Leading Off
1. Interesting take on the partial success and continued challenge of increasing downtown residential development. Main and Akard streets exemplify the good and bad. Worth a read.
2. Good to know that the dangerous people who for the most part work hard and put money into their families are being arrested at a higher rate. Now if we could only arrest people just for speaking a different language, we’d be set.
3. A new Google blotter that plots Dallas crime? I didn’t think Tim Rogers’ productivity could possibly decrease. I was wrong.
3 Comments to “Leading Off”
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The Mayor wants downtown to be better than Sundance Square? Seems like a good goal. Why then is the City expanding the number of downtown parking meters that operate well into the night? Until a year ago all downtown meters were free after 6:00. You will recall that all parking around Sundance Square is free at night. Two steps forward and one step back.
Maybe the answer to making Downtown Dallas better than Sundance Square lies in another direction - sabotage. With parking meters, narrow streets, and a brand new homeless shelter close by - it might just be too costly and difficult to improve D-downtown.
But, a couple of coordinated efforts might be able to diminish Sundance Square’s charm below that of Dallas’ downtown! A well-placed - or well mis-placed - horizontal gas well too close to the surface could crumble 4th, 5th, and Main Street! (Beat that Dallas potholes!) Passionate do-gooders in the Worth could be aroused to open their own homeless shelter smack in Downtown Fort Worth! Out of work petitioners from Dallas could be shipped to Fort Worth to harrass visitors on every street corner! Strategic muggings! A shooting outside the 8-0! A real flying saucer lasering the Flying Saucer!
Quite frankly, the opportunities to bring Sundance Square down to, or even past, our level abound! Why beat them when they can join us?
How to save downtown:
1 - Have the city partner with DISD to subsidize a non-magnet high school, ie draws only from those living in downtown, and make it the best school in the nation.
2 - Sponsor an agressive rent subsidy program that will provide livable rents ($500/mo 1 bed; $800/mo 2 bed; 1000/mo 3 bed) for at least 50 percent of the downtown housing stock.
3 - Agressively invest in parks that provide green space for DT residents (who wants to take their kids for a walk in a parking lot)
4 - Quit subsidizing actual real estate developments because a) you’ll need the money to accomplish 1, 2, and 3, and b) if you accomplish 1, 2, and 3 the developers will be knocking down doors to get into the DT market.