All the talk lately about downtown Dallas being in crisis or facing disaster or just plain dying makes us wish we had a time machine.
If we could take everybody back 10 years to remember what downtown was like then, maybe we could all take a deep breath and realize that, while we have some real challenges today, we’ve come a long way.
If we could go back 20 years, we would be astonished at the beautiful and dynamic downtown we have.
Downtown Dallas just isn’t the same place it was in 2005 when a scattering of residents lived in the central business district surrounded by vacant buildings, empty streets and acre after acre of sad, blacktop parking lots.
Opinion
There were no signature parks. There was hardly any greenspace at all. Boeing’s choice of Chicago as its headquarters location just four years earlier still stung. We were still a few years from AT&T and Comerica announcing downtown would be their home.
Historic structures like the Mercantile Building, the Statler Hotel and the old City Hall building were rotting away. The happening place was the underground tunnel system where high rise workers went for lunch. Plenty of people who worked downtown parked in a garage, went to an office up an elevator, ate in a tunnel, then left from the garage, never stepping foot on the street.
The West End, a 1980s attempt at building street life, was on its heels. The Farmers Market townhome district on the east end was just getting started. Victory Park had been labeled a disappointment. The Arts District hadn’t yet taken root. Klyde Warren Park remained a dream. Main Street was a jumble of vacancies and low-end storefronts. The list of empty, decaying structures was too long, but we’ll mention the Continental, the Lone Star Gas building and LTV Tower just to name a few.
For those who don’t get downtown much these days, the civic debate happening now around the area’s future makes it sound like downtown is a hopeless mess and that so much has been lost recovery may be impossible.
This is overwrought. The downtown we are arguing about today bears little resemblance to the downtown we worried about in 2005. Downtown Dallas is a dynamic neighborhood full of life and beauty that it just didn’t have two decades ago. It has greatly improved in function, form and value. It also has more champions than ever.
It’s important to say these things because we do need to have a serious discussion about major concerns with the future of downtown. But we need to have that discussion in the light of the progress we have made.
The challenge we face
The concern about downtown centers on the very real possibility that AT&T will move many of its employees out of downtown, that we will lose the newly merged Comerica Bank to Uptown and that the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars will pack it up and get out of downtown. There is also the ongoing question about what will happen to Neiman Marcus, spared for now, but at risk in the long run.
All of this represents a terrible blow to downtown’s identity.
AT&T has done incredible work revitalizing the central business district. Its employees bring life to Main, Elm and Commerce streets throughout the week. The development of the Discovery District on the plaza outside of the headquarters building was a gift to the city.
Comerica, recently acquired by Fifth Third Bank, has played a similar role as a corporate anchor.
Losing business giants like AT&T and Comerica puts the day-in and day-out economy of downtown at risk. That’s thousands of lunches, coffee breaks and little purchases each day for starters. That’s to say nothing of the impact on real estate prices if so much space comes rushing onto the market.
As bad as that would be, losing the Mavericks and Stars would be the deeper psychological blow. The Stars are all but assured of leaving come 2031 when their lease at American Airlines Center is up. The Mavericks remain a wild card, keeping their options open. But the real possibility that none of Dallas’ sports teams will be in Dallas, much less downtown, demands that we understand what the city is getting wrong.
If downtown really has improved in ways we can track, why has it become not only less attractive than the suburbs up the toll road but Uptown a few blocks away?
And if we can lose this much this quickly in downtown, what else do we stand to lose?
How we got here
From where we sit, two major factors combined to bring us to the place we are today.
First, under former City Manager T.C. Broadnax, crime and homelessness were permitted to fester downtown. A sense of disorder took root, and Broadnax was unwilling to meaningfully address it.
At the same time, former Police Chief Eddie García was totally committed to a crime-reduction strategy that placed the heaviest police resources in the highest crime areas. It was effective in bringing crime rates down, but downtown didn’t qualify for more resources, even as it became more violent.
Broadnax’s eyes-shut approach to encampments and García’s crime-reduction strategy failed to recognize the knock-on effect of losing ground on redeveloping downtown. Business leaders throughout downtown were rightly worried about their employees. They were making decisions while the city stood by.
The second major factor is a general lack of leadership and vision, and this falls mainly on Mayor Eric Johnson. The signals of decline have been on display downtown for some time, but Johnson hasn’t been around.
City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has stepped into the gap in admirable ways. When Neiman’s was at risk of shutting its doors, she picked up the phone to insist on a meeting with its parent company’s leadership. She got a deal, for now at least.
When downtown leaders demanded something be done about crime and homelessness, Tolbert stepped up to enact the Safe in the City plan that has reduced visible homelessness and put more cops on downtown streets day and night.
But Tolbert can’t be both city manager and city visionary; that’s not the way the job works. Traditionally, the job of pulling the city together around a shared vision has fallen to the mayor. Johnson is unable to fill that role, and we all know it now.
If he isn’t careful, his legacy will be the loss of AT&T, Comerica, the Stars and the Mavericks. That will be tough to top.
A path forward
Downtown is in a bind right now.
We need to face this problem not by lamenting what we might lose, but by putting forward a bold vision for downtown, one that says we are absolutely committed to making downtown Dallas one of the great city-centers in the country.
Everything needs to be on the table. To us that includes finding ways to support pedestrian movement throughout downtown by narrowing streets and widening corridors. It includes reconsidering traffic flow along the one-way streets through downtown. It includes asking whether some streets would be better used as pedestrian corridors.
It means considering greater investment in beautification and upkeep, something Downtown Dallas Inc. has taken on for years.
It means recognizing that the downtown of the future is unlikely to be what the downtown of the past was — a headquarters hub for major corporations. Downtown has been changing for the last two decades into a more balanced office and residential neighborhood anyway, and that must continue.
But mainly, a bold vision will have to ask hard questions about how we use the space we have.
That includes whether the site where City Hall now sits would better serve Dallas if City Hall wasn’t there. First, the city needs to be certain that the costs to repair City Hall make it unviable to remain. If so, moving has to be considered. This is an important economic question that could redound to the long-term health of the central business district. It would be irresponsible not to have the option on the table.
Another difficult question that must be addressed is the location of The Bridge homeless services center. The Bridge cannot foreseeably expand services in its current location; the tension between downtown residents and businesses and the homeless population is too great.
If The Bridge could be relocated to a place where it could have more beds and additional services, that could benefit both the homeless and create a renewed opportunity for that segment of downtown.
These are hard questions to consider. But they have to be weighed in light of the greater cost to Dallas and the region of a declining downtown. The cost of that would be terrible, and despite the progress we’ve made, it’s a real possibility. It’s taken the better part of two decades to bring a measure of vibrancy to the central business district. That work is under threat.
The problem with needing a vision is knowing where to turn to get it.
We dread the words “task force.” Nothing kills momentum faster, and we need momentum.
But we need some mechanism for city leaders to step forward and fill the vacuum of vision around downtown. The business and political class need to recognize the urgency of presenting a plan for what we want downtown to be.
How can we take the success we have had and enhance it? What public-private partnerships can we leverage? What additional incentives can we apply through the city?
How can some of downtown’s critical partners, like Dallas College and Dallas County, contribute to a new vision?
We can’t afford to wait for what might happen next. The time to seize the momentum on the future of downtown is now.
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