Six months ago came word: Park Cities Bank, which had taken possession of circa-1925 807 Elm Street in the West End, wanted to raze the building, which sits in a parking lot across the street from El Centro and which one Friend of Unfair Park had pursued, briefly, as a…
This week the Paper Version of Unfair Park’s cover is a profile of Al Armendariz, who took a leave from his gig as a Southern Methodist University engineering professor to run the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in Dallas, stepping right into a simmering fight between the agency and Rick…
The McCord Theatre Museum on the SMU campus closed some 20 years back; says here that since then, the thousands of odds and sods collected by its curator, Edyth Renshaw, have been in cold storage. Five years ago, though, theater student Emily Grubbs decided to sift through the stuff –…
A few weeks back we were reminded that the city still has plans to widen César Chávez Boulevard from Live Oak to Commerce downtown. At which point we were also reminded that the plan calls for the purchase and demolition of several historic buildings along Elm Street — chief among…
It hasn’t been easy reaching a preservationist in this state in the last couple of hours. Or in D.C., for that matter. Not since Governor Rick Perry announced earlier today that in order to save the state some money, he’s proposing the elimination of the Texas Historical Commission, at least…
Almost as soon as Gasland nabbed one of this year’s Academy Award nominations for best documentary, industry groups rushed out with a fresh wave of criticisms of the film and director Josh Fox’s argument that natural gas drilling is spreading new health risks across the country. I reached Fox by…
Speaking of vehicles powered by compressed natural gas …Mayor Tom Leppert was deeply involved in the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board’s decision (after much debate and delay) to spend $210 million to convert its liquefied natural gas and clean diesel bus fleet to CNG. Mayor Tom was also deeply involved…
The redo of the once-deteriorating Embarcadero Building at Fair Park was among the recipients of Preservation Dallas’s 2006 Preservation Achievement Awards; so too were The Big Thicket at White Rock Lake, the Belmont Hotel, the restoration of SMU’s Dallas Hall Dome and Rotunda and ARCHITEXAS’s job well done restoring the…
A little more than a month ago — and before the Environmental Protection Agency assumed control of Texas’s greenhouse gas permitting — the EPA looked to be drawing a line in the sand over water contamination from gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, with an emergency order for Fort Worth-based…
Almost as soon as we published that very popular post about University of Texas at Dallas researchers’ efforts to silence that high-pitched problem known as tinnitus, readers began leaving comments and sending e-mails in which they all asked the same question: How can I participate in the forthcoming human clinical…
When U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reps dropped in last August to hear the public’s thoughts on new gas drilling regulations, it was a ¡Three Amigos! sort of moment, the townspeople pleading for help wrangling with Governor Guapo and his jefes at the TCEQ. Now that the EPA’s muscled them aside…
If you were all revved up yesterday for a few solid hours of public debate on the environment, only to be abruptly denied, well, take heart — at the Crowne Plaza Hotel tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency’s holding an all-day hearing on its proposals for regulating greenhouse gases. From 10…
First I’d ever heard of tinnitus was when Who guitarist Pete Townshend announced the ringing in his ears had gotten so bad he might have to hang up his Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster for good. Then I became a music critic, stood too close to too many stages and speakers…
U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall of Rockwall says that despite evidence to the contrary, why, sure, he’s willing to take a few courses in “climate science.” Because as he said during an Energy & Environment subcommittee hearing only last November, “Reasonable people have serious questions about our knowledge of the state…
I still get the morning paper, even though I’m now paying $4 more for the privilege than I previously thought, which sucks. Anyway. Saw on the weather page that it’s supposed to be colder than normal beginning next week. Didn’t say how cold, but yesterday Tim Rogers linked to a…
While we await the Dallas City Council’s decision concerning XTO’s permit application to gas-drill within the city limits, we look just a little westward — toward Arlington, where, tomorrow, the council there will vote on a permit to allow drilling on city property not too terribly far from Cowboys Stadium…
For those following along, it seemed all but inevitable that Gov. Rick Perry’s appointees to the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission would sign off next Tuesday on Harold Simmons’s license application to bury 36 states’ nuclear waste out in West Texas. The commission — consisting of six…
For the last few weeks, Brother Bill Holston’s been on me to write about longtime Friend of Unfair Park Harvey Lacey’s save-the-world project — which, till Tuesday morning, wasn’t completely clear to me, as it were. But earlier this week, Harvey, who lives up in Wylie, sent me a handful…
We’ve noted a couple of times in recent days that Gov. Rick Perry’s appointees to the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission are but days away from closing comment on Harold Simmons’s permit application to bury 36 states’ nuclear waste out in West Texas. Ah, but see, Public…
Surely you’re aware of the ongoing battle between the Environmental Protection Agency and Governor Rick Perry over the state’s enforcement (cough) of the Clean Air Act. Long story short: The governor says the feds don’t have the right to regulate greenhouse emissions, to which the feds have responded with a…
A nuke-free Friend of Unfair Park forwards this morning this just-released add-em-up from Texans for Public Justice, which asks: Can anyone seriously believe Governor Rick Perry or his appointees on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission are going to do a damned thing to stop Harold Simmons…
Speaking of demolitions …Back in September we wondered whether 807 Elm Street’s days were numbered. Park Cities Bank, which owns the building, had been trying to sell it for years but could find no takers. Said attorney Steve Metzger, repping PCB Properties, that was for one very good reason: “That…
