Angela Hunt Tours the Statler, Which "Could Be One of the Coolest Addresses in Downtown"

• Zzzzz... She's an architecture critic now? Or you're making her out to be an expert in urban planning? Really, who gives an EFF?

• All that place needs is a good scrape and paint and some serious cleaning. Replace the linens and carpets and voila, a cool destination hotel for a step back in time.

• Very cool slide show. Great looking building with good "bones." Kinda creepy to look at though. It seems like it is preserved in time. Makes me think of "The Shining." Hey, wouldn't this place make a great backdrop for a movie? Or, the next addition of "Ghost Hunters"? Surely there are a few here.

• I was got drunk in that bar on the corner in college. I was underage and therefore drank many whiskey sours. It was OU/TX and it was a damn fine destination for drinking. The kids need a new place for that. bring it back.

• Even if the park across the street ends up being full of homeless people, it's still an improvement over what was there before. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but even as a humongous fat guy, downtown has never seemed that hot to me when I've been down there walking around, and I've been down there plenty in the summertime (it wasn't that long ago that I was taking classes for a worthless masters degree at UCD and frequently walking from the St. Paul DART station to UCD).

• This was in daily use as a hotel for over forty years - claustrophobia, a/c and asbestos did not seem to be an issue. Isn't there a lower cost way to get it back open? I would like to see it used as subsidized housing for Dallas teachers, fire and police.

• As far as cool is concerned, midcentury modern isn't going anywhere - it's "coolness" is going to hang around more than just a trend, I think. This building truly could be a solid foundation for growth at this end of downtown. As for making it affordable, I completely understand that if the construction numbers don't work, you can't make the rent affordable. My point was that you don't need to spend a bunch of money on granite countertops, crown molding, and other "upgrades" that apartment builders think are necessities, but aren't appropriate for that building. For example, look at how the Republic Center apartments (another midcentury modern classic a couple of blocks away) were finished out and you can see exactly what is NOT appropriate. If the issues are asbestos, HVAC, and other major construction costs, that's a whole different story.

• It all sounds too good to be true. Well then, "It probably is." Streetcars? Sidewalks? Shops? Pedestrians? Where is the funding going to come from? Oh, yes,Obama. Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one gets filled the first.

• "Downtown used to be "cool", now it's no longer "cool". Victory Park was way cool. Now it's a backdrop for weather men." Downtown and Victory Park are cool. So is uptown. They are just missing a few critical elements to making them truly livable. A grocery store, schools, libraries, parks, etc. The thing most developers don't understand is that it's the little things that make a place a home. Shopping is the national pass-time, but sooner or later it gets old. Mixed use developments need more than retail, restaurants, and condos to be successful. You have to make it a home. (Or maybe they do know this, and just don't care because libraries, schools, and parks are wasted land and money to them.)

• Great slide show. Looks as if they just locked the door and walked out with all the equipment left in place.

• I don't think it'll fly these days. The units would be too expensive and the financing for anything like this is going to be even more impossible over the next 6 to 18 months as the bad commercial real estate loan wave comes ashore. My gut feeling is for the next 5 years you're not going to get anything grandiose but instead will see smaller renovations like 2 story bottom tenant/upstairs apartment type stuff.

• "Make these cool and affordable, and you won't have a problem leasing them out. There's no reason they have to be $1800 a month for a 1-bedroom." There is if you have spend hundreds of millions of dollars, which is what it would take to renovate the building.

• "Downtown used to be "cool", now it's no longer "cool". Victory Park was way cool. Now it's a backdrop for weather men." I don't think Victory Park was ever considered 'cool' in any way except the imaginations of its creators. And their marketing plans. And Daniel's comment is genius.

• Tim, If Dallas would save 1 out of every 3 of its historic buildings, that would be an improvement. Our actual ratio is quite a bit higher, unfortunately.

• ignoreLander Ok, maybe a little lawyerly hyperbole. I should have said, Really, it's only about a month that it's pizza oven, egg frying, ice tea boiling miserably hot. I guess a day like today makes me think Dallas is tolerable.

• Anon., You know, I've worked down here for two years, and didn't even know it was two blocks from me. Duh. Thanks for the tip...

• One model to consider, - Detroit's Book Cadillac Hotel, now renovated into a Westin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Cadillac http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=3001 It was a complex deal, requiring over 32 different funding sources, but the hotel is back and open. Opened in 1928, abandoned in 1984, reopened in 2008. It's a larger building than the Grand. I don't know for sure what the ceiling heights are, but I believe they are taller than 8 feet. In historic preservation, I think you have to consider what I call the Rule of 3 - for every three structures you WANT to save, you are only going to be able to save 1. This was true in Detroit - the Book-Cadillac survived, while the Statler-Hilton and the Hudson building fell.

