Last week the city of Austin took the unusual step of suing the Travis Central Appraisal District, the body that sets property values on which local governments and school districts assess taxes. According to Austin officials, commercial properties were widely and consistently undervalued, handicapping the city’s ability to provide services and…
Zad Roumaya says people are willing to pay $880 a month to live in a complex of 320 square foot shipping containers he plans to outfit and install in The Cedars. That’s $2.75 a square foot, right in line with luxury units across the city of Dallas. The units will…
Months ago, Dallas school board member Miguel Solis shipped me a copy of a 1999 book called Show Me a Hero by former New York Times writer (now senior columnist at Huffington Post) Lisa Belkin, about a late 1980s affordable housing/desegregation fight in Yonkers, an inner-rim suburb of New York…
You, my fellow citizen, can do a study of the development potential associated with a single DART light rail line through downtown. I’m serious. You can do this. All you have to do is walk east to west through downtown on Bryan Street and Pacific Avenue along the existing DART…
A fight centered in what seems to be one of the most contentious blocks of downtown Dallas continued last week with developer Tim Headington asserting that Texas law doesn’t guarantee apartment dwellers the right to access “air, light or a view.” He was talking about tenants in the Wilson Building…
Downtown Dallas has tons of parking — 69,000 spaces, according to Downtown Dallas Inc. It will have ton of parking for the foreseeable future. Despite that, city planners are calling for even more parking downtown, in part to help the those who might someday want to call downtown home. But…
The redevelopment of West Dallas as a hip dining and apartment area proves one thing: Give the big boys in Dallas a quarter billion dollars in public subsidy, and they’ll make some money for themselves. The renaissance of nearby North Oak Cliff proves another thing: Stay the hell out of…
Yeah, but the thing about Dallas being so screwed up is that being screwed up is also what’s cool about it. In everybody’s understandable push to make this a perfect city, we never should forget that Dallas’ glaring imperfections have always been among its attractive qualities. Many years after the…
Yesterday’s announcement in The Dallas Morning News of a new Dallas-based $75 million private bullet-train fund was not actually about a new Dallas-based $75 million private bullet-train fund. It was about screwing southern Dallas. Not since southern Dallas got screwed out of the Richard Allen Inland Port opportunity — a…
Hey, Julian Castro. Thanks a ton. That was sarcastic. You’re the Obama administration’s new secretary of Housing and Urban Development. First thing you did when you took office nine months ago was yank the rug from under a major housing segregation investigation of Dallas. Before you took over, HUD had…
First, I want to say that that Digital is God. Second, I know digital when I see digital. An item that appeared on The Dallas Morning News crime blog yesterday was the new digital version of how to cover a murder trial. It was really breezy and first-persony and it focused not…
If the city of McKinney is to be believed, the $79,229.09 bill it sent Gawker was a mistake. The bill came in response to a request from Gawker for records and emails related to Eric Casebolt, the former McKinney police officer who resigned after he was caught on video earlier this…
Every Supreme Court decision is a “landmark decision” until it gets rewritten by a new Supreme Court,. But the recent decision in favor of a Dallas-based fair-housing advocacy organization has the scent of staying power. After all, it was based on a principle that hasn’t changed much since Brown v…
David Brooks has an essay in The New York Times this week called “The Next Culture War” in which he quotes former Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rod Dreher as saying that, in the wake of the Supreme Court gay marriage decision, now is time for Christians to take what Dreher…
Somewhere in the midst of his presidential campaign, Texas’ junior senator and Simpsons fan Ted Cruz took the time to audition for the Simpson’s roles vacated by the recently retired Harry Shearer for Buzzfeed. The results are equal turns amusing and horrifying. Amusing, because Cruz as Mr. Burns is just…
A government agency has two basic ways to slow down or avoid a legitimate public information request. It can either refer the request to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, forcing Ken Paxton’s employees to issue an opinion as to the request’s validity and potentially pushing the date the request is…
The town of Mansfield has at least 200 gas wells, some of which are dangerously far away from any serene neighborhoods with nice houses and cute children playing in the backyard. Luckily, some home developers are ready to change that. Locals have spotted a few signs lately advertising planned housing developments…
The Preston Center skybridge that would connect the shopping center’s aging city-owned garage to a potential Tom Thumb remains but a twinkle in developer Harlan Crow’s eye. The Dallas City Council agreed Wednesday to delay a final vote on the bridge until at least November, heeding the request of council member…
Plano knocked over its old water tower today “to make room for Legacy West, an exciting new development, which will include shops, restaurants, residential living, a high-rise hotel and the Liberty Mutual Insurance campus,” according to a city news release. Crews from a Michigan company, Iseler Demolition, cut the base…
Dallas renters rate the city as one of the worst in Texas in which to live, according to a new survey from Apartment List. Among Texas cities, only Houston ranks lower among the 100 cities surveyed. Apartment List talked to a bunch of renters — more than 18,000 nationwide —…
This is a thing: The Observer has ended its relationship with LiveFyre, the commenting platform our readers have been dutifully using and bitching about for a while now. We’re searching for a new platform to spark and support the debate that occurs beneath many of our stories, which is great news…
Hey, let’s take this new web site’s block-quote function for a spin. Here’s a memo I sent to the staff a short while ago. If you have any ideas about what we should look for in the next Dallas Observer editor, leave them in the comments. If you suggest fictional…
