On Monday the council’s Transportation and Environment Committee took up the subject of setting up electric vehicle charging stations at several city facilities, including City Hall and the downtown central library. For the most part the committee was on board with the initiative, which includes putting three electric trucks in…
In the end, the timing was perfect: The rain, scarce for far too long, had moved off but not before topping off the Trinity River just enough so that it resembled an actual river — roaring, even, almost mighty. The clouds remained, and the glare from an ever-illuminated downtown gave…
After a few weeks off, the city’s Gas Drilling Task Force gets back at it today at 2. The agenda’s short and sweet — “Develop Recommendations for Gas Drilling and Production Regulations” — but the process has been anything but; initially, you may recall, the group was to turn in…
Perhaps you were under the impression that the Texas Department of Transportation is responsible for mowing and maintaining the highway rights-of-way throughout the city. Or maybe you just never thought about it. What’s that like, not thinking about highway medians? We wouldn’t know. Either way, you may recall that way…
Drove the Continental Avenue bridge several times over the weekend on back-and-forth trips to Oak Cliff; the boy and I even pulled over on the west side, at the under-construction entrance to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, to grab the quick pic seen below. As mentioned Friday, all that and…
On Thursday we plugged into the city’s interest in setting up electric-car charging stations on city property — at City Hall, the downtown library, Fair Park, Dallas Love Field and Dallas Executive Airport — with partners TXU and ECOtality, the latter a San Francisco-based company. As it turns out, per…
At 11 a.m. Friday morning, Lorene Turner got the call: Her granddaughter, Jakadrien Turner, who had run away from her Oak Cliff home and her life as a student at Kimball High School, was on a flight home from Colombia. Eleven hours later, the strong but exhausted grandmother finally walked…
Should have seen this coming, what with the new-look Reunion and the downtown Omni and the Chase Tower and all the other buildings illuminating the future Woodall Rodgers Deck Park. But one year after they turned on Margaret Hunt Hill in advance of the Super Bowl, City Hall and the…
Barring an earth-shattering memo from Mary Suhm arriving in the in-box this evening, expect your Saturday-morning Unfair Park item to be filled with … wait for it, wait for it … conceptual renderings. But this is The Good Stuff, the real deal: the latest looks at the Continental Bridge, which…
Several Friends of Unfair Park have inquired: Whatever happened to Great City Attractions’ plans for that enormo Ferris wheel in downtown? Because last we heard, in a Halloween email from Nigel Ward, Great City Attractions’s head of global site development, was that while the original site — next to the…
Mention the words “Craig James,” and chances are at some point your comments section will fill up with something like, oh, I dunno, something like this: “I’ve heard CRAIG JAMES HAS NEVER DENIED THAT HE KILLED 5 HOOKERS WHILE HE WAS AT SMU.” Which the SMU Mustang never seemed to…
When I directed your attention to those pretty pictures filling City Hall’s 2012 calendar yesterday, I forgot to note: Those are the latest top-prize-getters in the third annual Trinity River Corridor Project Photo Contest. Tops, again, was the great Sean Fitzgerald, winner of the second annual contest. That’s his work…
In June 2010 we told you the remarkable tale of a rather unremarkable-looking building that stands at 4526 Leland Avenue, near the intersection of Hatcher Street and S. Central Expressway in South Dallas. It came to our attention because its owner, Vanessa Baker, was seeking landmark status for the property…
A couple of months back we noted that as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s $115-million EV Project, which will spend a few years analyzing if and how much folks actually charge their rides, San Francisco-based ECOtality will be plugging in electric vehicle charging stations at a handful of…
For the last several months we’ve watched construction crews buzzing up and down the scaffolding erected in Webb Chapel Park, on Cromwell between Royal and Marsh. We knew what was coming: the latest “art” pavilion, one of many funded with ’03 and ’06 bond money (speaking of). Per the recently…
City Manager Mary Suhm reminded the council, again and again, by way of introduction: Today’s presentation on the 2012 bond program is very, very, very, very preliminary. There will be many more meetings, including February confabs in every district. The numbers are rough, very rough — guesstimates of guesstimates. The…
Before the city council comes back from lunch-time recess for some Bond, 2012 Bond talk — a belated Christmas miracle! — allow me to direct you to City Hall’s annual post-holiday gift: the 2012 calendar, so I won’t be the only one who knows when Quality of Life Committee meetings…
We ended the year by lamenting City Hall’s inability to implement the new Bike Plan due to two speed bumps — the need for public hearings and the lack of money. But we begin the new year with word that for at least one stretch of concrete, money has been…
Below we noted that after his dismal showing in Iowa last night, Governor Rick Perry went back to Austin to pray and fast — so sad. But minutes ago he tweeted this magnificent photo, accompanied by the note: “And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State…Here we…
We’re about four hours away from finding out who won those long, hard-fought caucuses in Iowa, which Rick Perry is trying like holy hell to win based on the newly minted video you’ll find on the other side. It’s quite the stars-and-stripes-and-church-cross spectacular — like something Jerry Bruckheimer might have…
It was something we heard an awful lot from City Hall in 2011: We expect that to be funded in the 2012 bond program. City officials said it about the Elm Fork Soccer Complex, expanding the Cotton Bowl to keep Texas-OU in Dallas past 2015, implementing Complete Streets and addressing…
Speaking of the Dallas County Commissioners Court (or at least I was, to myself, since you’re probably doing something far better with your last holiday-break day off) …Late last night Cecile Fernandez sent word that she wants to replace back-to-BBQ Maurine Dickey as the commissioner for the new-look District 1…
