On Friday afternoon, 30-year-old Shontell Johnson lived in a rundown house in South Oak Cliff, where she took care of 13 children: six of her own, three from a neighbor with a drug problem, and four from her sister, who’s currently in prison. The kids were sleeping on mattresses on…
This morning, a Friend of Unfair Park sent me this press release, which, on the surface at least, appears to reveal the mystery behind that real estate deal known only as “Project Wall-E” the council chatted about behind closed doors two months ago. The release is a bit inscrutable but…
Colleen McCain Nelson’s doing her part to keep South Dallas clean, going so far as to take Mayor Mike out to an illegal trash dump and getting him to call it in after 10 days’ worth of morning-paper tsk-tsks couldn’t get the jobs done. To which Dallas City Hall says:…
Kim Jong Il will never get to see implementation of the Dallas Bike Plan; neither will Václav Havel. Whether you will remains to be seen: Last we looked it’s going to take 10 years for the city to roll out a maze of bike paths — despite what council members…
Since becoming Mayor, Mike Rawlings has been consistently passionate about a few key things: South Dallas, DISD, pizza, economic development, Halloween, ethics reform — not necessarily in that order. On Rawlings’s issues hit list, ethics reform is perhaps the most high-minded and difficult to pin down, even for the Ethics…
In recent days we’ve seen a video in which the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau sells the city to conventioneers and tourists, and a short film in which the Dallas Citizens Council sells the city to … um, the citizens council? But after the jump, here’s a real, honest-to-God pitch…
Went to the city’s website to look for something — oh, what an exciting life it is — and came across this freshly minted item: “City clarifies Dallas Bike Plan implementation status and outlook.” Well, now. Looks like someone (cough) would like to rebut a law-practicing council member’s argument that…
One month ago, after a lengthy discussion, the Dallas City Council voted not to give a late-night specific use permit to a bowling alley being proposed for the old Lucky’s Roadhouse space, next to Good Records on Greenville Avenue. Pauline Medrano — who, with Angela Hunt, co-wrote the Planned Development…
The reason I called Park and Rec’s second-in-command Willis Winters the other day wasn’t about downtown parks. Rather, I was curious about an $869,465 item on the Park Board’s agenda for today: “Consider a professional services contract with Good, Fulton & Farrell Architects for schematic design through construction administration services…
Just after that totally delightful discussion on the voting habits of trees, after which the city council OK’d a new Walmart, there came another momentous development matter: the West Dallas mixed-use project known as Sylvan Thirty, the one we’ve been writing about since, I dunno, forever-ish. The city council voted…
Speaking of Dwaine Caraway …The city council just voted on that Walmart Supercenter proposed for Ledbetter and R.L. Thornton, and though it ultimately passed unanimously it was no simple thing — far from. It was quite the discussion — heated at times, thoughtful at others. On the surface it was…
We’ve known for a long while now that the upcoming expansion of expansion of César Chávez Boulevard and Pearl Expressway downtown, from Commerce Street to Live Oak Street, would create a new downtown park — Carpenter Plaza Park, to be specific, which will unite those three separate parcels into a…
This is not the first time Dwaine Caraway has stood up for Skyline High School. Three years ago, back when the Dallas ISD first toyed with tinkering with its magnets, the District Four council member — and Roosevelt grad — went to the board of trustees and demanded they keep…
I know — this whole tussle over “flow control” probably doesn’t do much for some of you. So long as your trash goes away, it doesn’t matter where it goes or who takes it there. Let the waste-haulers and City Hallers duke it out in the courtroom. Just make sure…
Former Mayor Tom Leppert may well need a Hail Mary come the March 6 GOP primary — if, that is, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst can maintain his frontrunner status in the race for the U.S. Senate. So, then, who better to lock up for an endorsement than Captain America himself?…
Way back last April, the energetic, civic-minded hipsters over at Better Block turned the area around King’s Highway, W. 7th St. and N. Tyler St. in Oak Cliff into a nice little plaza space where it was entirely possible to sit without being, you know, repeatedly run over. That was…
When Walmart made its big to-do back in February about opening “more than a dozen new projects in the city of Dallas, including at least three new stores in Southern Dallas,” among the locations mentioned was a Neighborhood Market on S. Buckner and Scyene Road that would provide “that community…
Council member Angela Hunt popped into the comments yesterday to express and explain her frustration with implementation of the city’s new Bike Plan, unanimously okee-doked by the city council in June. Because, as we’ve been discussing since Saturday morning, the plan isn’t really a plan — more like a suggestion,…
Schutze is at the council’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee meeting; he didn’t want to miss Trinity River Corridor Project Managing Director Rebecca Rasor’s presentation Trinity River Corridor Project Update On Recreation, where — and you won’t believe this — they still have those renderings of the solar-powered water taxis,…
Turns out, the city’s new bike plan, unanimously approved by council in June, is far more complex than drawing lines along the street in patterns deemed good ideas by city consultants. Before we get into the meat of the issue, here are some basic stats to catch you up to…
No doubt you’re aware by now that beloved Houston-based Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods is due to take over the old Toys “R” Us at Walnut Hill and Central Expressway; originally due to debut ’round Thanksgivingish, Spec’s tells Unfair Park this morning that there’s now “no specific date” for…
On Saturday we previewed today’s council look-see at how the new Bike Plan will be implemented; both the Quality of Life and Transportation and Environment committees got the docs Friday night. (There’s also a very related briefing on the agenda: the boringly titled but nevertheless fascinating Pavement Markings, which, as…