• Angela Hunt doesn't like Mid-Century Modern eh? First she falls in line with the goose-stepping anti-smokers while stomping on <i>private property</i> rights, and now this. Laura Wolens didn't hurt me this much. That's why one should never trust any politician further than you one can shot-put a planet. Even if they come off at first blush to be sensible. Oh, and bill h: "hot here for about a month or so"? Come on now....

• &#64; Angela - thank you for the wonderful pictures and vision of a renovated Statler. @ matthew - you should get to downtown more often: try the Urban Market grocery. Decent prices, well stocked @ Hannibal Lecter - your negative attitude contributes no solutions. Because YOU see the park as a hobo camp doesn't mean it will be. Some people don't care for its modern architecture. Others feel the mid-century style is wonderful. Personally I think it is one of the City's signature buildings. Re-purposing the Statler as residential will pose some challenges. The address, however, will be enviable.

• I'm all about the urban infill, but is anyone talking about adding a grocery store somewhere downtown? If people have to crank up their cars to get food, public transit won't become the lifestyle change Dallas will need to make the streetcars and light rail work.

• Isn't "coolness" terribly perishable? In fact, isn't it the single biggest reason things can be depended on to ALWAYS go to shit in Dallas? Downtown used to be "cool", now it's no longer "cool". Victory Park was way cool. Now it's a backdrop for weather men.

• Chris, Oncor handles street lights not the city. http://www.oncor.com/community/streetlights/form.aspx That is probably why you are not getting a response from 311.

• I for one cannot believe Angela Hunt was wearing red!

• If the asbestos isn't a deal-breaker, I think conversion is doable, IF you get the RIGHT developer who understands what mid-century modern architecture is. If you get someone in there who thinks it needs to look like Perry Homes crap, it's doomed. ******** Exactly, modterm. That place would be awesome if it got fixed up right. One of my friends redid a neglected mid-century modern house, complete with period furnishings, and it's amazing. I don't care for it myself, but it's a distinct and very cool style when it is done right.

• Both 5- and 105-degree temperatures are very uncomfortable, but when you walk in 105 degrees you end up drenched in sweat and in need of a shower. When you walk in 5 degrees, you bundle up, get to your destination, and may be painfully cold but still socially presentable. It's a big difference. We don't care if the person next to us in the elevator is cold, but we do care if they're soaked and stinking. That's why cold weather is practially far more walkable than hot weather.

• The Statler is incredible, and just because housewives in Plano or Frisco want 30 foot ceilings and crown molding doesn't mean everyone does. Make these cool and affordable, and you won't have a problem leasing them out. There's no reason they have to be $1800 a month for a 1-bedroom. If the asbestos isn't a deal-breaker, I think conversion is doable, IF you get the RIGHT developer who understands what mid-century modern architecture is. If you get someone in there who thinks it needs to look like Perry Homes crap, it's doomed.

• Can we stop talking about the streetcars like they'll be right out of the 1920s? The streetcars that Angela Hunt is talking about are modern machines that are air-conditioned and look more like small DART rail trains than the McKinney Ave trolley.

• Also, I reject the idea we are not 'walkable'. I walked at lunch today, down the Katy Trail, bought my wife a 25th wedding anniversary, took the shirts to the cleaners, back to the office. I do this on most days that are not over 105. We need to accept it's hot here for about a month or so. I'm all for historic preservation. I don't know what to think about the Hilton, it looks pretty far gone to me, and wouldn't be all that excited about spending city money to fix it up. I see your point Jay about either or, but in this economic climate, there seem to be choices about how to spend money best. That community garden space is creating a cool look to that part of downtown.

• Chris, the streetcars will likely be paid at least in part with Federal Transportation grants. It seems that investing in central Dallas where density and capacity offer the greatest opportunity for growth. No longer is this forcing the market but responding to it. West Village and McKinney are domestic examples of street cars working, despite the one line being more a novelty act than pragmatic. But put in a few other lines downtown and suddenly you have a nice intricate network once the trolleys are coupled with DART rail. We did have trolleys back in the 30s and 50s. They were pulled up initially due to a campaign by the oil companies amidst outrage over electric rates. Interurbans remained into the 50s but were eventually removed. It's not clear that they were ever unsuccessful, though very cheap gas, a post war auto industry and suburban sprawl eventually did them in. Many believe it was a mistake. San Francisco never removed their cable cars and that was most likely a profitable decision. This city was planned and built with the streetcars. It makes sense to return them to the denser, older neighborhoods that pre-date WW2. Those happen to contain a good portion of our night-spots, museums, public facilities, densest zoning greatest opportunity for growth and development. I absolutely agree that the street cars should be air conditioned, though I am less worried about them being heated. Most likely, heating them is the easier of the two.

