One Critic Thinks AT&T PAC Is Pretty on the Inside. But the Outside? Not So Much.

• Posh you impostor of Wick. The real Wick knows that Lew Sterrett is Dallas' nod to Alcatraz and with the Margret Hunt Hill Bridge, our own Golden Gate, Bay Bridge to come... Once the Trinity Lake is built, and the Trinity Lock system Dallas will be a major shipping port.

• Welcome to Dallas

• Mike Guy, Far be it for me to dispel your incessant nay-saying, when commiserating with your peers in the bleachers is clearly your wont. However, I must point out that where the ordinary see only obstacles, the leaders among us see a challenge to relish. Relocating the Lew Sterrett Justice Center to less troublesome climes is the opportunity of a generation. Shall it be South Oak Cliff? Pleasant Grove? Whatever the solution turns out to be, rest assured that our own homegrown visionaries will find it and that, as I write this, they approach their task with gusto. -W

• This is a problem that has plagued Dallas for decades. They knew a Trinity Lake was planned for the near future. So what do they do but build a huge jail in front of it. Farmers Market was suppose to be a gathering place. They build the homeless shelter next to it. City Hall Plaza was going to set the new standard back when. It had the only public "you can touch it" and best piece of art Dallas owns, the Henry Moore. The homeless pee on it, it burns your hands when you touch it and there is NO grass so there is no there, there. You can see it sometimes when you drive by. The worst art project is probably the most touched and approachable. The cattle drive next to the convention center. It should be in Ft. Worth or Frisco. No green, no fountains, nothing to draw you in. Dall isas nice to look at from a couple of angles from the comfort of your car.

• It costs hardly anything to invite musicians to play, artists to set up booths, etc. Perhaps that's the problem. Nothing gets done in Dallas unless it costs a minimum of $500 million dollars.

• <i>There needs to be a soul there.</i> Are you kidding? In <i>this</i> credit market? Rest assured, though, "A Soul" is third on the list in the city's new <i>Vision! 2025</i> plan.

• Flora street shouldnt even exist. It should be closed to vehicular traffic and be an open space for vendors, artists, musicians etc. There needs to be a soul there. The buildings are gorgeous but its embarassing to take out of towners there because they see our arts district has no cultural soul.

• I suggest you visit One Art Square next time you are down there. Its a shorter walk from the square to the theaters than it is from the Mort to its parking lot. Or go about 4pm.

• Jay said it best - I'd only add why not a bench, a bike rack, a water fountain, and yes a street vendor - to quote VFL - "we'll get some eventually but they will be upscale" - what is wrong with a hot dog vendor. The people that paid got just what they want - it will take some time for things to change.

• This describes 99.9999% of Dallas. A girl I went to college with from France once described it as a giant concrete soul crushing machine. Like on Star Wars, but without the vivacity of a sleek monster underneath the trash.

• I've been doing design work long enough to know that if you want a specific activity to happen any place, you've got to build in the patterns or else the place will never come to life... www.patternlanguage.com is where you should look if you want a fix...also take a look at Christopher Alexander's "Nature of Order" for inspiration. There is only one way to produce a Living Architecture and I really don't see it happening at all in the arts district...and I;ve got to assume that it's probably just the way the people who paid for it like it. Is it not a beauty?

• Typical Dallas. The shortcomings of the structures can be overcome by PEOPLE and the force of the culture on the street. This is supposed to be an arts district. Where are the buskers? Oh it's illegal...where are the artists setting up stalls? Where are the jewelry makers selling their wares? Where are the street poets? None of these things are facilitated or even ALLOWED. The arts district is not home to the arts, it's home to the shiny and oft-overpriced, culture by and for the people who deigned to finance it almost exclusively (with the occasional bone thrown to "ordinary folks"). I enjoy the Nasher, Jazz Under the Stars, Madame Butterfly at the Winspear, etc. but at the end of the day any place that truly plans to celebrate the arts needs to open itself up to every day self expression. It's neither difficult or expensive, especially in a city with hundreds of local artists and performers who'd kill to be putting on a set along Flora street, or to put up a stall on one of the many plazas or abandoned spaces. But alas, organic and real isn't Dallas's scene...

• The buildings in the Arts District are gorgeous and can truly put Dallas on the map as an arts destination. But I agree with this guy about the outdoor spaces. Those streets need to be removed and all the venues connected by common areas that will bring people off the streets and allow them to easily and peacefully wander throughout the Arts District. As of now, I've only walked through the area once on a sunday afternoon, and was shocked at how unconnected and fragmented the area is. A reworking of Ross Ave, and getting something built on the stonehenge parking garage site will help too. Right now, Dallas has the Arts District about half right.

• I can't simply bypass this discussion without having to point out the engineered ugliness of I. M. Pei's Meyerson exterior. @ lakewoodhobo, as with the Nasher garden, we simply <b>can't have</b> public art where just <i>anyone</i> on the street could enjoy it. What a barbaric notion!

• Not to mention the worst offender: Annette Strauss Artist Square, an outdoor performance space surrounded by a concrete wall (and this completely invisible to patrons of the new park). Can we just get it over with and rename it Alcatraz Amphitheater?

• He's right. The issue not addressed and oft-overlooked when analyzing public open spaces, is the definition created by the built form. There is a direct relationship between spaces and the buildings that (ought to, at least) form those spaces. When buildings reject creating order or form out of space, the spaces fail, then the district fails (speaking hypothetically). Buildings properly framing public spaces create either the potential for success of streets, plazas, and parks to operate as centers of activity or they can damn them to failure. Some of the buildings in the Arts District made attempts at doing the right thing, but are undermined by various other forces, such as the barriers of highways, lack of any real contributive urban context (to which the clustering of performing arts facilities undermines), or just bad landscape design such as the bizarre "plaza" in front of the Winspear, etc. On the other hand, REX and the Wyly chose to ignore the role of a building to either frame space or be a sculptural object itself. They chose neither.

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