​The video you seesaw above till it was unceremoniously yanked this afternoon was made by Michael Marco on behalf of Tracy Locke on behalf of Downtown Dallas Inc., which had intended to show downtown's makeover at its annual meeting held at the Omni a couple of weeks ago. Alas, it got trimmed for time. Marco had posted the short-short this week, no doubt in the hopes that someone other than no one would see the film DDI wants to use in its efforts to rebrand the Central Business District. But now it's gone. Sorry about that.

Still, the timing was certainly good: Downtown Dallas Inc. also just posted to its website its 32-page annual report, which looks back at 2011 ("a year full of celebration as cranes began to fly high once again in Downtown Dallas"), gets even giddier about the year ahead ("Downtown will rise to a new summit in 2012") and keeps its fingers crossed that those proposed downtown building redos are more than pretty renderings.

Click to enlarge these first looks at the new-look 508 Park Avenue. You'll find more, many more, below.

​Amongst all the maybes, could-bes and one-days downtown, one development's as close as it gets to a Sure Thing: 508 Park Avenue, which First Presbyterian is in the process of turning into The Museum of Street Culture to be curated by blues historian Alan Govenar. At this very moment, in fact, reps from First Presby and Good Fulton & Farrell are at Dallas City Hall presenting to the Landmark Commission's Central Business District/West End Task Force the pages of plans you will find below, which include your very first look at the rooftop deck and next-door amphitheater, which Landmark signed off on last year.

First Presbyterian found this never-before-seen photo of 508 Park as it looked in '46 in the Jack Warner Collection at USC.

​There are actually three presentations below -- for 508 Park, 1900 Young (which will be razed and replaced by the outdoor concert site) and 1905 Canton, the latter of which is presently a fenced-off patch of weeds. Jon Rollins at GFF, who will make the presentation to Landmark, says there have been some tweaks since last we spoke about the project -- such as the addition of solar panels and rain-water storage units on Canton and restrooms to the amphitheater site, as well as WPA-style murals on the exterior of the site where Robert Johnson and Bob Wills once recorded. "So we'll start to tell the story of the building on the outside of the building," he says, "before you even step foot into 508 Park."

As for the rooftop deck and that dance floor and the new elevator, he says: "The church all along has wanted to occupy the roof, which has a wonderful view of the downtown skyline. 508, when it's reused, will be all about spaces for public gathering, arts groups and the connection between the public and the private. It'll create a space for people to gather and listen to music, which seemed like a natural program, and to be able to do that we needed to make sure it was accessible for the mobility impaired. And we needed to provide shade so people could use it in the summer, and the rail is for safety. But because it's historic, it's important for us not to disturb how the building meets the sky, which is why were using glass."

Rollins says 1900 Young will begin coming down sometime before the end of April, when their certificate of demolition expires; there's some abatement that must take place first in both existing buildings.

Now, on a related note: Carol Adams at First Presby also directs our attention to the just-updated-and-revised 508 Park Ave. website, which offers more history about former Warner Bros. movie storage facility -- including the photo you see above, recently discovered in USC's Cinematic Arts Library. (Who knew there were windows on the side presently devoured by 1900 Young?) She promises more from the archives soon. Till then, the future awaits below ...More >>

The former Baylor offices at 2625 Elm in Deep Ellum where Uplift Education expects to open a new campus in August

​At this very moment the city council members are discussing whether they'd like to get into the bond business to help Uplift Education with its plan to sell tax-exempt bonds to help open a new charter school in the former Baylor offices Deep Ellum. (Sounds, so far, like the item will be deferred, though, as Angela Hunt just said, "it sounds like we're being asked to take sides" -- charters or DISD.) Last week, business owners from the area met at the Deep Ellum Foundation's HQ to fret about what the project will mean for their bars and restaurants, specifically a rule that prohibits new alcohol-having businesses from opening up within 300 feet of the school. (Privately, some of them have started calling Uplift's new venture "Nightlife High.")

But last night, Sean Fitzgerald, president of the Deep Ellum Community Association , dropped by the weekly meeting of the Deep Ellum Enrichment Project (D.E.E.P) to cautiously deliver some good news. He "can't say a whole lot yet," but after a meeting with Uplift higher-ups, it's possible that they will agree to lobby the city to grant a variance on the 300-foot rule, making it possible for new bars and restaurants to freely open up around the school.

"In general, the tone of that meeting was very positive," Fitzgerald told the crowd, consisting of several dozen who'd crammed into La Bella Cupcakes on Elm Street. "We want to be in control of the nature of this neighborhood." Small business and bars, he said, "are our life-blood. ... We're still in negotiations, but we can probably work out a way that this is a win-win."