• Having lived in cities where 8 months out of the year qualify your front lawn as a long term storage space for frozen goods, I will never understand the argument that Dallas's weather precludes walkability & things like streetcars etc. Once you get past the weather non-sense it's pretty easy to see that streetcars are cheap compared to light-rail, combat pollution and traffic problems by increasing transportation alternatives, and spur economic development as has been proven in study after study. But no, instead of talking about advantages and figuring out ways to get all the positive things we can done effectively let's needlessly pit streetcars against schools as if one precludes the other. Dallas - the either/or city. Residents are far too lazy to try to figure out how to get multiple things done at once.

• Yeah, lets not dismiss the streetcars. Lets reserve that for things like Code Enforcement.

• It would be nice to redevelop the building into something useful, but after seeing the ruin down condition, not sure I would want to suggest it to people even if it is deemed "safe" by government standards. As for streetcars, well, didn't we used to have some, way back when? Besides, Seattle and Portland are places people enjoy being outdoors, with nice parks and oh yeah, cooler weather where you CAN be outdoors. I hope these streetcars have a/c, otherwise a bust. But, we're investing lots of money downtown, where no one is or goes due to main reasons, while our neighbors are starting to fall apart - I filed a 311 online request to fix streetlights three weeks ago and nothing yet. Potholes are bad, break-ins rise in North Dallas and schools are failing. I think we have much better ways to spend taxpayer money than on falling apart old buildings and streetcars.

• Hannibal's right. It would be much better to tear down the Statler and make it a parking lot. We don't have enough of those Downtown. You're misinformed about the ceiling issue. The hallways are taller than 8 feet and there is room for HVAC to run along the side of the hallways (one possibility). The HVAC issue is not a deal-breaker. As for the streetcars, we can agree to disagree on them, but take a look at the development they've leveraged in places like Portland and Seattle before dismissing them.

• &#64;Hannibal, I think you missed one typeo.The end of your post should read: "...And Get off my Lawn!"

• The problem isn't with the 8 foot ceilings, per se. The problem is that there's a single concrete slab that serves as a ceiling for one unit and the floor for the unit above. There's no way to run new plumbing between floors, and the 8 foot ceilings mean you can't hang it from the ceiling. Without new plumbing you can't add kitchens, thus precluding conversions to apartments. And let's fix some typos here: "Imagine the new homeless campground is done, the taxpayer-subsidized third-rate vocational school for lawyers has moved into the municipal courts building that the city allowed to go to pot, and the streets are torn up for 5 years while the city spends $80 million on trolleys that no one will actually use. The Statler could be one of the coolest vacant buildings in Downtown."

• Great slide show indeed. Perfect for today's sophisticated bachelor -- the man who enjoys his Hemingway, but also demands the finest in his hi-fi equipment, the man who is equally at ease discussing Sputnik, the World Series or Miles Davis, the man who owns a 3-volume encyclopedia of cocktails but rarely requires its guidance, the kind of modern, educated gentleman who is very comfortable with himself and the opposite gender and not at all shy about sex matters.

• Yes, +1 on the slideshow. I did not think that much was in there but that place could be pretty cool if done right. Diggin' that circular fireplace wall.

• "Imagine Main Street Garden is done, the UNT Law School has moved into the municipal courts building, and the modern streetcar is up and running on Commerce (with its mate on Elm). The Statler could be one of the coolest addresses in Downtown." SOOOOOOME WHERE......OOOOVER THE RAAAAINBOOOW.....

• great photos, have never seen that much of the building before.

• +1 on the slide show.

• I don't get why people/developers in Dallas feel tall ceilings are nice. Especially in bars or hotels. A lower ceiling makes for a more intimate and cozy setting. High ceilings are fine for group areas, entrances or ballrooms. Cold and dark can be nice on a hot Texas day and warm and cozy is always good on a frigid winter day/night on these plains.

• Go to London. Stay in The Sanderson or St. Martin's Lane hotels. You will see the possibilities.

• Two eight foot ceilings plus a sledgehammer can be one 16 foot ceiling!

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