Apparently, the Rest of the Country Cares More About Re:Visioning Dallas Than Dallas

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Jul. 21 2009 at 11:01 AM

Categories: News

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So, by now you're probably plenty beaten down by all the items we've had in recent weeks dealing with Re:Vision Dallas and that proposed sustainable block behind City Hall. Because, clearly, you just don't care. I just noticed that for the last couple of weeks, Urban Re:Vision has been taking a poll to find out which of the three finalists folks actually prefer. So far, it's a landslide victory for the Entangled Bank, whose designer we visited with a few days ago during his trip to Dallas. But of the 1,856 votes cast thus far, only 65 are from Texas.

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"Who would not be willing to pay $50 more in taxes to have the parks in GREAT shape and to have other city services maintained?" Your forgetting where you are. This is Texas, home of Glen Beck and the Tea Party. This is the place where a local option transportation tax (a local tax to fund local trans projects) lays still born. People here are against taxes of any kind -even if it actually helps them in the long run.
Show us the money you have to build it. Otherwise, it's just needlessly raising expectations.
lakewoodhobo, you are right, it is an enviable city. However, the cuts in the city budget will adversly impact the city parks and the demise of the Office of Cultural Affairs will adversly impact our image as a cultural center, just as the Center for the Performing Arts is opening, the largest such center since Lincoln Center in New York. Who would not be willing to pay $50 more in taxes to have the parks in GREAT shape and to have other city services maintained?
I will clarify my last comment and say that Dallas CAN get something like this done. We have an enviable city with a respectable light rail system, a reawakening downtown core (excellent job on the Merc block), not to mention some beautiful parks and arts facilities coming online in the next few months. It would be amazing to capture the attention of the country for being innovative and building a sustainable city block. We can get behind it if it's done right, on budget, and free of the political tug-of-war that tends to ruin these projects for us.
I support any entry that includes (a) cattle grazing on rooftops with no perimeter fencing and (b) private herb [cough] gardens.
For what it's worth, the president of Urban Re:Vision is coming to town this weekend to touch base with the locals behind the project -- John Greenan and Brent Brown -- both of whom insist the project is moving forward. As mentioned before, the land's under contract for the development, and Greenan insists a development will get underway sometime in 2010.
To further lakewoodhobo, I know exactly why no one around here cares. We who live here no there is absolutely 0.0% chance anything will ever go there but a parking lot. We've seen it so many damn times we <i>just don't care</i>. As for the pretty renderings, I'm just surprised haven�t come from robber baron developers somehow finding some way to try to tap into that public money before disappearing and leaving nothing behind. I've been places where this sort of thing would be a big deal, and for them, it's a great thing. But here it's just another wart on the ugly face of "Can't Do City"�.
Point taken.
There's probably some sort of pipe-dream fatigue going around. Between the Trinity River levee saga, the vote on the hotel, the failure of Victory Park and beyond, those of us who care about things like this are a bit skeptical it'll ever get built, less yet without some massive public subsidy and a long political battle over it. If it can get built, let's build it. Until then, Dallas is burned out on pretty renderings.