More >>

When we joined, which is to say "stumbled," into Erykah Badu and the Rebirth Brass Band's 407-foot-long drive-n-dance down Main Street a few weeks ago, we noted the many cameras on hand to film the brief trek; word was, per Badu's business partner Paul Levatino, they were there for a doc-in-progress about Tim Headington's ever-expanding efforts to remake Main in his image. So, then: Not sure if this freshly posted short-short, which is short some Rebirth Brass Band funk and uses instead as its soundtrack "The Healer" off 2008's New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War, is an excerpt from that or something else. But whatever it is, it's nicely done.

Photo by Harry Bennett, via eBay seller "ericdatz"

​A couple of years back we virtually toured the Mercantile Bank Building as it looked following its 1958 redo, when Heritage Auctions made available 17 never-before-seen photos of R.L. Thornton's skyscraper taken by legendary Chicago-based architectural-photo firm Hedrich Blessing. Those photos, offered in a single package initially guesstimated to be worth several thousand, never did sell (thought for sure Forest City would have snapped 'em up). Only recently, on behalf of a still-interested Friend of Unfair Park, I asked Heritage's PR man Noah Fleisher is the seller was still interested in parting with the pictures. He said he'd look into it.

Photo by William Langley, via eBay seller "ericdatz"

​Then, a couple of days back, Friend of Unfair Park PeterK dispatched me a trio of photos taken inside the mighty Merc in the 1940s, not long after it was finished in '43. Back then, of course, it was a significant structure for myriad reasons: It counted among its architects Walter W. Ahlschlager, famous for his work in Chicago and New York City. It was, by all accounts, the sole significant skyscraper built in the U.S. during World War II. And it was, till '54, the tallest building in the city.

Turns out there are far more than three photos of the Merc being sold on eBay: A seller in San Diego is sitting on a dozen, each still sitting a mere $9.99 with four days left, all but one taken by William Langley, whose own career appears to span the rough-n-tumble days of the Dallas Dispatch to the Texas Centennial Exposition in '36 (where he rounded up "beautiful bevies") to an ad assignment so unusual (at the time, at least) it landed him in Life magazine in 1959. (And Langley, intriguingly, mentored a young Jeff Kimball, who would go on to become the cinematographer responsible for the look of Top Gun, among other familiar titles.)

I'd begin the tour here. Then, in no particular order: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and, finally, here. Interestingly, the last photo -- the only one with actual people in it -- wasn't taken by Langley. At least, it's not credited to him. Rather, says the seller, the back of the photo is stamped: "HARRY BENNETT - 2108 McKinney - Dallas, Texas Phone 7-4906."

Photo by Anna Merlan

​Schutze broke the story a while back about a group of black people in South Dallas picketing the Diamond Shamrock gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. People in the neighborhood claimed the station's Korean owner had called black customers "broke-ass niggers," imposed a $10 minimum on debit card purchases, called black women "bitches" and even killed a black thief, which the store owner has vehemently denied.

The stream of accusations got South Dallas activists, including Joyce Foreman, Rev. Ronald Wright and Rev. Peter Johnson, fired up. These days they're often protesting in front of the gas station.

And they were just getting started.

The activists have since come up with a name for their coalition: Don't Stop Don't Shop. It's Facebook official and everything. And Wright, spurred on by DSDS, is spearheading an effort to buy the gas station -- an effort he says is close to success.

More >>

Photos by Leslie Minora

The first in a series of escalators that will give visitors a lift from the sweeping lobby to the hall of dinosaurs.

​A Perot Museum of Nature & Science curator wound us through the fourth floor of the partially completed space, calling upon visitors to imagine the 80-foot-long dinosaur that would soon occupy where he was standing. Next to that prehistoric giant will be the 25-foot Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, that horned dino named after the Perot family, the $185-million museum's namesake and chief donor.

Another reptile will hang from the ceiling, with a wingspan the curator compared to a fighter jet and a true bird's-eye view of view of downtown from the windows on all sides of the museum's open floor plan. Architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis aimed to highlight the "middle ground between nature and architecture," he says. "And everything is connected to the city." And it's really freaking cool.

More >>

Some of the buildings along Singleton that will become Trinity Groves, along with the trees being planted around parking lots that will be done in two weeks

​Spent a few hours today with Phil Romano, Stuart Fitts and Larry "Butch" MacGregor at their Singleton Boulevard HQ at the foot of the Calatrava bridge. It's the brick building painted red -- one of three on that side of the bridge now decorated with Shepard Fairey's handiwork. When I pulled up a little after 12:30, there were a handful of folks taking photos of the new murals; when Fitts and I took a walk around a couple of hours later, there were still more tourists from the east side of the Trinity.

