One month ago, City Manager Mary Suhm warned the city council: It’s early, very early, but it’s looking like the city could be short anywhere from $49 million to $87 million when it comes to putting together the FY2012-13 budget. And one month before that, Suhm warned the city council:…
Mighty kind of Dallas City Hall to offer all these briefings wrapping up a few loose ends before I get up outta here. First Sylvan Thirty, then the old Dallas High School, then the Cotton Bowl, and now Old Dallas City Hall, which one day should become the University of…
Shortly before the 2011 kick-off of Texas-OU’s annual clash at the Cotton Bowl we spoke with Willis Winters, Park and Rec’s second-in-command, about the need to once again renovate the Fair Park stadium in order to keep the Red River Shootout in Dallas past the 2015 contract. Said Winters, it…
Now that Sylvan Thirty’s out of the way …We learned at the end of last week that Wynne/Jackson intends to turn the 105-year-old Dallas High School on Pearl and Bryan into an apartment complex — that’s on Landmark Commission’s agenda this afternoon, as the developer’s seeking around $923,000 in historic…
The council’s Economic Development Committee’s being briefed this morning on two projects familiar to the Friends of Unfair Park — Wynne/Jackson’s redo of the old Dallas High School downtown, which we’ll get to shortly, and Sylvan Thirty, which is first up.The reason the latter’s on the agenda, says Karl Zavitkovsky,…
Not sure if it’s Ask the Lawyer with Tom Corea or Ask a Lawyer with Tom Corea — the lawsuit has it one way, virtual listings the other. But one thing’s certain: The call-infomercial, featuring the downtown attorney and former local-TV-newser Brenda Teele-Jackson, is at the center of a suit…
Our pros have been all over the Margaret Hunt Hill this weekend, with one, Jay Barker, sending word from the sun-up service this morning that Santiago Calatrava “hinted that this three-day celebration was a bit excessive.” Ya don’t say. You can see Danny and Paul and Jay’s their fine work at…
The speeches went on and on and on and on … and on, everyone on the stage thanking everyone else on the stage for having a hand in building this thing we were all standing on: the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Mayor Mike Rawlings, Friday night’s emcee, introduced “our new…
The official version of the Velvet Underground’s visit to The End of Cole in the fall of 1969 makes up one of the greatest live albums of all time: 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, though truth is much of it comes from a month-later set at The Matrix in San…
Is the United States the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” as President Barack Obama has said? Or has the energy industry used fuzzy math to hype its estimated reserves to entice buyouts and Wall Street investment? Tough to say for sure, but last month the U.S. Energy Information Administration scaled…
It’s been more than three months since Seth Winder lost his tenuous grip on sanity in a Denton County courtroom, forcing Judge Bruce McFarling to declare a mistrial even as the prosecution prepared to wrap its case. Winder, a 32-year-old homeless man from The Colony, is accused of murdering and…
Got a note today from the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza’s Liza Collins saying that the museum has restored and just re-hung the old 2.5-foot-by-17-foot Texas School Book Depository sign once displayed above the Elm Street entrance to the building. Removed n the ’70s and stored by the museum…
The huge green warehouse that sits a short walk down Singleton Boulevard from the base of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge has been home to unusual occupants for the past few weeks. It’s become something of a doll hospital to a cast of 15 massive puppets, representing people who have…
Strange timing that one of my last tasks for the Observer will be covering the opening (but not really opening) of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Shame I can’t get Schutze to be my date this weekend, so instead I’ll just have to schlep along my son, who wants to…
Like I was saying, or writing, earlier this morning …When Edwin Flores announced he wasn’t going to seek re-election to the Dallas Independent School District board two weeks ago, the District 1 trustee said he’d hold off on making an endorsement. At the time, only one other candidate had announced:…
A few days ago, we told you that Texas’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program appears to be on death’s door, which could leave some 130,000 low-income Texas women without vital medical care. We also mentioned that Gov. Rick Perry’s administration appeared eager to blame the program’s end on the feds broadly…
Saw that AP piece this morning about how Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation are looking at connecting Dallas-Fort Worth to Shreveport-Bossier City, which would involve inserting a stop at the Trinity Railway Express’s CentrePort/DFW Airport station. But the piece isn’t clear: Should this study prove such a line…
More or less moments after Edwin Flores announced he wouldn’t be running for another term as Dallas Independent School District trustee, a Friend of Unfair Park wondered: “Is he going to give Educate Dallas their money back?” Referring, of course, to the $10,000 pledge made by the Dallas Regional Chamber-connected…
Hank Stuever is a critic for The Washington Post, but he did spend plenty of time down thisaway from 2006 through ’08 whilst researching and writing his tome Tinsel, about o little town of Frisco and how its many merry residents guzzle holiday spirits. Which is something to keep in…
Texas is in a tight spot. Electric supply simply isn’t keeping up with consumer demand in a state bursting at the seams. By 2013, grid operator ERCOT predicts we won’t have enough to cover peak demand, when we’re all sweating and dashing for our thermostats. Summer 2012, on the other…
As promised, Korean and black leaders met today in Oak Cliff to announce the end of the Diamond Shamrock Kwik Stop protests on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Rev. Ronald Wright addressed the media first, standing next to Korean Society of Dallas vice president Ted Kim. The two were flanked…
We virtually toured the splendor that is the 48,000-square-foot Champ d’Or up in Denton County in August 2010, when the asking price was, oh, $70 million, give or take — not quite The Nice Price. But it didn’t sell — shocking — not even when the price tag dropped to…
