Downtown's city-owned Omni Hotel has been a roaring success since it opened a year-and-a-half ago, routinely filling up and helping score such convention-business coups as the annual gathering of the American Meat Institute and the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Expo.

But the Omni was only one component of the city's plan to revitalize the newly rechristened Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and the southwestern corner of downtown. The convention center itself is getting a badly needed, $60-million update. A hotel-tax slush fund was created to help lure big meetings. Southside on Lamar is thriving.

Next on the list: drawing shops and restaurants to the area surrounding Omni and making walking from there to pretty much anywhere suck less. The former will be done using cash left over from the hotel's construction. The current plan is for 15,000 square feet of space and 350 spaces of underground parking, arranged as you see in the rendering above.

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Tons of talk already, of course, about this morning's announcement that City Manager Mary Suhm is stepping down. I tend to go with the end of the spectrum that's viewing it as ushering in the End Times. But I would.

Oh, not my End Times. Their End Times! The Citizens Council! I'm talking about the Dallas Citizens Council, the behind-the-scenes elite moneybags group that should not be confused, please, please, whatever you do, please do not confuse the Dallas Citizens Council with the old White Citizens Councils of the past, because, really, there is no connection whatsoever. It's just this unfortunate confusion that happens, like if we had a group in Dallas that called itself The Qu Qlux Qlan and everybody went around confusing them. Unfair!

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Last night the history group called Preservation Dallas gave a special award to Lindalyn Adams, one of the people who created The Sixth Floor, the Kennedy assassination museum downtown.

That's great. She deserves it. Now I want to know why The Sixth Floor got Robert Groden thrown in the slammer.

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Say farewell to Mary Suhm. The Morning News' Rudy Bush broke the news this morning that, come September, she's stepping down as city manager. She said so to the City Council and top staff.

The announcement begins the close of a remarkable 8-year career as city manager that saw the city become a safer place to live and return its focus to its center, restoring its downtown, opening paths to West Dallas, installing miles of trails and bicycle lanes and making major progress on projects that have frustrated city leaders for decades.

The construction of the convention center hotel, the opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the Trinity River, the agreement that will see a championship golf course built in one of the poorest parts of Dallas. Each project had Suhm's stamp. In fact, it was her conception to have the architect Santiago Calatrava design three white bridges to span the river and create a new iconic image of Dallas.

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As we write this, the world's top golfers not named Tiger are descending on Irving for the Byron Nelson Championship. It's a big deal, one of the region's biggest sporting events and driver of an estimated $35 million in economic activity.

But before play begins on Thursday, the city of Dallas would like to make an announcement: It has officially stolen the Nelson. The PGA inked a 10-year deal yesterday that will bring the tournament to the Trinity Forest Golf Course come 2019.

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Personally, we could do without the clown.

Klyde Warren -- the park, not the kid -- was still just a twinkle in the city's eye when Mayor Tom Leppert unveiled plans to kick the cars off the Continental Avenue bridge and transform it into a linear park over the Trinity River. The original plan was to have the $10 million project open by fall 2012, about the same time the deck park would make its debut a couple of miles away.

But the Continental Avenue redo, like pretty much every other high-profile public works project that touches the Trinity, was delayed. And delayed. And delayed again. But city staff announced last week that work on the bridge will begin next month. For real this time.

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Mark Graham

Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs: Drilling opponent Hunt is leaving the council, but that might not help Trinity East's plans to frack on parkland.

Even with two seats in limbo, the complexion of the new Dallas City Council looks decidedly unfavorable for Trinity East, the would-be fracker from Fort Worth that paid the city millions for the rights to its natural gas. Because the Plan Commission voted against the company's drilling permits, four "no" votes on the council is enough to deny Trinity East's appeal of the commission vote. It looks like the opposition gets to four easily.

See also:
Trinity East's Vapor Chase

Counting noses, there's Scott Griggs, a stalwart opponent of drilling, who defeated Delia Jasso for a redrawn District 1. You've got Adam Medrano, newly elected to District 2, who has said without equivocation that he doesn't believe in drilling urban areas. Carolyn Davis, just handily re-elected, has also opposed drilling in the city. Sandy Greyson is considered a likely "no" vote, as is Monica Alonzo in District 6. Philip Kingston, Angela Hunt's handpicked successor in District 14, is looking strong against Bobby Abtahi in a run-off. My, how the balance has shifted.

"I think the past year's public debate has had a profound influence ... so that the Council has shifted from hardcore, unquestioning support to something less than that," says Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk.

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thesanantonioriverwalk.com

Welcome to Dallas?

Right now, the City Council is debating whether to lower fees and loosen the rules governing what businesses can put on sidewalks and public rights of way, the idea being that more sidewalk cafes and awnings and creative signage and landscaping can help create a more enjoyable urban experience. Planners point to Lower Greenville and Bishop Arts as an example of what they have in mind.

Of course, such a sweeping policy change requires a lot of due diligence and debate, so, while both council members and city staff have expressed support, it's moving very, very slowly.

Dwaine Caraway for one is ready to start opening sidewalk cafes. At this morning's Quality of Life Committee meeting, he directed assistant city manager Joey Zapata's attention to the stretch of Cedar Crest Boulevard between Bonnie View Road and Stella Avenue. With a bit more sidewalk activity, Caraway thinks it's poised to become the next Bishop Arts. He's already imaging people sitting on patios eating pizza and sipping glasses of wine.

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Trina Triche, a regular at City Hall, had been preparing her remarks for nearly a week. She was going to address the City Council on the topic of government corruption and wanted to make sure she was signed up to speak during the open mic forum that closes each meeting.

She told the city secretary's office last week that she planned to deliver her remarks on Monday. She even filled out and submitted the required public speaker's card. But when she showed up to the council chambers on Monday morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings and his colleagues were nowhere to be found. She never got her turn at the mic.

So, Triche is now suing Mayor Rawlings and each of his 14 colleagues on the council in federal court, alleging that they violated her civil rights by denying her the right to speak.

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The final chapter appears to have been inked in the long, sorry saga of flow control, a moneymaking scheme that placed City Hall's imprimatur on the idea that southern Dallas isn't much more than a trash receptacle for the rest of the city.

This week U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor entered his final judgment, settling all claims between the city and the solid-waste industry, which sued because the ordinance would have required trash haulers to direct all waste to the McCommas Bluff Landfill in southeast Dallas, despite contracts that allowed them to dump trash elsewhere. Flow control was originally touted as a development opportunity for the beleaguered city sector; a creator of up to 250 green jobs; and a project that would handle Dallas waste in an environmentally responsible way.

It became apparent, however, that the real intent of flow control was to divert the tipping fees going to landfills outside of the city limits into city coffers. Depending on the day, Mayor Mike Rawlings said it was either strictly a "business revenue issue" or a moral imperative because the people of southeast Dallas had "waited long enough in this city for us to get them money."

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