Dallas has long been the beneficiary of other cities’ mistakes. When governments in California, New York and elsewhere lost sight of reality and overregulated, overspent, failed to provide basic public safety or simply treated their taxpayers and businesses with contempt, people fled. They came to Dallas because this city offered what others did not: predictability, consistency, fiscal sanity and a sense that leaders understood the basics of governance.
So, it is with something approaching vertigo that a Dallas resident watches the City Council in 2026 and wonders: When exactly did we decide to become them? Today, Dallas is in danger of becoming the very thing it once outperformed.
The March 4 meeting of the Dallas City Council – a 16-hour marathon during which council members debated the future of City Hall – was not just another long meeting. It was a vivid display of a leadership vacuum and a dysfunctional governing body unable to make even the most basic decisions. After hours of debate, the council voted 9–6 not to choose a path but to “explore options,” delaying any real action until summer, and risking much in the process. No decision. No vision. The council punted.
This paralysis is part of a larger pattern of inaction on the issues that matter most: crime, homelessness, economic vitality and the future of downtown.
Opinion
Businesses have noticed. Take AT&T, the largest private employer downtown. When it announced its move here 18 years ago, it was one of the biggest economic successes in Dallas history.
But in recent years, AT&T leaders cited crime and uncontrolled homelessness impacting their employees’ feelings of safety downtown. They and other major employers raised hell, but little action was taken. By the time the city did something concrete, it was too late. AT&T ultimately decided to move its headquarters, impacting 6,000 employees.
A study commissioned by Downtown Dallas Inc. estimated that move alone represents a $2.7 billion hit to downtown property values and $62 million in lost annual property tax revenue. Real numbers that will hit every taxpayer in this city.
The warning signs have been visible for years. In May, AT&T CEO John Stankey wrote to City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert in language that should have been read aloud in the council chamber. His concerns, he wrote, “transcend the immediate issues and moment and extend to the ongoing and cyclical nature of our challenges with effective/sustained governance of the City.”
This was not a complaint about parking. As I read it, this was the CEO of the largest Fortune 500 company headquartered in Dallas telling city leadership, plainly, that he did not trust the city to govern itself.
Bank of America is also relocating major operations out of the urban core. That will cost the taxpayers, too. The iconic 72-story tower will now require $103 million in public incentives just to attract developers willing to reimagine it.
Dallas leaders should be asking themselves a simple question: If the companies that helped build downtown no longer believe in its future, why should anyone else?
The March 4 meeting revealed something even more troubling than indecision: a hostility toward the very enterprises Dallas claims it wants to attract. CBRE and AECOM, two highly respected, international firms that recently relocated to Dallas, were asked to conduct an analysis of the City Hall building and the feasibility of renovation versus relocation. Their work was professional, transparent and grounded in industry standards. Yet several council members accused them of dirty dealing, questioned their motives and implied they were part of a conspiracy to demolish City Hall for financial gain. It was inaccurate and insulting.
These are global firms. Their part of any City Hall project would be a rounding error on their financial statements. To accuse them, or any business, of improprieties simply because their analysis did not align with a council member’s personal agenda is rude, condescending and arrogant.
And it sent a clear message to other companies: Dallas is not a place where facts matter, where expertise is respected or where enterprises will be treated with professionalism.
After the meeting, the CEO of one of those firms put it bluntly to one city official. His company is done dealing with Dallas.
And the attacks questioning integrity and professionalism were not reserved just for outsiders. Tolbert and her staff were also subjected to unfounded accusations. I’m told that morale among city staff is very low. What a great way to recruit and retain the best people to serve our city!
Losing AT&T and Bank of America is not just unfortunate; it is financial and fiduciary suicide. It reflects a lack of vision, a lack of responsibility and a governing culture that does not understand the stakes. This is not how a city behaves when it is serious about economic growth. This is how a city behaves when it has lost its grip on sanity.
And as bad as the meeting was, the prolonged debate missed the real point. Ostensibly, the paralysis was to decide what to do about the nearly 50-year-old I.M. Pei-designed structure that engineers have found riddled with water intrusion, concrete deterioration, asbestos and mechanical systems long past their useful life.
The cost to bring it to modern standards? Between $906 million and $1.14 billion over 20 years. Even the more targeted estimate for addressing major structural and infrastructure deficiencies alone runs to $329 million. I led the largest building company in the nation and I can tell you from experience it will be much more.
For a city facing a budget crunch, that is not a preservation question. It is a financial crisis dressed in brutalist concrete.
Let us be clear about what is actually at stake in the City Hall debate. It is not about a building. Preservationists have legitimate arguments about Pei’s legacy, and those arguments deserve a hearing. But the question before Dallas is not whether to honor architectural history. It is how to reverse downtown’s decline, seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform downtown and utilize limited financial resources.
We could invest in an antiquated, inefficient, costly building that serves mostly government employees or we could strengthen core services like police, fire and code enforcement, invest in southern Dallas where infrastructure needs are urgent, support affordable housing and homelessness solutions, catalyze redevelopment in long‑neglected areas and build a vibrant downtown.
A billion dollars is not a rounding error; it’s a generational choice. The council is stuck arguing over symbolism while downtown declines. Without decisive action, it will be an iconic building in the middle of a desert.
What is really tragic is that decisive action could lead to a phenomenal opportunity to not only reverse decline but create a viable, dynamic downtown that could springboard economic success for the next 40 years.
The Dallas Mavericks will build a new arena by 2031. Their CEO, Rick Welts, told this newspaper that the team wants to be in Dallas, and that downtown is one of two finalists for a new arena site and a transformative 50-acre mixed-use entertainment district. A roughly $2 billion arena complex on that site could catalyze as much as $10 billion in broader downtown investment, including new hotels, concert halls and other venues, invigorating downtown with residential, commercial and hospitality opportunities.
The Mavs are, by their own account, on the clock. They once moved the deadline from early this year to summer to allow City Hall to make a decision, but then came March 4. If Dallas loses the Mavericks downtown, in the same way it lost AT&T, it will not be because of a single vote. It will be the cumulative weight of a city that could not get out of its own way. The City Hall debate is not just about a building. It is a test of whether Dallas still has the capacity to govern itself effectively.
If the city fails that test, the consequences will be measured in lost jobs, declining investment and a downtown that no longer reflects the ambition of the people who call Dallas home.
What once drove businesses to Dallas from California and the Northeast was not a single policy failure. It was the accumulated signal that governments there would not make hard choices, that ideology would trump economics, that process would substitute for leadership. Dallas is now transmitting that same signal — not through taxation or regulation, but through indecision, opacity and a political culture that treats every major question as an occasion for another study.
Tom Leppert served as mayor of Dallas from 2007 to 2011.
Part of our Opinion series Saving Downtown, this column calls for decisive action regarding the future of City Hall and the Dallas Mavericks.
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