Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan called back late yesterday to discuss those still-in-place plans to widen César Chávez Boulevard from Live Oak to Commerce — plans that call for the demolition of one of the oldest buildings downtown. The project’s been in the planning stages for years, but Jordan says…
I’ve been playing phone tag with Keith Manoy, the city’s senior transportation planner and the point man for all things streetcar. It’s understandable. He’s been a little busy.”We’re not in the streetcar business,” Manoy says this morning. “But we’re learning.” He’s doing his best to play catch-up. Not a lot…
Speaking of books … Yesterday, Yale University Press sent word that Bonnie Pitman’s Ignite the Power of Art Advancing Visitor Engagement in Museums is now available at Your Finer Booksellers. (Well … it’s supposed to be — the Borders and Barnes & Noble in Preston Royal, at least, don’t yet…
We’ve documented developer Jack Matthews’s plans for a hotel next door to his South Side on Lamar ever since we stumbled across it on the Landmark Commission’s agenda last July. Back then, Matthews’s subsidiary, CCH Lamar Partners I LP, told the commission: It had big plans to restore the old…
In between phone calls and Unfair Park posts today I was goofing around on Heritage Auction Galleries’ website, where I espied this item set to go up for bids on Sunday: the Dallas Cowboys’s itinerary for Super Bowl VI, which was played at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans on January…
I’ve already seen council member Ron Natinsky’s for-mayor website — though, at the moment, it’s little more than an under-construction placeholder. But says here that on Thursday, he filed with the City Secretary’s Office his official paperwork naming his campaign finance treasurer, which makes it official: He’s a-runnin’ — along…
Earlier this afternoon, over on the DISD Blog, Matthew Haag posted a memo Dallas Independent School District sent to district employees Friday, in which the super warned: The state’s mammoth budget shortfall could result in “a staggering $180-$200 million” being excised from the district’s budget during the next two years…
A few months back the National Hockey League announced it was partnering with Stan Lee — the man who helped birth, oh, I dunno, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk and a few other make-mine-Marvel-ous comic-book heroes — on something called The Guardian Project. Long story short:…
No doubt you’ve forgotten all about plans to widen and two-way The Expressway Formerly Known As Central downtown — a plan that’s been around since ’05 but didn’t get really rolling till January 2009. But City Hall hasn’t put it aside; far from it.This week the council’s consent agenda includes…
The National Football League and FOX just made it official: The star of Burlesque will perform the National Anthem as part of Super Bowl XLV pregame festivities at Cowboys Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday. Says Christina Aguilera in the press release that just popped up in the in-box: “I have…
The Dallas City Council and Dallas Area Rapid Transit board will hold a joint meeting this morning during which they’ll discuss, among other things, DART’s long-term expansion plans, the planned Blue Line extension to the University of North Texas at Dallas campus and that second downtown light-rail line that’s been…
Driving home from the Kessler Theater Friday night, I was reminded yet again of how drab and shabby the Commerce Street bridge over the Trinity River looks in the dark, what with more than a dozen of the old streetlights inoperable since who can remember when. I made a note…
Amazing the things you find when you’re not looking for them. Take this morning’s accidental stumbled-across, for instance: The Gourds recorded in the old Barley House parking lot on June 1, 1997, during the third then-annual Barleypalooza musical marathon on N. Henderson. (Here’s some video, for those in need of…
This morning, the 7-year-old who lives in my house and I got way tangled in downtown traffic — hundreds, if not thousands, of anti-choice protesters filled the streets, with Dallas police officers blocking off every other intersection between the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Earle Cabell…
Speaking of the Standing Wave …Yesterday, a fellow named David Morring sent me the following note, which accompanied a link to the video you see above:I saw your recent post in your blog. Myself and several other whitewater paddlers have been following this project and in fact received permission to…
On January 7, Oncor filed with the Public Utility Commission a rate-hike request: It wants to jump your electricity bill by around $5 a month. Said Chief Operating Officer Charles Jenkins: So sorry, but we have no choice! “The proposed new rates reflect both the investments we’ve made and the…
Marilyn McDonald writes for something called Hg2 — “a luxury city guide series coveted by travellers who value both style and substance when it comes to soaking up a city.” I don’t see Dallas included in its series of Hedonists Guide-books between Courchevel and Damascus. But who knows: McDonald seemed…
What you see above is one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s AeroCommander 680s, which the agency uses to sniff air quality via Airborne Spectral Photographic Environmental Collection Technology. (I dunno.) Which I mention only because the Dallas Police Department just sent this heads-up well in advance of a flyover scheduled…
That’s not exactly what happened, sure, but this afternoon in Washington, D.C., at the 79th Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk delivered the keynote address to a lunch-time audience that included “my mayor” Tom Leppert. Following the mayors’ trip to the White House…
Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway just sent The Official Announcement: He’s decided not to run for mayor after all. His statement follows, but I also spoke to Caraway about his decision — one he came to, he says, after speaking with his family and concluding that now was not the…
The Unfair Park in-box is now a mess, cluttered with invites to and press releases for Super Bowl shindigs — each, just one more reason to consider moving to Farmersville till this whole thing blows over. But our music editor insists — nay, demands — I share this heads-up for…
In April 2009, John Patrick Newton was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents for growing, storing and selling marijuana out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard inIrving. Said the feds, he was the leader of “a marijuana distribution conspiracy known as the Newton Drug Trafficking Organization,” which included former…
