At long last, confirmation: The Dallas Mavericks and city officials are officially discussing a deal that could plant the team’s next arena where Dallas City Hall stands.
Before we go any further, let me be clear.
This is not exactly what Rick Welts, the Mavs’ CEO, said over lunch earlier this week. And City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert still won’t give a straight answer to straight questions about how the land beneath Dallas City Hall became a jump ball.
But we’re all grown-ups here. So when Welts says, “Based on the City Council vote, we now have the opportunity to talk to the city about the structure of a deal, and that’s new for us,” we all know what he’s talking about.
He’s referring to the council’s 9-6 vote earlier this month that directed Tolbert to further study repairing City Hall (wink, wink) and to “explore options for the disposition of the City Hall site.” In case anyone walked away from that 16-hour meeting on March 4 (and into the wee small hours of March 5) thinking that momentum for razing and replacing I.M. Pei’s City Hall with a new arena had slowed just because a lot of people opposed to tearing it down spoke into an open mic.
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Far from it.
That’s especially true given the Mavericks’ timeline that ends with a July decision about where the team will build a new arena and some 50 acres’ worth of amenities that Welts said will include a practice facility, hotels, apartments, retail, restaurants, a medical facility and a Live Nation-controlled music venue. The Mavericks have already pushed past their original March deadline, with no wiggle room left if the team is to meet its deadline of playing in a new arena come the start of the 2031-32 season. So it’s now or never if the city hopes to keep the Mavericks downtown.
Dallas Mavericks CEO Rick Welts has been far more visible and far more vocal about the team’s future home than city officials.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Welts is the 73-year-old Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer brought here to chase one more arena for one more NBA team. And he said a lot when we sat down this week, as he’s wont to do of late over the increasingly loud sound of the ticking clock City Hall has told us to ignore.
The city manager, on the other hand, sent only a brief statement dispatched by a spokesman, which concluded: “It is our practice not to negotiate in the media.”
It’s also city leadership’s practice not to talk to the media nor, by extension, the residents of this city. We’re just told, if we’re told anything at all: Just hold on, we got this. Which is increasingly impossible to believe when there’s no vision, no plan, no leadership, just a bunch of people fighting for their scraps of downtown.
We’re told, over and over, to stop talking, stop asking, stop looking at the mess of their own making. So let’s look no further than the Dallas Wings, which the council this week stuck with building their $81 million practice facility on public parkland because the city fouled up construction cost by $27 million. The WNBA team will also have to wait two more years before it can move into downtown’s Memorial Auditorium – which may very well sit next to whatever the Mavs hope to build on Marilla Street.
A Mavericks spokesperson confirmed this week what we’ve suspected all long: Welts and ownership didn’t look at City Hall and say, “Yeah, let’s do it there.” The official word is that the team “did not originate the conversation with the city of Dallas regarding a downtown venue.”
Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson during the open-mic portion of the City Council meeting that began March 4 and ended the morning of March 5. At the end of 16 hours, nine members of the council approving resolution that directed Tolbert, in part, to “explore options for the disposition of the City Hall site.”
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
So I asked Tolbert how 1500 Marilla became the downtown go-to.
“Since being named Interim Dallas City Manager and subsequently appointed to the permanent role, I have met with representatives of the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars regarding their futures in Dallas,” she said in that statement. “These discussions have included the teams’ need for a modern fan-friendly arena experience. Regarding discussions about the future of City Hall, the Dallas City Council directed me to explore options, including the disposition of the City Hall site.”
That’s the extent of her statement. A city spokesman also attached that March 4 council resolution, which, Welts said, made it possible for the team and city to officially begin those discussions Tolbert won’t discuss.
“Up until this point, we’ve not been able to have any discussions with the city manager’s office about any sort of specifics about what a deal could look like,” he said. “But now I’m told by the city manager that that 9-6 vote allows us to sit down and start to talk about the parameters of the deal.”
The Dallas Mavericks want to pick a site for a new arena by no later than July. Dallas City Hall appears to be standing in the way.
Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer
Welts said earlier this week those discussions were “imminent.” A source confirmed they met Thursday afternoon.
“Up until now, the level of conversation has not been specific at all,” he said. “Now we can start to explore if we can find the parameters of a deal that’s good for Dallas and good for the Mavericks.”
I asked Welts about those undated emails showing he took at least two meetings with Tolbert. He confirmed that yes, of course, absolutely, “we have been having periodic meetings with the city to discuss sites and talk in generalities about what this could be.” But only now, he said, would there be “a series of meetings that will be talking about what a deal structure could possibly look like.”
“For the City Hall site?” I asked. Or maybe just said.
“For downtown.”
Not for a specific site? Come on.
“Downtown.”
At which point I reminded him: That 9-6 vote to which he’d referred wasn’t about “downtown.” The vague, amorphous downtown. Some random slice of downtown. That discussion, that vote, was about a very specific site: Dallas City Hall.
“When you talk about downtown,” I told him, “people will read that and say, ‘Well, he’s not being specific about what we all know he’s being specific about.’”
To which he responded, “Well, City Hall is not available today, so we can’t make a deal on a site that’s not available.”
It’s like trying to guard a Tim Hardaway crossover.
But it’s now a few tomorrows later. And before you know it, those tomorrows will flip the calendar to July. It’s clear the Mavericks are getting antsy. I asked Welts if he was relieved he could finally talk to City Hall about … OK, fine, downtown.
“Yeah,” he said. “It has been frustrating for the Mavericks, and I think maybe it has been frustrating for the city, as well. But it was very clear to us that until the council gave permission to the city manager’s office to have those discussions, those discussions were not going to happen.”
Funny thing. Ten years ago this very week I wrote about how then-Mayor Mike Rawlings was all-in on then-owner Mark Cuban’s plans for a new Mavericks arena on 40 acres of land in or at least near downtown.
At the time, the AAC was just 15 years old. But as Rawlings said then, “The what-if is always out there for sports owners and developers, and hopefully we have a city that’s willing to explore that.”
In this town, every story’s just a sequel.