The Trinity River Project calls on all of us to use our imaginations. Standing before the scenic overlook, I imagine a beautiful river bordered by clever cafés and chic shops and folks of all shades cycling and kayaking. Someone is playing an accordion. I keep imagining.Now I imagine that I…
“Very seldom could you pull off an accord in a project if every time you had to wait for some kind of public referendum. The timing justdoesn’t work.” A petition drive under way right now in Dallas calls for a citywide election on tax subsidies from City Hall to developers…
It’s the tale of two cities: In this Dallas Morning News story, today’s closed-door meeting between staffs of the City of Dallas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is all about irritating bureaucratic delays in the Trinity River toll road project. In this WFAA-Channel 8 story, we learn that…
The Friends of Unfair Park know what’s happening. Just this morning, one of them hopped on a four-month old item about Detroit’s disgraced ex-mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, to warn Dallas about his impending arrival — just as soon as he gets out of the joint. Unfair Park had reported last September…
“We have a policythat says we willnot expand theaccess into our city by even one laneof additionalautomobile traffic.” Unfortunately for me, life is not always a conspiracy. Sometimes it’s just how people think. Which can change. Last week I attended a day-long seminar put on by City Manager Mary Suhm…
The Dallas City Council’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee gets a briefing at 9:30 this morning on hurdles facing the Trinity River toll road project. They’ll have people there from the North Texas Tollway Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I really wish they had thought to ask…
On January 9, Nelson wrote a signed column for the op-ed page in which she told how she personally had forced city officials to tear down a bad building in southern Dallas. She said it was part of a personal crusade. Nelson said she had heard from people in southern…
From the big seminar at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library today: City council is hearing experts from Canada and Virginia tell them how to do civilized development. The big question, of course: Why would we want to be civilized?One irony: The Canadian guy told them Vancouver has no freeways…
Fifteen people, count ’em, at Code Pink’s “No War Criminals in my Neighborhood!” protest so far on the bridge at Mockingbird Lane and N. Central Expressway. All very orderly except for the occasional SMU fraternity numbnut driving by in the Escalade and giving them the finger. Trish Major, communications director…
Last week Unfair Park told our dear Friends about an Oak Cliff gallery, Decorazon, soliciting international contributions to a show to be called “Farewell Shoes for Mr. Bush,” which is dedicated to our new neighbor (Hiya, W!) and some shoes. Unfair Park told readers that proprietors of the gallery had…
This morning I read with sadness of the death of Trammell Crow, a man for whom I have always had great admiration. I would like to pass along this modest anecdote.In the early 1990s when I was between newspaper jobs, I worked for Trammell Crow on a personal project of…
Certain things you can do that might turn out very badly for you. Borrowing money from the Mafia, for example. Posing naked for a photographer who is a stranger. But who worries about driving down a toll road? I can tell you who should: You! Over the last several years…
Decorazon Gallery in Bishop Arts has issued an international invitation to artists to submit works for an exhibition in February to be called “Farewell Shoes for Mr. Bush.” According to the invitation, it’s “a shoe art exhibition open to artists of all mediums and from around the globe, who will…
Yesterday’s New York Times travel section served up its “44 Places to go in 2009,” and guess what! Dallas was No. 17. And guess what! Absolutely no mention of the late 20th century TV series Dallas. Instead, The Times based its recommendation entirely on the arts district, whose name it…
OK, just tell me this. How do we greet him? Say I’m in the plumbing aisle at Home Depot bent forward at the waist searching for a beeswax toilet seal. I look up sideways. Damn it! It’s George W. Bush. “Oh, Hi, Mr. Presi…uh…former Mr….the ex…you… you… can you just…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page this morning takes another swipe at The Allen Group, the warehousing and logistics company trying to turn Dallas into a continental shipping hub. As usual, today’s offering is an exercise in convoluted insider speak that, if to be understood, requires the translation talents of…
This is the time of year when most people who do what I do for a living write about what they think will happen in the year ahead. In other words, they take the day off. But I prefer to view the future through my own lens. What warms my…
I actually love the way news pops up in The Dallas Morning News. I pick up the paper every single morning and feel as though I’m visiting a foreign city for the first time. Every story, even the most mundane, is a forehead-slapper, because I have no idea what they’re…
Go for a helicopter ride with me, will you? Let’s look down on Dallas from some perspective. And, uh, sit a few inches farther away from me and keep that air sickness bag handy if you don’t mind. Last week I reported on a powerful senior member of Congress, Eddie…
Santa came to my desk a day early. I have been papering City Hall with public-records requests for several weeks, and today, just in time, I finally got the one document I was hoping for: the written proposal to developer Richard Allen from three businessmen who wanted to be his…
Wick Allison committed an act of journalism today by calling Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and asking him if he’s going to run for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat. Leppert gave him an answer that was not “No,” which, in the language of politics, means “Yes.” Only, he didn’t say yes.The reason…
The Dallas Morning News says in an editorial today that voters should support a half-billion-dollar taxpayer-owned hotel downtown near the convention center and reject a ballot proposal next May that would stop the city from building it. The News says people shouldn’t worry about whether we’re headed into a economic…
