If you’ve never been inside one of Downtown’s vacant buildings, I can tell you that the ones I’ve seen are littered with old furniture, junk, and trash, and are generally in disarray.  (The City has taken measures to require buildings be cleaned up.)  While some property owners leave their property in shambles (trying to avoid the expense of clean-up and hoping that potential tenants can see past the debris and visualize their new space), Leobardo’s philosophy is that those looking for real estate are more inclined to purchase space if the building looks move-in ready.  The difference in 1600 Pacific is striking:  Looking at the before and after pictures reveals how significant his clean up was.

The first floor of the building will have restaurant and retail/business space.  The lower floors will be for a hotel while the upper floors will provide office space.  The original elevators in the building are incredibly fast, rocketing from the first to the 32nd floor in just a few seconds.

The building has terrific views of Downtown, with the Magnolia and Mercantile on one side and the Republic Bank Tower and Thanksgiving Square on the other.  There’s also a very cool, enormous terrace, as well as a beautiful ball room complete with high wood-paneled ceilings and a huge chandelier.  (Previous plans for the building had included tearing out that space.)

Leobardo’s approach to renovation appears to be well-suited to a time of economic slow-down.  He plans to renovate as the floors are purchased:  a crane and building materials are staged in the basement, and every floor has a large opening in the floor and ceiling along the west wall to allow the crane to operate.  The building should be ready for move-in by December.

Leobardo has a similar plan for the Statler Hilton, which he purchased days ago.  He and his team will clean up the exterior and interior, and do the same with the library next door.  I toured the Statler two years ago, and it has such potential, with great views overlooking Main Street Garden and cool mid-century architecture (which I’m liking more and more).  Leobardo is going to approach the Statler renovation in the same way as 1600 Pacific, renovating in stages.  We’ll see the building transform over the next two and a half years.

The changes coming to 1600 Pacific and the Statler Hilton are another example of our successful transformation of Downtown Dallas.  Each building will help revive it’s surrounding neighborhood — 1600 Pacific’s redo will complement the planned redevelopment across the street on Elm, while the Statler’s rejuvenation — along with the Merc, UNT Law School, and Main Street Garden — will bring life back to one of the most significant blocks in the heart of our city.

After working with the Downtown Dallas Association, I’m pleased to report that today the city council voted to prohibit panhandling in Downtown, Uptown, Victory, and Deep Ellum.  (We couldn’t make the ban citywide because courts have concluded that soliciting money is protected by the First Amendment, so the government must have a compelling reason to infringe on such a basic right.  Here, we’re trying to protect the region’s economic engine, Downtown Dallas.)

The city’s current panhandling ordinance prohibits pandhandling anywhere in the city after sunset, prohibits aggressive panhandling anywhere in the city at any time, and prohibits solicitation near locations where citizens could have cash, such as near ATMs, parking meters, banks, fuel pumps and car washes.

The amended ordinance will prohibit panhandling anytime of the day or night in the core Downtown area, including the Central Business District, Victory, Uptown and Deep Ellum.  Solicitations in these high tourist, high pedestrian areas hinder the city’s goal of promoting tourism, pedestrian traffic, residential development and economic development.

The booting ordinance we passed last fall requires parking lots that choose to boot to provide a written receipt to parking customers when they pay their parking fee (whether by an attendant or parking machine).  The ordinance had gone into effect in Deep Ellum on January 1 of this year and that resolved their booting problems.  Unfortunately, the problem then migrated to Downtown Dallas.  After receiving numerous complaints from Downtown business owners and visitors, Councilmember Medrano and I proposed to move up the effective date of the ordinance so Downtown visitors and businesses didn’t have to spend another five months unprotected from unscrupulous booting.

Councilmember Medrano and I called the parking lot owners in Downtown last week and told them what we planned to bring to the council this week.  Nearly all of the parking lot owners were supportive, explaining that they had abandoned booting as a means of enforcement once it became clear that booting threatened Downtown’s long-term health by driving off visitors.

