The Ghost Town Inside Downtown Dallas And How to Deal With It

Another interesting item on the council's Economic Development Committee agenda: discussion of a pilot program aimed at dealing with the vacant and abandoned buildings downtown, 10 of which were inspected from June 5-13 in preparation of today's get-together. And these are no small, out-of-the-way properties either: Notes the city doc, "These structures represent a total of 1,562,122 sq.ft. of vacant property in the CBD" with a combined 2008 Dallas Central Appraisal District value of $6,807,390. Do not visit page 8 before breakfast -- unless the phrase "pigeon infestation" and an accompanying photo of God-knows-what in a sink don't bother you, in which case, have at it.

Among the suggestions for dealing with the piss-poor properties: enforce code compliance, how novel. Or: register vacant buildings with the city, which ain't cheap. Or: "Downtown Community Prosecutor" and "Downtown Community Court." Or just get DCAD to knock down the value a little bit. Hey, waitaminute. --Robert Wilonsky