This would be … what, round three? And here you thought the Living Plaza was a one-timer. Nope. It may be a 192 degrees tomorrow, but that’s not going to stop the City Hall staffers who’ve taken over where Jason Roberts, Brent Brown and William Whyte started. And so, beginning…
Leslie just got back from the first meeting of the city’s gas drilling task force; her wrap-up’s due shortly. But I tried tuning in earlier, thinking surely the city would live-stream this much-ballyhooed occasion. Instead I got to see Mike Rawlings conduct his first meeting as mayor (from June 27)…
Steve Thompson beat me to it, but no matter. Because, see, in advance of this evening’s meeting of the city’s Redistricting Commission, some of us were sneak-peeking the public’s submissions made to the commission, and lookie there: Among the stacks of maps is one turned in by a rather familiar…
About a month back we sneaked a peek at the city’s fingers-crossed attempt to find someone interested in buying the naming rights to the Elm Fork Athletic Complex off Walnut Hill Lane just west of Stemmons, a project expected to run upwards of $38 million and funded with 1998, 2003…
While Mike Rawlings is off in France, Rudy has a pay-walled piece in the morning’s paper recapping the to-do list offered when he was a candidate and the we’ll-see-about-that realities facing him as mayor: “Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings must find a way to deliver on promises.” Speaking of: As Leslie…
About 40 homeless people descended on Main Street Garden this morning, beginning just a little before 6. They congregated on the patio of the Lily Pad Cafe; as far as we could tell there were no “bums” in the crowd. These people were midway through their morning run. The group…
Last week, just outside of Houston, a little boy’s parents were scrambling. Doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital had told them there was nothing more they could do for the boy, 14-year-old Jordan Allen, whose brain is dotted with inoperable tumors. He was on a ventilator and in a coma, and…
On Monday, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs will cut the city of Dallas a sales-tax revenue check for $16,658,081.23, as you can see above; City Manager Mary Suhm says that’s 13 straight months the city has seen a “slight increase” in tax revenue, among the “slight, slow signs of a recovery.”…
If you were were strolling through Main Street Garden late this afternoon, perhaps accompanied by Angela Hunt and a homeless acquaintance or pausing to let your dog take a leisurely crap on its spacious green lawns, you may have seen a group of increasingly sweaty teenage boys running towards a…
Over the last several months, reporters here and at some of our sister papers have published stories about the mythical child-sex-trafficking pandemic allegedly sweeping our nation. Prodded by activist researchers and research-adverse activists, the media has obsessively repeated bogus claims that hundreds of thousands of children are being held in…
This morning the city posted the agenda for the first-ever meeting of the Gas Drilling Task Force, which kicks off Tuesday at 2 p.m., don’t be late. The agenda’s mostly a bunch of introductory what-whats: Chair Lois Finkelman will give some opening remarks, outline its scope and schedule, review the…
The in-box is filled this morning with more news concerning Rick Perry’s “day of prayer and fasting” in Houston next month — you know, The Response. Let’s begin with this: Several Friends of Unfair Park have forward a piece I first saw this morning on Startlegram great Bud Kennedy’s Facebook…
Tuesday night, I was on the phone with Park and Rec second-in-command Willis Winters, who happened to be standing near the Lily Pad in Main Street Garden. Mid-sentence, he stopped talking, said, “Excuse me,” then said, rather loudly to someone standing near him: “Are you going to pick that up?”Ah,…
On a certain local man’s 65th birthday, The New York Times wonders whether Dubya and Gov. RIck Perry’s relationship will help or hurt the latter’s more-n-likely run for the White House. After all, they’re frienemies now — have been for years, with Perry insisting since at least ’07 that “George…
Directly below, in the comments, a reader accuses us of ignoring Angela Hunt’s handful of weekend tweets concerning “bums camping out in our [downtown] parks, making them unusable for families, children, & residents.” Can’t ignore what you didn’t see, but Hunt was referring specifically to Main Street Garden, where, she…
The boy and I swung by Fair Park Sunday, and on our way out we drove past the Museum of the American Railroad. Which reminded me: The museum and the city of Dallas, which sued to get those trains chugga-chugga’d to Frisco back in January 2010, were set to go…
For those who haven’t really read the Dallas Bike Plan, you might want to sit down with it sooner than later — both the 76-page document and the June addendum, which runs 42 pages. Like, say, turn to Page 33 of the plan, where you’ll find the heading “Strategic Demonstration/Early…
As we were heading out the door Friday, the Supreme Court of Texas handed down opinions in two local cases, one of which we’ve written about before but neither of which is the “billion-dollar case” still awaiting a result. Let’s begin with this one: City of Dallas v Heather Stewart,…
Two items-for-listening this morning: First up, a by-request; then, Schutze combs through his recordings archives and discovers he’s sitting on a JWP best-of.Here, to begin, is a segment that aired on The Ticket Friday morning — one week after Craig Miller and George Dunham acknowledged that they knew so little…
Rumors have long been circulating that something’s up with Valley View Center. Not sure what, exactly; no one’s returning calls (paging Greg Maloney). Even local commercial Realtors aren’t exactly sure. But … something. Involving the Macy’s spot. Like, say, this: On Thursday, per its agenda, the City Plan Commission will…
If you drove to Grapevine last night, entered the mall on the corner of Grapevine Mills Boulevard and Stars and Stripes Way, hurried past the Legoland, the Foot Locker and, outside the aquarium, two children strapped into some kind of bungee-jumping ride, pogoing slowly over and over again from floor…
Mayor Mike Rawlings took the mic before last night’s Observer co-sponsored Gasland screening and told the audience of council members, activists and concerned locals, “I will never vote to put any neighborhood at risk because of money.” And there are high stakes behind that sentence — tens of millions of…
