Councilman Atkins, Quite Contrary, How Does Your District Grow?

Can’t let this pass without at least pointing out the irony. Last Sunday Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins was all over The Dallas Morning News opinion pages with an essay on the importance of public incentives for private developers in under-served areas of the city. He wrote: “Evidence of…

Tearing Down I-345 Is Not as Crazy as It Sounds

UPDATED JULY 28 2014: Tearing Down I-345 Idea Is Starting to Get Interest From Important Rich People ORIGINAL POST The idea is to blow up, tear down, erase, make go away an entire elevated freeway at the eastern end of downtown Dallas. Chechen rebels couldn’t do better than that. But…

White Rock and Belle Isle, a Tale of Two Cities

A family chore last night prevented me from attending a big community meeting about a proposed restaurant at White Rock Lake, but stories on Channel 8 and in the daily paper this morning gave the flavor. The community is looking at the idea of building a commercial restaurant on parkland…

Help Settle a Bet: Which Recent Dallas City Hall Screw Up Was Worse?

Editor’s note: Recently, our Eric Nicholson reported on the goat skulls and carcasses that await visitors of the new Texas Horse Park, one of Dallas City Hall’s bizarre attempts to develop southern Dallas. Together with Eric’s previous scoop about the park being entrusted to an accused horse abuser, the story…

The Tunnels Didn’t Kill Downtown Dallas; Dallas Killed Downtown Dallas

The Dallas City Council is reopening the question of whether the underground tunnel system beneath the buildings downtown is what killed downtown street commerce in the 1990s. Apparently now that downtown is on the rebound, some people suffer from a superstitious fear that reopening closed portions of the tunnel system…

Not All DISD Reformers Are Elitist, Public Ed-hating Zombies

In the smoke, din, blinding flashes, screams, roars, flying body parts, weird music and scarily bad odors blasting out from Mayor Mike Rawlings’ enormously maladroit public school takeover campaign, there has been a silver lining. It is a very thin silver lining, kind of like a kitten that survives an…

“Home Rule” Drive for DISD May Be in for a Brake Job This Week

There is a distinct possibility the mayor or somebody else associated with the public school takeover effort now underway — called “home rule” by its backers — will announce this week that they are “tapping the brakes,” pausing the campaign for now. That will make lots of people happy but…

What Made Mayor Mike Rawlings Blow His Top? The Mystery.

The mayor’s pissed-off walk-out last week from a meeting with Latino leaders to discuss his school takeover plan is, if anything, more of a mystery, now that a recording of the meeting is circulating. He said last week he walked out because the meeting was being hijacked and he wanted…