The city-run Stevens Park Golf Course, the crown jewel of Oak Cliff, closed in December for renovations — not just a tiny redo, either, but a wholesale makeover that cost upwards of $8 million (using ’03 and ’06 bond money) and was intended to deal with erosion along Combs Creek,…
For the first time since news broke that 1401 Elm was off the market, the city council got to hear all about the project — one its new owner says could be a “tipping point” for downtown. Turkish investor Mukemmel “Mike” Sarimsakci, who purchased and plans to redevelop the 1.5-million…
Speaking of lawsuits involving the city …It’s been two months since we learned of a likely resolution in the city’s case against the Museum of the American Railroad at Fair Park, which the City Attorney’s Office sued to remove in January 2010 so it could reclaim the land for State…
The case of Leanne Siri v. City of Dallas, Texas, et al. is alive and well in Dallas federal court, with discovery scheduled to wrap up by no later than November 18, according to a doc filed with the court only last week. For those who’ve somehow forgotten all about…
Last month we broke the news that 1401 Elm Street was about to be snapped up by Turkish investor and developer Mukemmel “Mike” Sarimsakci — if, that is, the city OK’d $30 million in TIF funds for a redo now expected to run upwards of $136 million. (The George Dahl-designed…
Just what you wanted to kick off your Labor Day Weekend — 16 pages’ worth of budget Q’s and A’s prepared for the City Manager’s Office for the city council following the August 8 budget briefing. There are 49 questions, all told, ranging from Big Picture to footnotes that flesh…
Finally, a press release from Dallas City Hall that settles a long-simmering argument at my house: “Dallas becomes first major Texas city to add cartons to the list of acceptable recycling items.” Son. Of. A. Clearly, I was wrong. Sorry, honey. My apologies. Never shoulda been putting those rinsed-out milk…
Oh, right — Morsels is the name of the downstairs coffee shop at the city-owned Omni downtown, which opens on 11/11/11, in case you’ve forgotten. Anyway. They’re looking to hire someone willing to be “responsible for up-selling and suggestived selling of gift shop items and brewing gourmet coffee.” Suggestived? Hey,…
Looks like we’ll need to find something else to do on September 12: Judge Laurine Blake of Bonham has dismissed the lawsuit hoping to overturn the November referendum allowing for the citywide sale of beer and wine. As we’ve noted in recent days, the city had filed a motion for…
The day before the Labor Department broke the dismal news that the unemployment rate’s unchanged and consumer confidence has “dropped sharply,” students, professors and local business leaders filed into the auditorium at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business to hear from two panels of business and governmental leaders as…
Wednesday’s council briefing is shaping up to be action-packed, in the words of Ronnie Dawson: It’ll have redistricting, a look-see at Dallas Fire-Rescue’s budget (which includes that proposal to move and mothball engines) and … dunh dunh dunh … flow control, otherwise known as Marys Suhm and Nix’s controversial proposal…
Two weeks back we talked to Joey Zapata, the interim assistant city manager who deals with code compliance, about the city’s plan to “reorganize” the Dallas Animal Services staff by pink-slipping 53 employees and replacing them with what they’re calling “contract,” or temporary, workers. Yesterday, in a packed, narrow room at…
Been hearing in recent weeks that there’s a plan afoot for the beleaguered Valley View Center, at long last, prompted by the as-predicted sale of the old Macy’s to a group of local investors who had the plan commission break up the mall into more manageable puzzle pieces two months…
Today brought another round in the ongoing fight over whether Lower Greenville is a daylight retail district or an evening entertainment strip. This afternoon, the City Plan Commission denied specific-use permits to two longstanding venues: Service Bar and Yucatan. City council will have the final say when both appeal the…
In the midst of all this talk of muni pool closures and family aquatic centers we can’t afford and privatizing parks clean-up and renegade tree-trimmers (oh — and liberating Kidd Springs), I went to look for something about Dallas’s park system. A history-of, some old photos, a little more information…
Karen Blumenthal was once a Wall Street Journal bureau chief and continues to write about the money business for the newspaper; and that’s her name on the books Mr. Sam: How Sam Walton Built Walmart and Became America’s Richest Man and Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition…
A busy D.C. kinda in the DFW this first day of September. Because, recall, Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness convenes in Dallas today, first at Love Field and then at SMU, to chitchat infrastructure in advance of the jobs speech that John Boehner made the president put off by…
Rest easy, Friends of Unfair Park. ICE’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit is on the job. In the most recent sweep, they rounded up 27 dangerous immigration violators in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — criminals guilty largely of … overstaying their student visas. Not quite the stuff of Bruckheimer actioners…
It’s been five whole weeks since the City Plan Commission denied giving a specific use permit to the proposed bowling alley next to Good Records. But fear not: It will resurface in two weeks, when the city council considers its last-ditch appeal. Before then, though, the CPC will once again…
By cutting funding to libraries, eliminating raises (or just paychecks) for City Hall workers, raising taxes, closing pools, deferring maintenance on pothole-ridden streets and privatizing parks clean-up? I kid. Only, I don’t. Anyway. This just in from Dallas City Hall: Angela Hunt, a 2008 recipient of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship,…
On June 6, 2006, this item appeared in the regional roundup found in the Metro section of The Dallas Morning News:Authorities have identified a woman fatally struck by a Dallas police car Saturday night as 51-year-old Patricia Ann Brooks. Police said Officers Juan Rangel and Susan Kreun were driving south…
A couple of weeks back, the city acknowledged that a “renegade pruning operation” was responsible for hacking down trees in the Great Trinity Forest, kinda the last place you’d expect someone to go nuts with a chainsaw. Now, this: Friend of Unfair Park Bill Holston sends along an item posted…
