wealth and be as obnoxious about it as they like. You and I might think some poeple are greedy and that's possible when we talk about people who have a home in the Hamptons, a villa on the French Riviera, a private condo in the Caymans and a ski lodge in the Swiss Alps. And use a fleet of private jets to get to and fro them all. Sure, that's motivated by pure greed. That's not the case right here and now.

Geez, have you ever even been invited to a "charity event", more commonly termed a non-profit fundraiser? As someone who spends a good 70% of my time trying to come up with good reasons to get people to the "party", you're totally wrong-there are around 1.5 million non-profit organizations in the country, and most are very small (with budgets under $25k a year). We're a little bigger than that but still considered small, and I'm proud of how well we leverage our dollars. In fact, I'm having a little fundraiser on Thursday, do you need to be invited, so you can socialize with all the cool kids? I like to think that people will come to my "party" because we tell a damn good story that's fun and interesting. This isn't the Cattle Baron's Ball.

LakeWWWooder has a good point, that the Scovells went to DISD schools. They don't live in HP, and didn't send their kids to private schools. This beating them up because they're rich and connected is getting tiresome and I just hate to see poeple that are well-intentioned continue to get bashed and their motivations questioned by poeple who happen to disagree with them on this ONE single stinkin issue. This whole debate has turned into a class thing because of the RIP group. Now it's about sons and daughters of rich people are evil and clueless. It's getting real old real fast and May 9 can't get here fast enough.