Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Rubble Is Now All that Remains Of Oak Cliff Christian Church

• The building was finally put out of its misery. Old, desolated, and only inhabitted by rats, mice, and other critters, the old church was thrown down, but for the cause of moving on and looking forward to the future.

• Have any of you been in Adamson? I took a tour with several architects and construction types. Aside from the fact that the interior is stunning-all original doors, woodwork, tile, etc.-it is actually in good space. There is a problem on the front facade but it doesn't warrant tearing the school down or closing it up. DISD feels compelled to build new instead of maintaining what they have. Maintenance is a whole lot cheaper than building new. Just wait--in 10 years they'll want to tear the new school down because they didn't maintain it and it's in bad shape. Oh, and how "green" is it to tear down that building and haul it off to the landfill? I thought the City wanted every one to be "green". The greenest building is the one already built.

• Roosevelt is by no means the only school with a low total enrollment and a low average daily attendance. It's endemic in DISD. New schools aren't needed; new attendance zones are needed. Check out shiny, new Medrano Middle School and see how under capacity they are while nearby middle schools STILL have portables and are overcrowded. Here's the drill: Tax citizens and give the money to builders/contractors/vendors, who will then give a bunch of it back to you in the form of a campaign donation.

• And of the 700 students at S'velt on average only 64% are present 90% of the time. How's them apples? But redrawing lines causes more unhappiness than filling contractors pockets while picking yours and mine. No doubt Adamson needed some upgrading, but a new building was necessary for the contracted vendors. That is why a $200,000 bldg ended up over a million before it was town down. And yes, G David, this horse is dead so time to dismount.

• Weird: nobody's rescuing those capitals or posts, I could get $500 apiece for them if I could lug them into the Range Rover, I mean into my 1977 Toyota. You'd think any conservation efforts could have tried to save some components: these are all in a heap.

• Meanwhile just down the road Roosevelt High only has 700 students..but it's 'historically black' so the attendence zone remains the same and new schools are built.

• Jon, I have Larry Throm on digital recordings from the Budget Presentations that say different. http://www.dfpe.org/podcasts.asp What has changed since June?

• If only reactionary, dismissive offhand remarks had a value. Then you might actually know something about the impossible logistics of your assertion.

• If only BS had a value. Then, all of the so called OC activists could have had an auction and saved the church.

• There are no plans whatsoever to "mothball" the new schools that are being built as part of the 2008 bond program. They will open on schedule. Jon Dahlander Dallas ISD

• The current plan is for Dallas ISD to spend almost $1B in the construction of 12 new schools in the next 2 years using previously approved bond funds. The catch is that they do not have, and will not have, the funds to actually open and staff at least 8 of the new schools. Their current plan is to "mothball" the new schools until some future date when funds become available. So how is this benefiting the children? Who is really profiting from this construction? Did you know that this is going to personally cost you money if you are a taxpayer? I do know this, very few people seem to care.

• Who comes up with these schemes? The DISD trustees. How do you think they paid the people to tear down the church? Your tax dollars. They just couldn't wait to tear this church down. They can't balance out enrollment numbers on actual campuses so actual kids don't have to miss lunch due to overcrowding, but they waste no time in paying someone to tear a building down. Because no one is watching what they do, they take YOUR tax dollars and blow it on stuff like this. Day in, day out. The trustees like it that no one cares. While everyone is busy griping about Leppert and the convention center hotel or the levees or the farmers' market, DISD is quietly going about the business of funneling tax dollars to companies who will, in turn, give back part of that money to trustees in the form of campaign contributions. It's a BILLION dollars a year we're talking about, but as long as you don't care, they'll keep it up. And it won't remain a vacant field--they'll give the money to some builder to build a crummy building whose roof will cave in 3 years after it's completed. The builder will get rich and will, in turn, give money back to the trustees.

• Don't get me wrong. Dallas pisses me off as much as the next guy, when it comes to tearing down stuff and putting up another intersection that looks exactly like the one 2 miles up the road. But I don't have enough money to save old churches, and apparently nobody that does was interested. That really limits the options.

• People often ask me why I and others sneak in to take photos of abandonments. The short answer is that the photos we take is all that's left.

• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=app_2915120374#!/album.php?aid=149631&id=755262731

• G. Dave, I can't imagine there's anything left to write about it. Unless it goes ghost-al.

• Thankfully this will bring a close to blog posts regarding this church. Horse sufficiently dead.

• !!!!!!! I submitted an offer for the facade or pieces of the facade. I cannot believe they tore it down without removing the facade. With that money perhaps DISD could water the brand new landscaping they install on these new schools and how about general maintenance like mowing and edging. Imbeciles!

• Just like the Hard Rock and the Esquire..will be vacant land rather than a piece of history. Maybe I'm weird but I still get upset going by the site of the old Ross Avenue Baptist Church...at least that one burned and did not die from a malevolent bulldozer or crane wielded by Neanderthals who don't know the value of history. And I was just thinking of the Wilshire Theater the other day..instead we have CVS and KFC.

• "Options" indeed. An historic church, or a Church's Chicken.

• Jesus is pissed.

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