1. The city council approved the $42 million purchase of land for a city-owned convention center hotel. Angela Hunt: not happy. Mitchell Rasansky: probably still not pleased. Jim Schutze: well, he hasn’t weighed in yet, but expect something this morning. I’m going to predict it involves the image of Tom Leppert in a bellhop’s uniform. Oh, and Leppert: at the very least, he looked like this for an extended period of time.
2. Tom Hicks has decided to put Glorypark on blocks in his front yard for the foreseeable future. Somehow, he did not attribute the development’s failure to attract an anchor tenant to its bizarrely terrible name. Hicks also announced he has fired project manager Ron Washington.
3. Stars do Detroit a favor, winning Game 4, which allows the Red Wings to clench a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals at home. That’s right. I went there.
30 comments
Zac, you should try and convert that picture of the Mayor into a 3D image, fingers and all.
1. Where’s that petition to sign again?
2. Aren’t the Cowboys the anchor tenant?
3. 33 years! It’s fate! (ok, no I don’t really “Believe” either, but trying to – last night was awesome)
I hear “Glory Park” will be renamed “Glory Hole” until they are ready to develop.
Another bit of Leppert and Hunt news, did anyone else see the news report on Channel 8/WFAA about the Trinity Park Tollroad? Apparently it is being delayed by another year or so. Mayor Leppert even admitted that each month that it isn’t built, it costs Dallas taxpayers about $10m. They also pointed out NTTA’s potential oversight in their revised timeline. Not only are they pushing back the timeline, the completion term is shorter than the original plan by almost another year. Needless to say, Ms. Hunt was not pleased. And dare we say it, she…was…RIGHT!!!!!!
Nate, I saw that story. There is no way that the NTTA will build it at $2B
So do you think it will cost more than $2B? I’m worried it will.
1) Make some popcorn and get ready for a dust-up. This should be good.
It would be a hell of a lot smarter to use the trinity river Right of way for mass transit.
I say we put Hicks in charge of the Trinity tollroad so it never gets built. The term “pull a Hicks” has to become part of our lexicon — the only issue is trying to come up with the right definition. Should it be “to take a virtually guaranteed money making machine and screw it up beyond repair” (e.g., Glorypark, Liverpool, Hicks Muse)? To be a pompous ass and always promise way more than you can deliver? To hire a man stalked by snow monkeys?
Perhaps the increase in cost to the Trinity project can be offset by revenues from the City hotel’s minibars?
When I moved away three years ago, the extent of development at The Ballpark was an office for Siemens, a couple of restaurants and Hicks’ helipad. Now the Cowboys move in and he STILL can’t get anything done. I think he could screw up a wet dream.
So, we have basically no development at The Ballpark (Save for the culinary masterpiece that is Joe’s Crabshack), and now development in/around the Cowboys stadium is delayed. Constant variable here? Arlington.
I am sure the people who live there are very nice, but for the other 90% of us we always ask the question, “Why the hell would I go to Arlington for anything?” It’s like putting Disney World in Sachse.
Cuban needs to bring the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to town and build a stadium in Fair Park. If the Bay Area can support two teams, why not Dallas/Ft. Worth?
DFW can’t even support one team. And don’t use the excuse that the Rangers are a losing team. There have been plenty of sorry teams around the country that still draw a crowd. There’s a real problem when you can’t put butts in the seats on Opening Day. While they were reportedly sold out, but there were LOTS of empty seats…and not just the cheap seats.
Have any of you considered the fact that the seemingly reality that there are MAYBE 17 kids left in the DFW area who don’t think of baseball as Their Grandpa’s Game?
Bad Demographics just might have something do it with it.
$2B? We could have four convention center hotels for that!
I’ll be making my annual trek from North Dallas to the Ballpark this weekend. I’ll enjoy parking in an extremely remote parking lot, overpaying for hot dogs and beer, a marginal product on the field, and Robert Earl Keen’s postgame show. Afterwards, I will get back in my car, telling myself that the only reason I will ever go back is because they’ve paid some musician a lot of money to off-set the pathetic product on the field in a stadium that belongs in downtown Dallas!!!
