The way the Dallas City Hall debate has been handled has been a mess, and it only got worse Wednesday.
The silver lining is that the debate inched forward toward resolution when the council took an important vote that can help answer questions about the site’s future.
After a contentious meeting that stretched into the early hours Thursday, a path emerged that opens the door to leaving City Hall. Had the council shut down that path, any hope for the Dallas Mavericks to remain downtown may have been lost.
That’s the good part. The trouble is that any path forward is not going to be clean or easy.
Opinion
A long list of amendments and amendments to amendments muddied where this will end up.
There is an option to have city management explore moving out of City Hall, opening the site for potential redevelopment. But there is also an option to explore repairing the building and staying put.
Council members tried to craft this split-the-baby resolution that leaves no one any clearer about what will happen.
Until recently, few people thought about City Hall, at least not enough to spend serious money on it. But the possibility that the Mavs might anchor a redevelopment of the core’s southeastern corridor is an important opportunity Dallas can’t ignore.
The mistake is the council and management’s insistence on disconnecting the Mavs opportunity from the City Hall debate. The two are entwined, and everyone in Dallas should be thinking about the value of the existing City Hall building versus the value of having a major new arena development downtown.
This all needs further discussion, not only about what it will cost to repair City Hall or procure a new one, but about the opportunity cost of remaining in 1500 Marilla St.
Sadly, Wednesday’s debate deepened divisions between preservationists who want to keep City Hall and those who believe the building shouldn’t stand in the way of keeping the Mavs.
Council member Adam Bazaldua succeeded in passing an amendment that can only hurt the city by unfairly limiting the ability of some of Dallas’ most qualified companies to bid their services for future work on a City Hall project.
Bazaldua’s notion is that companies that assessed City Hall’s condition should be barred from future work on any related project because of a supposed conflict of interest. There is no conflict. The idea that reputable companies turned in an inflated assessment of City Hall’s problems to get future work besmirches them without evidence.
The council’s resolution also comes with a provision directing the city to create a plan to fix City Hall’s most critical maintenance needs.
That reads as an expensive patch-it job. There is no money for major repairs to City Hall.
If the end result is a massive bill for taxpayers, and the departure of the Mavs, we will be worse off.
If, however, the council’s vote leads to a serious discussion about what downtown stands to gain or lose, then the pain will have been worth the price.
Part of our Opinion series on Saving Downtown, this editorial explores the Dallas City Council’s recent decision that opens a path to keeping the Dallas Mavericks.
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