The Latest Look at What the City and the Stakeholders Want Out of Downtown Dallas

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Jun. 22 2010 at 8:28 AM

Categories: News

Initially MIG Inc.'s Downtown Dallas 360 plan was due to the city council before its summer vacation, set to start more or less after tomorrow's marathon meeting. But the addition of the parking study pushed back the deadline till later this summer, which gives MIG more time to meet with downtown stakeholders to determine what the what's needed downtown. Which brings me to this: Late yesterday, MIG posted to the Downtown Dallas 360 site the long-awaited summary of its May meetings with, among others, property and business owners and City Hall, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Downtown Dallas, Downtown Residents Council and Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau reps.

It's brief -- four pages. But it should give you some idea of what to expect from the plan the closer we get to its presentation to the council. Forthcoming: a separate summary from the first meeting of the Parking Study Steering Committee. Till then, some highlights from the May downtown sit-downs, in which we find, surprisingly, significant mention made of the proposed 11.3-acre Spire mixed-use development planned for the Arts District. As in: "Encourage appropriate urban design within the Spire development: Add a special use overlay street on Hawkins St. [And] ensure no street closures."

There are a lot of ideas jammed into those four pages. Among them: There's mention made of deck-parking I-30 "to expand on and complement Dallas Heritage Village"; putting a skate park and "a landscape of illuminated columns designed by artists" under Good-Latimer Expressway; repurposing the downtown tunnels as "bicycle parking"; "pull[ing] Main Street development east towards gateway to Deep Ellum"; bringing "new energy" to the West End Marketplace (like an ESPN Zone, maybe); and being "bold in spurring public investment to catalyze private investment!" That's their exclamation mark, not mine.

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