For the past few weeks, the discussion around City Hall’s future has been one silly game after another: Insinuations. Infighting. Innuendo.
For many observers, the debate over City Hall might sound like a mess. There was a 16-hour City Council meeting that strayed too often into matters not on the agenda. There have been “news” outlets blasting tabloid-style articles about boogeymen and sensational-sounding MacGuffins like “5,000 pages of emails,” and then framing the normal procedural steps and the course of City business as scandalous revelations. Those who are more interested in muddying the waters than dealing in facts are working overtime, trying to make normal stuff sound nefarious.
Enough. You deserve straight talk and clarity. So, here it is:
First, the fact is that Dallas City Hall isn’t in good shape. It doesn’t meet the needs of a modern big-city government—or, really, of any modern workplace. It also serves as an anchor of the city’s government district—an outdated concept that essentially condemns an entire area of the urban core to close up shop at 5 p.m.
Second, Dallas’s urban core is undergoing a transformation. The convention center area redevelopment, the growth in Uptown, the arrival of Y’all Street, and, yes, the impending departure of AT&T a few years down the road, have created both challenges and opportunities.
You may ask “why now?” Because this city is at an inflection point now. It’s the right time to ask what kind of urban core Dallas wants to have in the coming decades and then start building it.
That’s why I voted with the majority of the Dallas City Council to explore potential options for housing the City government. This is prudent due diligence. That’s it. You can’t consider the viability of any one option in a vacuum without knowing what your other options are. And the path to this point followed a series of decisive yet deliberative steps that were taken prior to the vote:
In August, I instructed the Finance Committee, led by Chairman Chad West to determine whether City Hall and other municipal buildings effectively support the City’s operations and best serve Dallasites, and to identify the most fiscally responsible of all potential options to address the mounting deferred maintenance and carrying costs of City Hall.
In September, Chairman West kicked off the committee’s work with a memo laying out his plan to aggressively review the City’s book of real estate, starting with City Hall; work with City staff and CBRE—which had already been retained as a consultant by City Council, and with which the City Council in December unanimously approved a new five-year contract for real estate brokerage and consulting services—to build a strategic plan; and find options within the City’s real-estate portfolio to generate additional revenue and address deferred maintenance.
Then, last November, the full council passed a resolution stating that “further evaluation of real estate and economic development opportunities is necessary to guide decisions regarding the future of city hall and related facilities.” The City Manager was also specifically directed to review office space for lease and purchase citywide and fully evaluate options to redevelop City Hall. The results of some of these evaluations went back to the Finance Committee last month, and then via the committee’s unanimous recommendation, to the full council. That recommendation is what the City Council debated and voted on in its marathon meeting.
It makes complete sense to know what the alternatives are, even if the City Council ultimately decides to stay right where it is and ask taxpayers to pony up for fixing up the current City Hall.
Though it’s unclear if that would be prudent. Repairs and renovations will be expensive and won’t necessarily lead to a better functioning government. But without knowing what alternatives are available, how could anyone say whether $1.1 billion to stay at City Hall is a good or bad idea? Likewise, if leaving I.M. Pei’s inefficient brutalist icon can increase the City’s tax base, revitalize a currently desolate sector in the center of Dallas, spur growth, and anchor new development, it would be a dereliction to not consider that alternative. All of that could not only provide funding that can help the City continue to lower your tax rates while improving public safety and streets, but it would also increase the vitality of Dallas’s urban core.
And such a move would not be novel. Dallas has moved City Halls several times in its history. Dallas ISD moved its headquarters a decade ago, leading to significant growth around its former facility on Ross Avenue. Fort Worth recently moved into a new City Hall last year. And Dallas has undertaken big, bold projects like this before: Klyde Warren Park, which led to tremendous growth in Uptown, and the American Airlines Center, which spurred Victory Park. These are huge economic engines supporting the growth of Dallas and benefitting Dallasites from all walks of life.
Unfortunately, the merits of various alternatives are not being discussed as they should. Instead, there have been attacks on process and on people who are assessing City Hall in accordance with the City Council’s wishes to have information and options.
The fact is that AECOM, CBRE, the Dallas Economic Development Corporation, and the City Manager are doing their jobs. They have shown their work. Yet they are being subjected to unrealistic expectations and standards that are applied only in retrospect. This is a tactic meant only to cause dissent and confusion—just like the injection of other issues, including the Dallas Mavericks, into the discussion. It is ironic that some of the same voices who most loudly demanded an outside facility condition assessment are now the loudest critics of the result. Perhaps it is they who only wanted a report that would support the position they had staked out while operating with—in their own words—insufficient information.
It’s understandable that people want to talk about the Mavericks. So let’s talk about them: The team wants a new arena. That has never been a secret; they have been publicly calling for a new arena since Mark Cuban owned the team. This has been foreseeable for 30 years.
The fact is that no matter where the team’s next arena is built, it will create economic value and vibrancy. That is exactly what happened in Uptown and Victory Park. There are a number of potential great options in Dallas, and while I have said repeatedly that the City cannot negotiate deals like this in public, it will do everything reasonably in its power to keep the team here.
That doesn’t mean a giveaway, it means a reasonable, prudent business deal that benefits the team and the City. Everyone criticizing a “giveaway” of land to the Mavericks must know something that no one else does because the City Council hasn’t yet even been briefed on what a potential development deal at the City Hall site might look like, let alone asked to vote on one. So there’s no basis to characterize an entirely unknown—and as yet, hypothetical—deal as a “giveaway.”
But let’s not be naive. While a new arena and surrounding development will benefit Dallas in amazing ways, there will be individuals who personally benefit as well. Some of them will be millionaires and billionaires. Some of them will be small businesses, vendors, plumbers, carpenters, food truck owners, homeowners, etc. But that is true wherever the arena happens. So it’s unclear why some council members feel the need to vilify developers with interests around City Hall while supporting a different possible arena site that would simply benefit a different set of developers. Maybe someone will find that worth reporting on.
The City Council must figure out what to do with City Hall. It’s unfortunate that the current building doesn’t work as intended and the vision for a thriving government district never materialized. But that is where we are. At the same time, it must fight to keep the Mavericks in the city of Dallas. Those are the facts. It’s time to put aside the pettiness and start talking about a real vision for this city’s future.
That’s all for today.
Until next time,
