We said it before: Downtown Dallas is starting to look a little like Lil' Las Vegas. The subject spurred a little back-and-forth during a staff dinner last night, during which someone mentioned the story in yesterday's paper about our even more illuminated skyline. Said urban planner Larry Beasley, it's not good or bad, merely "inevitable." Brent Brown, also of CityDesign Studio, noted there's a fine line between standing out and coughing up "visual pollution." Back and forth it went amongst those for and again it, while Park and Rec's second-in-command Willis Winters offered his own theory for the lite-briting of downtown:
"Rather than spend money on architecture, which is expensive, they can light it up at night," he said. "A building that is unremarkable during the day can stand out."Didn't know till I poked around a little bit that Jack Matthews, builder of the convention center hotel, has a whole YouTube channel devoted to the Omni's Blinding Wall of Light, which right now features the countdown-to-New-Year's clock you'll find on the other side. And ever since Justin Terveen outed Reunion Tower's Christmas tree-ornament redo on Unfair Park a few weeks ago, seems the folks running that operation have gotten a little more brazen about test-patterning those LEDs, as you can see above in a video shot a few weeks back.