One councilmember suggested that if booting were less convenient to parking lot owners as a means of enforcement, they would start towing cars.  While that’s possible, that hasn’t been the experience in Deep Ellum.  Barry Annino, president of the Deep Ellum Foundation, explained to the council today that towing hasn’t increased in Deep Ellum since the booting ordinance took effect there at the beginning of the year.  Instead, the parking lots are doing what they did before they began booting — ticketing cars that didn’t pay the proper fee.  So there hasn’t been an uptick in towing.

Some councilmembers opposed the change because they believe parking lot owners need another five months to implement an electronic payment system on their lots.  But I question whether that’s a genuine concern or just a stalling tactic because (1) parking lots have the option not to boot or to use an attendant rather than a machine and (2) no one has implemented these machines in Deep Ellum, despite having had five months (August – December 31) to do so.

After about an hour of debate, the council overwhelmingly approved the ordinance, which will go into effect tomorrow:

FOR:  Hunt, Medrano, Jasso, Davis, Hill, Atkins, Salazar, Leppert, Caraway, Koop, Margolin

AGAINST:  Natinsky, Neumann, Kadane, Allen

Yesterday, I attended the “groundmaking” for the Woodall Rodgers Park, a 5.2 acre deck park that will be constructed above the Woodall Rodgers Freeway between Pearl and St. Paul streets.

I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation (the non-profit that has raised private funds for the park and which will operate and maintain the park).  Over the last several years, I’ve worked with the Foundation to ensure that the park was included in the 2006 bond program, to make Harwood Street pedestrian-only within the park, and to coordinate with surrounding stakeholders.  In 2006, I joined them in visiting Millennium Park in Chicago and Bryant Park in New York City.  In addition to touring the parks, we visited with community leaders who had been key to the parks’ creation.

The Real Estate Council sponsored a breakfast before the groundmaking ceremony.  TREC has been instrumental in the park’s creation — originating the concept and providing seed money.  The breakfast featured Tony Jones (pictured), Chancellor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who gave a very engaging presentation on “Millennium Park, Chicago: Art, Entertainment and Economics, a model for Woodall Rodgers Park and Downtown Dallas.”

You can check out some pictures from the breakfast and groundmaking as well as from our 2006 trip.

Newsrack “condos” have begun replacing the clutter of individual racks in Downtown Dallas. All the individual newsracks in the foreground of the photo will be relocated into the newsrack condo in the background. The new newsracks are a partnership with between the City and the Dallas Morning News.

The new newsracks lessen the visual clutter in Downtown and make the sidewalks more walkable. I’ve been working on this for several years and it’s very exciting to see the newsracks finally installed.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a tour of 2000 McKinney Avenue. The new Uptown office building sits on the edge of the future Woodall Rodgers Park, between Harwood and Olive.

Like many new developments in District 14, the developer came to the city requesing a zoning change to allow them more flexibility in height and other aspects of construction.

Their original proposal had (typical) narrow sidewalks, a parking garage facing the park, and several driveways along the building (which broke up the sidewalk).

When I’m reviewing a zoning case in dense areas like Uptown, I look for wide sidewalks, greenspace, walkability, and connection to the surrounding area. In this case, I requested the developer create wide, tree-lined sidewalks to provide an attractive route to Woodall Rodgers Park. I also requested fewer driveways into the parking garage to reduce the pedestrian-car intersections along the sidewalk.

Lastly, I requested that the side of the building facing the park be actively engaged with street life and the park. The proposed parking garage didn’t do that; it turned its back on the park and left park patrons with a monolithic concrete tower to look at. Now, we’ll have a street-level restaurant with condos above — a great addition to the streetscape and surrounding area. (And those condos will have some of the best views of the park and Downtown as you’ll see in the photos.)

Enjoy these pictures.

I got a call this afternoon from Dallas FOP president, Mike Walton. Dallas lost the 2013 FOP convention to Cincinnati, 800 to 1100 votes. We think one thing that may have tipped the vote in their favor was that FOP members in states near Ohio wanted to drive to their destination, and they have a larger voting bloc than down south.

