Val Jean-Bart learned the Akard Street bridge was coming down roughly when the bridge came down. The overpass across I-30 — for decades the most direct line between downtown Dallas and the Cedars — was demolished in mid-January as part of TxDOT’s $888 million I-30 Canyon Corridor Improvement Project. The replacement won’t return until 2028. “The minute I heard that, two years, that’s a whole lifetime for a small business like us,” Jean-Bart, who runs Val’s Blue Label cheesecake shop out of the historic Cedars Corner building on South Akard, told CBS Texas.
The severing has been swift and disorienting. Signage is contradictory — “a right turn only sign, and then a no right turn sign,” as Hotel Lorenzo managing partner Justin Burton described it. Cyclists who once rode through from downtown now face full reroutes. “Where’s the road?” customer Keaira Lee told NBC 5. “As a cyclist, detours like that are hard, because you literally have to go all the way around.”
The disconnect cuts deeper than logistics. The city’s own Capital Improvement Budget shows that Dallas approved Cedars TIF funding specifically for Akard Street sidewalk and traffic signal improvements — investments designed to strengthen the very connection TxDOT has now closed for two years. The City Plan Commission called the Cedars the “entryway into downtown from south of Dallas.” And during last week’s marathon City Hall meeting, Preservation Dallas executive director Sarah Crane put it plainly: the $3 billion convention center investment was supposed to connect the core to South Dallas, but the economic studies “were all kept north of I-30.”
Jean-Bart has written city leaders and TxDOT asking for wayfinding, parking, and bike lane fixes, and has a meeting planned with District 2 Council Member Jesse Moreno. “We’re not asking for a lot,” he said. “Just basic city coordination with DOT.” All Jean-Bart wants is for the city to honor a previous promise.