The most iconic feature of Dallas’ skyline is the geodesic sphere atop the Reunion Tower. The 259 high-output LEDs around this ball form patterns for holidays, sports victories and various remembrances. But someone has to keep the sphere in shape — cleaning windows, inspecting the light nodes and changing the…
Andy Beal, he of enormous banking wealth and modest fame from his second life as an amateur mathematician, high-stakes poker player and failed space entrepreneur, has purchased what was listed as the most expensive home in Texas history — Tom Hicks’ sprawling, 25-acre Preston Hollow estate. Being that Preston Hollow…
The best thing about the incessant deluge of crap to which we are now subject thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Gmail push alerts, Google alerts and Instagram, among many, many others, is the daily occurrence of something untoward, accidental or just silly slipping past a public figure’s social media goalie…
It sounds like The Dallas Morning News is going to take another run at getting people to pay for their online content at some point next year. I am strongly in favor of getting people to pay the media for content, because I want the media to pay me. So…
Saturday, The New York Times reported that Chinese real estate investors, frustrated with prices and a lack of available property in areas in which they typically invest, are turning their eyes to the United States’ interior. Specifically, they’re looking at Corinth, of all places. Zhang Long, a Beijing businessman, is…
Every so often, city officials descend on a particularly dismal corner of southern Dallas, say a few words about the neighborhood’s bright future and then gaze appreciatively while hulking construction equipment tears apart a decrepit house or apartment complex as TV cameras roll. It’s an attention-grabbing and even useful spectacle. Far…
Although you are already well aware, either because you are one of the 66 percent of Dallasites who rent your home or because you’ve wondered at the bewildering number of luxury apartments sprouting up around the city’s core, the point bears repeating: The rent is too damn high. This is true…
Please welcome back for a return engagement, Joe Pappalardo, who takes over as the Observer’s editor on December 7. Longtime readers with good memories — we’re pretty sure they exist — will remember Joe from his time as a staff writer here 15 years ago. He recalled us fondly, as…
The easy argument to make is that people shouldn’t move to neighborhoods known for the nightlife and then complain about the nightlife. But have any of you intelligent, classy Observer readers partied in Uptown recently? Who among us really wants to go on the record defending Kung Fu Saloon, the Uptown…
Based on what we know, calling University of North Texas journalism dean Dorothy Bland a race-card-playing, self-aggrandizing, lying, cop-hating bigot is entirely unfair. Not that some people care. Trolls, mainly. Still, some serious humans are upset with Bland too. She’s the target of an online petition demanding her firing for…
Christina Casas has lived on Rusk Avenue all her life. She remembers sitting on the front porch early one afternoon in about 1973 as her family bustled past her, lugging furniture and boxes into their new home, a small, wood-frame workman’s bungalow at the corner of Rusk and Carroll Avenue…
We have a confession to make. Two weeks ago, we published a piece in this space purporting to identify Dallas’ 10 HOTTEST Apartment Complexes. While this might seem to imply that we used some sort of objective methodology for determining HOTNESS — or, for that matter, had any knowledge at all about…
To get a flavor of the opposition to “Plano Tomorrow,” the northern suburb’s newly adopted comprehensive plan, you don’t need to listen to the dozens of residents who spoke against it at a marathon City Council meeting this week. Skimming this column by a leader of the opposition group Plano Future will…
Do you ever get Houston envy? It’s terrible. For me it always starts with a scratchy throat, then a splitting headache. What could be worse? Really. What could be worse than being jealous of Houston? I sometimes get Fort Worth and San Antonio envies. They’re not quite as bad as…
Yeah, we know: Dallas is all about big houses with green lawns and a couple of cars in the garage — WRONG! Maybe that was true when your grandma was alive, but this is the 21st century. Apartment living is where it’s at, and in case you’ve been living under…
In one narrative, a Dallas developer hoping to capitalize on Bishop Arts has decided to listen to citizens and do what is right. Alamo Manhattan, the company that once promised to make Oak Cliff cool with giant apartment structures over existing homes and businesses, in a project that was to…
Wait a minute. Dallas Morning News Metro columnist Steve Blow is gone? You’re kidding me. Why was I not told? You say he retired? How can he just retire? This means no more Steve Blow alerts. What am I supposed to do with my wind-up Steve Blow alarm? I’ll tell…
The most stubbornly entrenched meme in local white culture — that “South Dallas” is a scary awful place — is the one most certain to flip in years just ahead. It will turn around 180 degrees. People of the green ethnicity, meaning the ones with money, will start scouring southern…
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…
