<\/p>\n
The Civic Living Room concept, which says that by “lifting the landscape,\u00a0public space, circulation, and access are integrated into a unified surface, while civic functions are embedded below. Along the edges, a permeable interface activates the street with everyday programs, extending civic life beyond the building into the city.” Better than what’s there now, anyway.<\/p>\n
Courtesy Dallas City Hall<\/p>\n
Preservation Texas this week released its 2026 Most Endangered Places<\/a> list, which counts among its six imperiled structures an old movie theater in Houston, an abandoned Amarillo airport terminal and the century-old Barton Springs Bridge in Austin. Oh\u00a0\u2014 and Dallas City Hall<\/a>, would-be site of \u201ca large-scale mixed-use development\u201d for a professional basketball team. At least until the Mavericks decide to circumvent city staff, council votes, ticking clocks, political potholes and the threat of lawsuits and plant their Flagg atop the wide-open wasteland that used to be Valley View Center. Just a wild guess.<\/p>\n And because that could happen, and because the City Council might yet vote in coming days\u00a0to abandon our civic center for a high-rise regardless, I spent Thursday morning thumbing through, and getting bogged down in, those 418 proposals submitted to the city\u2019s open call<\/a> for what to do with I.M. Pei\u2019s brutalist colossus and the surrounding land.\u00a0<\/p>\n As an avid collector of conceptual renderings for my coffee-table book Dallas: The City That Almost Was, I\u2019d become curious: Had anyone proposed anything of interest or something worth taking seriously? Which was unlikely, as this was just a cynical sop to the aginners planting \u201cSave Dallas City Hall\u201d signs all over town. But surely, out of the mountain, there had to be a nugget of something of interest aside from the Mavs\u2019 noncommittal note that just says they\u2019re \u201ccommitted to keeping the team in the city of Dallas<\/a>,\u201d which could be anywhere. Including Preston Road and LBJ Freeway.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n As expected, among the short-n-sweet pleas (\u201cSave City Hall\u201d) and anonymous all-caps rants (\u201cLEAVE IT THE WAY IT IS. STOP BEING MONEY HUNGRY AND DONT SELL OUT MORE OF DALLAS TO SATAN HERSELF\u201d), there\u2019s plenty of AI slopping around the final product<\/a>. Some of it\u2019s hilarious<\/a>, obscene<\/a>, overwrought<\/a>, garish<\/a>, grotesque<\/a>, dumb<\/a>. Though, let\u2019s be honest, replacing the hot, foreboding plaza with a waterpark isn\u2019t the worst idea.<\/p>\n From a University of Oklahoma student, a proposal that preserves Dallas City Hall\u00a0\u2014 \u201cand expands it, reorganizing underutilized office space and adding new program to consolidate civic functions into a more efficient and accessible hub.\u201d<\/p>\n Lance Kammerlocher\/Dallas City Hall<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a straight-faced 46-page proposal<\/a> that, inevitably, converts Dallas City Hall into RoboCop\u2019s Omni Consumer Products\u2019 116-story high-rise, complete with \u201ca 30-foot RoboCop helmet grotto, and a 10-story mural of RoboCop on horseback facing a multi-story videoboard.\u201d In the end I guess it\u2019s no less outrageous than putting an arena atop what used to be City Council chambers.<\/p>\n But that deep dive into the shallow pool did turn up a few provocative proposals \u2014 imaginative, thoughtful peeks at a City Hall plucked from its currently inhospitable surroundings and dropped in lively, populated, flourishing contexts. The best of them remind us that city councils and city managers didn\u2019t just slowly kill the building by refusing to take care of it; they killed our ability to appreciate it.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n There are proposals that surround the building with shops and offices, that top it with glass offices and vertical farms (which were all the rage around here in 2009<\/a>), that convert it into a boutique hotel with an open-air restaurant-bar, that fill it with swimming pools and tennis courts, that rip out the parking garages and convert them into below-grade apartments.\u00a0<\/p>\n The best of them remind us that you can develop downtown around the building without pulverizing it (at the cost of tens of millions, likely). It needn\u2019t be a roadblock to redevelopment, but could be the centerpiece of change.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to change our perception of preservation,\u201d Raha Talebi told me Thursday night. She\u2019s a Dallas-raised, Los Angeles-living architect who, with partner Paul Vantieghem<\/a>, worked with Rice School of Architecture students to reimagine Dallas City Hall. The Rice kids came up with three proposals in a few weeks, among them one that would fill the building with swimming pools and sports courts, but didn\u2019t submit them because they were skeptical about how the city would use or abuse them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe site is so expansive,\u201d said Talebi, a Hockaday School and Harvard University graduate. \u201cThis is our opportunity as a city to reuse a building that is structurally viable and a disaster to demolish. It\u2019s not just a concrete building\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s actually a steel building made mostly of rebar. It\u2019s also a vessel.