Hey Don…
WTF? What did I ever do to you?
Hey Sachse, there you are! I have been looking for a place to park, I’m glad you made an appearance.
TH…
you are a white double-wide…right?
There is a certain high-level person out there with Hicks as a client. I told this person, in front of Tim (whose memory is non-existent), at the Old Monk, that GloryPark would not happen. And that if it did happen, no one would go. Because I was at the Star-Telegram when Tom Schieffer left the Rangers to go develop the area around the ballpark, and that didn’t happen. You know how I have this insight? Because I acknowledge reality: Arlington is an armpit. It’s a place people will go for a sporting event, and then high-tail it outta there. Specifically the area around the Ballpark and Cowboys stadium. This is the reason that the decision to put the Cowboys stadium there was a bad one, no matter the money the Cowboys saved or the deal they cut. Because it’s a land of water parks and bad chain restaurants. Urban cores can be revitalized, and institutions like the Cowboys can be a part of that, as it could have been in the Cedars. (Remember, blame Pete Sessions, not Laura Miller.) But outside of a few cool residential enclaves, Arlington isn’t a desirable destination, and a stadium, cool as it will be, won’t change that fact. Double harumph.
Sachse – yes. Complete with tires on the roof to keep it from blowing off. Got any space? I would like something close to the Ranch House, so I can be myself, but not too far from Firewheel, so I can feel like a city-dweller once in a while.
Ok, so we’re laying blame on Pete Sessions. Can we find someone to replace him? It would have to be another Republican, because that district won’t be turning blue for a while longer.
Hey, Incog, if you think baseball is Grandpa’s Game, you need to get out more. Check out any Little League field (every city out in the ‘burbs has dozens of them). Check out Big League Dreams in Mansfield. Or the RoughRiders in Frisco…. or Fort Worth Cats… or Grand Prairie’s AirHoggs. Kids LOVE baseball! And so do a LOT of adults. Don’t blame basseball because a few businessmen don’t understand how to market the sport.
Bravo, Eric. I don’t have anything against Arlington; however, it it just crazy to have our baseball and (soon to be) football stadiums out in the ‘burbs, when ballparks all over the country are being brought back to the city center, where they belong. My goodness, even Detroit has new football and baseball stadiums in downtown! Imagine the ballpark nestled along downtown Dallas, instead of in a sea of suburban parking lots. That kind of atmosphere and location would help make the on-the-field product palatable.
Again, this is not a rip on Arlington (or the suburbs), just a comment that stadiums, baseball especially, belong in an urban surrounding. It is a failure of vision on the part of team owners and political leaders that we (DFW) are stuck in the 1970’s, and not bringing our teams back to the city.
At Firewheel, they’re secretly filming Jim Carrey’s every move for a reality show about his life but he doesn’t know it but we suspect he’s starting to catch on and then it’s becoming increasingly plain that, yes, he is starting to catch on.
I stumbed across a development just outside St Louis that was so Truman-esque it was crazy scary. Makes Firewheel look like Garland.
1) When was Angela Hunt ‘happy’? Maybe when Tara Reid was a ‘rising star’? Ricky Martin was in Menudo? I had a full head of brown hair??
idea on the trinity toll road…
build a dam down stream
use a ferry to transport the cars
have arkansas Jones dig a canal to the
cowboys new stadium.
Now I remember the name…New Town, Mo. I couldn’t find a home page for the development, but found a site with these pics…www.flickr.com/photos/commorancy/page5/
Developers bought farmland near the river and built their own perfect little town with quaint houses, townhomes, shops, cafés, fountains, parks, churches — all brand new and painted matching colors… with a select group of perfect people walking perfect, pre-approved pets. Crrreeeepy!
Yeah, but us folk out in Sachse don’t use Firewheel like that. We all drive down there and drop off our children every Friday and Saturday night so we can go to the Ranch House. That upscale shpping center is the perfect babysitter.
We miss you Dale.