I’m disappointed, but am so glad I had the opportunity to work with Mike, Fred, Dena, and everyone else who put so much time and energy into this effort. We’re very lucky to have these folks in our DPD.

Enjoy these pictures from our trip, and check out the videos of our presentation (below). Mike was on fire, and did a great job selling our city and hitting all the right notes.

Next time, I’m bringing the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. I kid you not.

In January, I joined DPD officer and Dallas FOP executive board member, Fred Mears, and Dena Rambo of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, as we gave the national FOP officers a tour of Dallas’ police headquarters. Fred’s been working tirelessly to bring the convention to Dallas, which would be terrific for Dallas’ economy. I’ve been working with the Dallas FOP and the convention center to ensure we could bring the best deal possible to the table.

I was really impressed with the regional cooperation and statewide support Dallas received. Richardson, DART, Fort Worth and others have stepped up to help lure the FOP to Dallas. And the FOP lodges across Texas have been really working the delegates here at the convention, encouraging them to vote for Dallas.

On Monday, I met with Dena from the DCVB and DPD officer Mike Walton, president of the Dallas FOP. Mike has been working his butt off, campaigning every possible minute. We discussed our presentation for Wednesday (each city vying for the 2013 convention gives a ten minute presentation to the entire delegation).

On Tuesday, I spent the day at our convention hall booth with Dallas’ 20-member delegation. We were working hard to sell the delegates on Dallas. We had two main points. First, the entire delegation would be in just 3 downtown hotels, all close to the convention center (including the convention center hotel) and connected by light rail. This was a big selling point because the group is usually spread out across whatever city they’re in. This has been especially true in Long Beach, where some of us (the Texas delegation) are 10 miles from the convention center. Second, Dallas is economical. The three hotels have agreed to offer the prevailing federal per diem rate, which is $115 right now. None of the other cities could beat that.

Last night, Dena, Mike and I got together to prepare our presentation. We worked on it about 4 hours, and I think it paid off. Today, we made our presentation to the whole delegation (I’ll post the video shortly).

This has been such a great group to work with. I can’t say enough good things about the DPD officers I’ve gotten to know on this trip, and Dena from the DCVB could not be a better cheerleader for our city.

Tomorrow, the delegation will vote on the host city for 2013. I’ll give everyone an update on the results. Keep your fingers crossed.

(FYI — I didn’t spend any taxpayer funds on this trip; it was paid for by the FOP and out of my campaign funds.)

I’m not a huge fan of mid-century modern architecture.  It’s always seemed a little kitschy and plain to me.  The traditionally-designed Adolphus, the Magnolia, the Kirby, those buildings have style and class to spare.  But I’ve gotta say, mid-century modern is growing on me.  It’s still not my favorite, but I’m starting to appreciate the clean lines and blocks of color.  It’s something.  It’s the Jetson’s vision of the future made real (only without the jet-packs, air-cars, or robots, unfortunately).

The Statler Hilton (aka, Dallas Grand) is the quintessential mid-century modern building, with its blue glass paneled facade and Sinatra lounges.  Last week, I toured the building with Karl Zavitkovsky, Director of Economic Development for the city, and the style grew on me a little more.

As you’ll see in the pictures, the building needs some love.  But it has great bones and lots of cool mid-century flourishes.  I don’t know the structural integrity of the building, what it’d cost to do asbestos abatement, HVAC expenses, etc.  But aesthetically, the Statler’s no worse off than the Merc or Atmos buildings.  And the view is amazing.

I’ve heard again and again from developers that the eight foot ceilings are the killers — they’re just too low for today’s marketplace.  But the configuration of the rooms, combined with the wall of windows, make the ceilings seem higher than eight feet, and the rooms don’t feel small or cramped at all.

Imagine Main Street Garden is done, the UNT Law School has moved into the municipal courts building, and the modern streetcar is up and running on Commerce (with its mate on Elm).  The Statler could be one of the coolest addresses in Downtown.

(And I didn’t wear the cool headgear throughout the tour — only in the stairwells and basement where it was dusty and/or smelly.)