\u201d<\/p>\n From one of the\u00a0submissions by HKS architects, the Agri-Tech District: \u201cImagine a civic future for Dallas not defined by sports and spectacle, but by climate stewardship, food systems, and public well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n The only plan to get any attention is the oft-discussed AIA Ten Presidents proposal, offered in collaboration with the University of Texas at Arlington\u2019s College of Architecture Planning and Public Policy. That one spares City Hall <\/a>while inserting a new arena between Memorial Auditorium<\/a> and a convention center the city\u2019s apparently not yet done debating<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But there are four proposals among the more than 400 from architects at HKS, so named for a man who helped outline the city\u2019s skyline, Harwood K. Smith. HKS likewise counts among its projects SoFi and AT&T and LucasOil stadiums, Globe Life Field and, most recently, Halperin Park.<\/p>\n One proposal called for the creation of a \u201cDallas Civic Center Agri-Tech District,\u201d which asks you \u201cimagine a civic future for Dallas not defined by sports and spectacle, but by climate stewardship, food systems, and public well-being.\u201d Long story short: It plants a \u201cvertical farming tower\u201d atop a City Hall surrounded by swirls of buildings<\/a> full of housing, retail and restaurants. \u201cA high-tech urban hub where civic identity is intertwined with research, production, and academic exchange,\u201d in other words. Which is nice. But like Logan\u2019s Run set in Seattle.<\/p>\n Another submission stamped HKS imagines a Mavericks arena incorporated into City Hall, with the front preserved \u201cas the block\u2019s defining architectural presence.\u201d Yet another proposes razing the Pei and replacing it with something called the Athletic Research, Recovery and Community Advancement Institute<\/a>, which would remake the site \u201cas a shared platform for sports medicine, rehabilitation, performance science, mental health, and community wellness.\u201d It was probably a Medical District leftover.<\/p>\n The best of the four\u00a0\u2014 the one you can actually see without squinting too hard\u00a0\u2014 preserves the Pei but transforms the \u201cisolated monument\u201d into a connected \u201cpublic living room<\/a>\u201d surrounded by shops and shade, bars and seating areas and parks. There\u2019s also an open-air cafe and bar in the middle of City Hall\u00a0\u2014 the \u201ccivic living room, an active, inclusive space for everyday use<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe building is retained and repositioned as visible, accessible civic infrastructure, while new program and public space are embedded across the site to create a porous, active urban edge,\u201d says the proposal that accompanies the renderings intended to position \u201cCity Hall as both a destination and a daily asset for Dallas residents.\u201d Which it hasn\u2019t been for a long, long time.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Those of us who spend any time in Dallas City Hall can appreciate a conceptual rendering that includes a cafe and a bar that \u201ccreate a dynamic environment for gathering, working, and socializing.\u201d<\/p>\n How serious were these proposals? Probably not very: When I reached out to HKS to discuss them, a VP in media relations said they \u201ccame from individuals who work at HKS, but not the firm. So, it wouldn\u2019t be accurate to identify them as HKS submissions.\u201d<\/p>\n Because, of course, HKS as a firm wouldn\u2019t take part in such a charade; neither would anyone else serious about the future of City Hall. City officials gave people four lousy, appalling weeks to submit proposals. And as a result, they made a mockery of this process, turning a generational decision into a joke.<\/p>\n Atmos Lab, a London-based environmental design firm, says as much in its 14-page submission to the city<\/a>, which is less a proposal than a warning. Talebi actually enlisted Atmos Lab as a consultant. And what the studio returned might be the most significant words in the mountainous pile no one will ever read.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not an exercise in patching a defective building into a workable office,\u201d says the Atmos Lab document. \u201cIt is an opportunity to reimagine what Dallas City Hall can become for the next generation of Dallasites\u00a0\u2014 a civic landmark that not only endures, but earns a renewed place at the heart of the city. A building that the city is proud to call its own.\u201d<\/p>\n Have\u00a0thoughts\u00a0about this?\u00a0Send a letter to the editor\u00a0using our letters form<\/a>\u00a0or email\u00a0letters@dallasnews.com<\/a>.\u00a0Letters should be no more than 200 words and include the first and last name of the writer and city of residence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Civic Living Room concept, which says that by “lifting the landscape,\u00a0public space, circulation, and access are integrated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,1631,88574,87999,88952],"class_list":["post-318205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-opinion","tag-tp-downtown-dallas","tag-tp-architecture","tag-tp-dallas-city-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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