Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan called back late yesterday to discuss those still-in-place plans to widen César Chávez Boulevard from Live Oak to Commerce — plans that call for the demolition of one of the oldest buildings downtown. The project’s been in the planning stages for years, but Jordan says…
I’ve been playing phone tag with Keith Manoy, the city’s senior transportation planner and the point man for all things streetcar. It’s understandable. He’s been a little busy.”We’re not in the streetcar business,” Manoy says this morning. “But we’re learning.” He’s doing his best to play catch-up. Not a lot…
Wasn’t so long ago that the Dallas Public Library system appeared to be on life support, a victim of yet another round of city budget cuts. But at City Hall yesterday, during the council’s Quality of Life Committee meeting, Interim Director of Libraries Corrine Hill insisted: Quite the contrary. Said…
We’ve documented developer Jack Matthews’s plans for a hotel next door to his South Side on Lamar ever since we stumbled across it on the Landmark Commission’s agenda last July. Back then, Matthews’s subsidiary, CCH Lamar Partners I LP, told the commission: It had big plans to restore the old…
I’ve already seen council member Ron Natinsky’s for-mayor website — though, at the moment, it’s little more than an under-construction placeholder. But says here that on Thursday, he filed with the City Secretary’s Office his official paperwork naming his campaign finance treasurer, which makes it official: He’s a-runnin’ — along…
No doubt you’ve forgotten all about plans to widen and two-way The Expressway Formerly Known As Central downtown — a plan that’s been around since ’05 but didn’t get really rolling till January 2009. But City Hall hasn’t put it aside; far from it.This week the council’s consent agenda includes…
A day after WFAA-Channel 8 spread the word that the enormous Ultimate Super Bowl party planned in the Southwest Center Mall parking lot was no more — folded at the last minute amidst dirty politics and safety concerns — council member Tennell Atkins held court this morning in the atrium…
This morning, the 7-year-old who lives in my house and I got way tangled in downtown traffic — hundreds, if not thousands, of anti-choice protesters filled the streets, with Dallas police officers blocking off every other intersection between the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Earle Cabell…
On January 7, Oncor filed with the Public Utility Commission a rate-hike request: It wants to jump your electricity bill by around $5 a month. Said Chief Operating Officer Charles Jenkins: So sorry, but we have no choice! “The proposed new rates reflect both the investments we’ve made and the…
Before the Dallas City Council voted to back Dave Neumann Wednesday and wait till October to vote on XTO Energy’s gas drilling proposals, we did get a little more insight into where the council stands right now. Angela Hunt, for instance, mentioned why she was for extending the city’s leases…
That’s not exactly what happened, sure, but this afternoon in Washington, D.C., at the 79th Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk delivered the keynote address to a lunch-time audience that included “my mayor” Tom Leppert. Following the mayors’ trip to the White House…
Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway just sent The Official Announcement: He’s decided not to run for mayor after all. His statement follows, but I also spoke to Caraway about his decision — one he came to, he says, after speaking with his family and concluding that now was not the…
I was looking for something completely unrelated on the Dallas County Civil District Court website this afternoon when I came across the petition you’ll find after the jump, which was filed one week ago today. In it, attorney Haakon Donnelly — on behalf of, among others, the Dallas Police Association,…
Mayor Tom Leppert hasn’t formally announced his candidacy for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s gig just yet, but he hired Republican fund-raiser Shelly Carson last year as his finance director and paid her nearly $75,000, according to campaign finance reports. Carson has yet to return a phone call placed to her office…
We’re back in not-so-executive session, breezing through the rest of the council’s agenda so Mayor-For-Now Tom Bailey Leppert can hop a flight for his swan song at the US Council of Mayors. First, though, Dave Neumann apologizes for his last motion to defer the gas drilling applications till October 12…
I’m wedged into the corner of the briefing room at City Hall — no complaints, because really, Brad Watson needs his legroom. The council’s running through its various opening proclamations — Delia Jasso just introduced Oak Cliff’s Better Block Bunch right now, including Jason Roberts and council challenger Scott Griggs,…
On Monday we took a couple of looks at bcWORKSHOP’s public-art installation known as 5750Dallas, intended to spark a conversation about homelessness and consumption and so forth. It certainly got noticed — by Dallas Code Compliance, which wants ’em vanished by week’s end, per last night’s WFAA lead-off piece. Shouldn’t…
As you’ll no doubt recall, Brian and Cheryl Potashnik were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn the week before Christmas. The couple, of course, was among the first to take guilty pleas in the Dallas City Hall federal corruption case that eventually landed former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill…
Between court hearings and cover stories, we couldn’t spare a warm body to attend this morning’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee, the first since December 7. On the agenda: an update on the Standing Wave and Santa Fe Trestle projects, about which a Friend of Unfair Park will occasionally ask…
Soon as I got back to the office, Jim Rogers showed up with a press release and a photo. Rogers, the first president of the Bryan Place Neighborhood Association perched in the shadow of downtown, came by to announce that he’s running for Dallas City Council — the District 14…
This morning’s hearing got started an hour late, and court’s in recess till 1 p.m. — I’ve sent Intern Jesse to cover the afternoon portion of the proceedings. Should be interesting: Shortly before Judge Laurine Blake called for the noontime lunch break, City Secretary Deborah Watkins was on the stand…
Just rode up to the briefing room with Tennell Atkins, who — and I’ll try not to take it personally — seemed awful anxious for those elevator doors to open on five, and we’re shooting the breeze in the gallery as the rest of the Economic Development Committee trickles in…
