The Dallas Morning News editorial page this morning takes another swipe at The Allen Group, the warehousing and logistics company trying to turn Dallas into a continental shipping hub. As usual, today's offering is an exercise in convoluted insider speak that, if to be understood, requires the translation talents of a brave, experienced, handsome and highly skilled cipherologist. Luckily for us all, I am here.
The purported point of the editorial is that it's really important to impose a new "master planning" process on Dallas's "inland port" -- a huge agglomeration of high-tech rail yards, warehouses and trucking centers in which The Allen Group is the lead developer. I'm not sure the average reader would pick up on it, but there is a certain sniffy-whiny tone to this essay having to do with recent decisions by several units of local government to back off from the whole master plan idea.
The News is pissed, in other words.
It says people like themselves, "obviously not in tune with the peculiar politics of southern Dallas, probably did not anticipate being accused of trying to stifle development or even 'shake down' property owners by suggesting a master plan study, as today's conspiracy theories do."
That would be a reference to the many pieces I have written in recent months dealing with the shakedown accusations surrounding this planning effort.
The shakedown is this: All of the planning The News is calling for has
already been done. The Allen Group says launching a new planning effort
right now, just as they are ready to open their doors and begin selling
property, will screw them. They will have to tell potential buyers that
they can't really say what the rules will be for property in the port
area until the new planning process is completed a year and a half or
more from now.
Also -- and this The News does not mention - a move to stymie the Allen Group project right now will deliver a major competitive advantage to a
similar development at Alliance Airport in Tarrant County owned by the
locally well-connected Perot family.
The News also does not mention in its editorial that the term
"shakedown," does not come from me or the Observer but from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, dean
of Dallas African-American office-holders and one of a the most
powerful people in America on transportation infrastructure issues.
The News also takes no account of an issue treated in the business
section of today's New York Times: the
fact that an expansion of the Panama Canal is about to create major new
competitive pressure for all shipping hubs in the American West, very
much including Dallas. In other words, The News' editorial writers
don't even try to put this local controversy in context with global
realities, an exercise that would have illuminated the extreme folly
of doing anything to weaken Dallas's inland port project at this
moment.
The editorial also takes no notice of a story that did appear in The
News' business section today
announcing
that the Allen Group is moving its corporate headquarters to Dallas
from San Diego. Of course, talking about that in the editorial might
have required The News to acknowledge Allen Group's deep commitment to
its Dallas project.
But these omissions pale, in my view, before the big one -- the fact
that this company, The Allen Group, trying to bring a project here that
promises 60,000 new jobs for southern Dallas, was approached at the
very beginning of the development process by a group asking for half a
million dollars a year and a 15 percent equity in the company. For
what?
Well, the money was to be paid in order to make sure Allen Group
would not be perceived by Southern Dallas officials "as an 'out of
town developer' who only wants to take opportunities and resources out
of the community."
What? Allen Group is trying to bring an employment center to Southern
Dallas that will be the equivalent of several automobile factories.
It's trying to bring resources in, not take them out. Why would they
have a problem with the community?
But they do. As I have pointed out in columns. Southern Dallas county
commissioner John Wiley Price is openly derisive of the promise of
jobs, saying, "in slavery everybody had a job." He insists instead on
"equity." Meaning what?
Oh, about half a million bucks a year and 15 percent of the company.
The News editorial today makes no mention of any of that.
Take a gander here, at the Unfair Park item posted just before the
holidays, in which the preposterous "equity" proposal was
posted in full.
It
was after The Allen Group declined to accept this offer that
Commissioner Price began sand-bagging Allen Group's project on key
infrastructure decisions and investments.
Here is what The News's
editorial page would ask itself, if it were honest: Why on earth would
Dallas ever allow an investor of this size and quality, bringing this
much promise to a benighted sector of the city, to get the impression
that he was up against a good-old-boy cabal of rich white guys and
their operatives in the black community?
I can tell you why they don't want to raise that question. Because they
know the answer. It ain't an impression.
I have heard again and again in recent weeks that local business
leaders have criticized Allen Group for not paying off. Their line, I
am told, is that, "That's how we do it here. It's not worth the trouble
to resist."
I spoke to a former elected city official yesterday who said, "We here
in Dallas better hope that The Allen Group keeps right on not listening
to that line."
But, when The Dallas Morning News editorial is fully deciphered and decoded,
that is precisely the paper's line today.
Glad to be of service.--Jim Schutze