Ostensibly our chat was about their Trinity Groves restaurant-incubator concept; come summer they hope to begin opening eateries, one by one by one, in the brightly painted structures the trio have amassed on the west side of the Trinity. When we took our walk around Fitts could point to each building and say who was going where. But before that happens, as you can see from the photos above and below, there are trees to be planted and parking lots to be graveled; these will be the sites for several of the opening-weekend bridge-bash events scheduled one month from today.

Among those slated to move in to the sprawling development planned along Singleton: Luna's Tortillas, Mike Babb's barbecue (with a live-blues component), Sharon Van Meter's Milestone Culinary Arts Center, in addition to, oh, rooftop bars, butchers, bakers, cheesemakers, fishmongers -- a little bit of everything, it would seem.

It's a complicated business model, the way they explain it: investors paired with chefs (Stephan Pyles, Kent Rathbun, Nick Badovinus, Dean Fearing ... for starters) to create sellable, spreadable concepts. Some will be temporary eateries; others, permanent. "If I were younger, I'd do this all myself," says Romano, the man behind eatZi's, Fuddruckers, Nick & Sam's, Macaroni Grill and on and on. "I'd get the investor group and put people in each space. But we're gonna get real owners, a guy who's gonna be here bustin' his ass, not some absentee owner. ... We'll have Chinese, Italian, soul food, Indian, barbecue. And what comes with that are the people who do it, a diversity in cultures."

"Food is a great resource," says Fitts. "It brings culture."More >>

Dallas Area Rapid Transit

​When The Ambrose and DART's Baylor University Medical Center Station on the Green Line finally, formally married three short years ago, Dallas Area Rapid Transit hailed it as the "consummate example of the new transit-oriented lifestyle." After all, the complex at Indiana and Malcolm X consisted of 325 apartments and a city block's worth of retail right on the rail. Said DART's Green Line Report from the spring of '09:

In a tough market for retail, the ground floor is nonetheless gradually filling in. A Jimmy John's sandwich chain will open in the near future. And things are already hopping at It's A Grind, the first Dallas location of a national coffeehouse franchise. On a recent weekday afternoon, there was no shortage of customers bantering with one another, ordering pastries, drinking coffee, and settling in with their laptops. Initial popularity notwithstanding, the store's staff is anticipating a serious boost in business when the station opens. "September can't come fast enough for us," says Cindy Chaffin, the store's marketing director. "That's why we chose our location -- train service will be huge for us."

But the Jimmy John's lasted about as long as it took to finish a sandwich. And It's a Grind shuttered suddenly last October, with owner Serena Connelly acknowledging "the overall project has not proven to be feasible financially." And now that 13,913 square feet of ground-level retail space sits vacant. The reasons are myriad: Rent's high (said to be double normal Deep Ellum asking prices), the location's hard to find unless you're riding the rail, and, in the words of Deep Ellum Public Improvement District president Barry Annino, "There still are not that many people riding the train yet. It's not yet an urban world."

Which is why Broadstone Ambrose will go to the City Plan Commission this afternoon and request a zoning do-over: The complex owner will ask the city for the OK to rewrite its small piece of the Deep Ellum Special Purpose District that will allow it to convert the ground-floor retail into "multifamily units." Says the CPC doc prepped by an approving city staff: "The applicant has indicated that the retail space has been difficult to lease or to maintain tenants due the location of the development."

​Speaking of Walmart (told you) ...

In the end, turns out, I didn't need Mitchell Rasansky to tell me what everyone already knew -- or guessed, anyhow. Because, as I discovered this morning, the permits were filed with the city two months ago and approved December 29. So, yes, brace yourself, Lower Greenville. You are indeed about to get a Walmart Neighborhood Market in the building formerly occupied by that Whole Foods.

Well, actually, the neighborhood market thing's not confirmed; Walmart officials haven't returned calls or emails sent this morning, and folks in Sustainable Development and Building Inspection can't say for sure. "They never identified it as a neighborhood market," says one of Dallas's senior building officials.

But city officials confirm: There will be a Walmart going in almost directly across from the planned Trader Joe's on the old Arcadia site. And it will occupy only the former Whole Foods and not the next-door Blockbuster: Plans call for filling 34,630 square feet with coolers for meat and produce and dairy products, a bakery and a pharmacy, for starters. Per Walmart's website, "A typical store is about 42,000 square feet." The plan also notes: "No late hours."

Tried calling Rasansky. He's out of the country till Monday.