John Greenan, executive director
of Central Dallas Community Development Corporation and one of the main men charged with growing that self-sustaining block behind Dallas City Hall, took note of El Centro College's plans to perch 21 wind turbines on the roof of the old Sanger Harris building: "I'm glad to see someone is pioneering the technology," he writes in the comments. "I'll be very interested to see how it works out."
But when I called him to follow-up about the initiative's potential impact on Re:Vision Dallas, Greenan dropped this bit of info: He and architect Brent Brown will announce by week's end which design they're going to proceed with. Just last week, he tells Unfair Park, two of the three finalists (San Francisco-based David Baker and Partners Architect, responsible for the Greenways Xero Energy building; and North Carolina-based Little, designers of fan favorite Entangled Bank) were in town meeting with Brown and Greenan, as well as reps from The Real Estate Council and Urban Revision. And, at this very moment, folks from Portuguese firms Atelier Data and MOOV (of Forwarding Dallas fame) are in Dallas for their meeting, which began only moments ago.
"It's going really well," Greenan said before ducking into his meeting. "Both of the earlier presentations went very well, so we're feeling pretty good. We're about a month or so behind where I'd hoped to be: It took a little longer to get the review groups organized during the summer than I'd hoped. But in September they were diligent about figuring out what needed to be done." After the winner is announced, Greenan and Brown will have to finalize a contract with the architects before moving forward; they're still hoping for a groundbreaking by next year.