{"id":636435,"date":"2026-05-11T11:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/636435\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T11:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:10:09","slug":"will-the-dallas-wings-will-ever-play-n-memorial-auditorium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/636435\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Dallas Wings will ever play n Memorial Auditorium?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday afternoon, I tried every single door at the downtown convention center to find an unlocked entrance that might get me into\u00a0Memorial Auditorium<\/a>. Thursday morning, I just walked right in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u00a0because I was accompanied by Rosa Fleming, the executive director of Convention and Event Services and the woman tasked with building a new Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center\u00a0where\u00a0the old one\u00a0now stands. Memorial, a landmark long treated like an afterthought, is supposed to serve as one of\u00a0the\u00a0convention center\u00a0complex\u2019s\u00a0centerpiece, as home to the WNBA\u2019s Dallas Wings.<\/p>\n

If the Wings can ever get there. Which\u00a0seems like a\u00a0bigger if\u00a0every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are excited about this building,\u201d Fleming said, shooing away the naysaying along with the fruit flies that were swarming\u00a0in\u00a0Memorial Thursday morning. \u201cWe will make a lot of our competitive cities upset, but that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we have reached a final decision where we\u2019re going to play the 2027 season,\u201d he said, \u201cthe team will announce that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This certainly was not the plan. Far from it. The Met Gala\u2019s\u00a0own <\/a>Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Arike\u00a0Ogunbowale and their teammates were supposed to be tipping off Tuesday\u2019s home-opener against the Atlanta Dream in Memorial. That was the deal the Wings and the city signed in April 2024<\/a>, for an arena with a practice facility\u00a0downtown\u00a0 by\u00a0spring 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the Stars threatening to skate to Plano and the Mavs huffing and puffing to blow down City Hall, the Wings are the only professional team\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0begging to be downtown.\u00a0But\u00a0they\u2019ve\u00a0been told to wait, to do more, to pay more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why\u00a0the Wings haven\u2019t\u00a0yet flown to Frisco or Fort Worth amazes me.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing has gone right with a team that has been very patient and wants to be here,\u201d City Council member Paula Blackmon told me. \u201cAnd that\u2019s really unfortunate. We cannot get our deadlines right. We just can\u2019t. My confidence has slipped in this project and many others.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week I started asking city officials about the likelihood of the Wings actually making it to Memorial in 2028. And \u2013 oh, yeah \u2013 how much is this going to cost? Because with all things convention center-related, I\u2019ve yet to see a final, for-real figure.<\/p>\n

Some council members said they had heard the Memorial makeover is going to cost upwards of $280 million, and some complained that they\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0been briefed about Memorial in months. The most recent update was\u00a0a December memo filled with renderings but no numbers<\/a>. The Wings said they\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0sure of the price tag, either, as\u00a0they\u2019d\u00a0been focused solely on getting the practice facility\u00a0built. The team and the city will resume Memorial conversations sometime this month.<\/p>\n

Fleming asked to meet to clear up the misunderstandings, beginning with the cost: She said during our meeting that the $280 million figure is inaccurate, and that\u00a0she\u2019s\u00a0been calling council members to tell them so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know where that rumor came from,\u201d she said, \u201cand I can’t control them, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the cost right now is closer to $200 million, and that\u00a0she\u2019s\u00a0working to get it down to $170 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe construction term is value engineering, but that’s really not what we’re doing,\u201d Fleming said.\u00a0\u201cPeople get excitable: \u2018Oh, let’s create this, let’s do this, let’s do that.\u2019 And it starts to escalate the price, right? But if we really look at all that history in the building and how it’s worked all this time, if we look at where certain things are located and leave them there and then just run the new infrastructure into them, that saves millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Bibb if $170 million is enough to remake Memorial into an arena that \u201cmeets the requirements and standards of the WNBA,\u201d as he put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said, and that was all\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0say\u00a0on\u00a0the subject.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0also far from clear when Memorial\u2019s makeover\u00a0will begin.<\/p>\n

A soundproof wall has been erected to separate the arena from FIFA\u2019s International Broadcast Center, and Fleming said\u00a0they\u2019ve\u00a0agreed to keep construction noise below a certain decibel level while the World Cup takes\u00a0place. But so far\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0only been some environmental testing to see if there\u2019s asbestos or mold.\u00a0A few ceiling tiles have been removed, and a few cherry pickers have been rolled\u00a0in.<\/p>\n

As Fleming put it, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to debone the chicken before you can begin the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, every single seat, all of them original, will be torn out, and the\u00a0entirety\u00a0of the old building will have to be made ADA-compliant. The domed roof will have to be reskinned. The catwalk will\u00a0likely have\u00a0to come down. All the mechanical,\u00a0electrical\u00a0and plumbing will have to be replaced. All the lighting must go. A locker room will have to be built; so, too, a team store, full-service\u00a0kitchen\u00a0and\u00a0any number\u00a0of other\u00a0amenities.<\/p>\n

For now, you can still stand on the original stage. At present George Dahl’s Memorial looks just as it did when it opened in 1957 and\u00a0when John F. Kennedy spoke there in 1960<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0when the Beatles, Jackson 5 and Elvis Presley performed there or when the Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association called it home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0a time machine. And the Wings are running out of it.<\/p>\n

Fleming said the architecture firm Gensler is still in the design-development phase of the project, now tasked with reducing the price tag.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0no timeline on when construction documents will be ready.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some council members have raised concerns about\u00a0McKissack & McKissack,\u00a0the project manager\u00a0on\u00a0Memorial.<\/p>\n

The local firm had also been tasked with building the\u00a0Wings\u2019\u00a0practice facility at Joey Georgusis Park in West Oak Cliff. But shortly after\u00a0last September\u2019s groundbreaking<\/a>, it became clear that the 70,000-square-foot facility wouldn\u2019t be delivered in time for the 2026 season. When the team finally took control of the project, McKissack\u00a0& McKissack\u00a0was\u00a0fired.<\/p>\n

I reached out to the firm for comment but never heard back.\u00a0So\u00a0I asked Fleming why she was confident the company could remake a 70-year-old, 9,000-seat arena when it\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0build from scratch a practice complex in a park.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think just two separate projects in two separate places wasn’t something they anticipated,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cIt’s\u00a0a tough job, and if you slip a little bit, you cost a project time, and\u00a0that’s\u00a0just basically what happened. It\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0work out in this case, so they made a staffing change and brought their A-team, and so we have every confidence in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with every day that passes,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a good chance the wheels\u00a0fall\u00a0off. Fleming said she\u00a0remains\u00a0confident\u00a0Memorial\u2019s\u00a0ready to go come the 2028 season, but \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI say this all the time: I can’t control tariffs,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cI\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0control delivery. Some things\u00a0get slowed\u00a0down because of the cost of fuel right now.\u00a0All of\u00a0those things can throw something off schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for now, yes, Fleming said: \u201cI\u2019m confident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I spoke with Fleming,\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0asked Bibb the same question. And this was all\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0say:<\/p>\n

Does that sound confident to you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday afternoon, I tried every single door at the downtown convention center to find an unlocked entrance that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,249341,249343,249344,248033,434],"class_list":["post-636435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-tp-dallas-city-council","tag-tp-dallas-wings","tag-tp-downtown-dallas","tag-tp-paige-bueckers","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}