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We all know and love Jaap van Zweden. But without the efforts of Liener Temerlin and those who joined him, the great conductor wouldn’t have a building in which to conduct. But in September 1989, Dallas got its symphony hall. And the Arts District began to take shape.

The Dallas Museum of Art was the beachhead for what became the Arts District. The trump card was when Dallas decided to build the symphony hall. I was on that board, and for 10 years, those of us who were interested devoted time and energy to raising money. I think, at the time, the City Council, with some exceptions, was very much opposed to raising that money. Being president and chairman, that was my chief responsibility: getting people to put money in.

I think it was more than $120 million, and that has to be a hell of a lot more than that in today’s dollars. (By the way, D Magazine used to run a thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature. Well, I got a thumbs-down from D Magazine for milking the community by raising money for the symphony hall.) Just in terms of selling, I said if we can establish a high-water mark, like the museum did, this portends all kinds of exciting things for Dallas. The analogy I drew was if you had all the money in the world, you’d never have a museum to equal the Metropolitan or the Louvre or the British Museum, because they have all the artwork. But that’s not true with a symphony hall. I said if we build a great symphony hall, we can end up with the best symphony hall and the best orchestra in the world, because that’s all au courant. And that seemed to make sense to everybody.

The symphony hall really became the cornerstone, I think, for what was to follow. The visionaries in Dallas certainly saw that, including Stanley Marcus. The great violinist Isaac Stern said it best. There was a fundraising event, and I asked him to come down. His words were, “The symphony hall shows what Dallas thinks of itself,” which is a great thought, and I think that’s true of this city.

When there was a committee looking into various architects, I.M. Pei said, “I have never built a symphony hall before.” But we had assurances from Pei that he would devote his exclusive time to it, and it turned into a masterpiece.

There was a sort of warfare going on between I.M. Pei and the acoustician, Russell Johnson. There was a constant battle about the floating ceiling. Pei wanted one shape, Johnson wanted another. I finally got them both together and said, “I’m walking out of the room. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours, and if you two [can’t agree]”—and I remember my heart was pounding in my chest as I said this—“we’re going to end up letting both of you go and start all over.” And Dallas Symphony Orchestra executive director Leonard Stone was there at that time. I thought he was going to kill himself. It was costing the symphony money that we raised, because we couldn’t do things until they made that decision. I said, “That’s not going to look good for Dallas, the symphony, or either of you.” They got together, and as a result Dallas is recognized in headlines all over the world.

It was easy to raise money for a while. Then Dallas went into its first slump ever, and it was hard as hell to raise those extra bucks. There’s another story: my wife told me that Ross Perot had called. I was in Chicago, and Ross said, “I understand that you would name the hall after whoever gave $10 million.” He said, “I’ll give you the $10 million, Liener, on three conditions. One, that you follow I.M. Pei’s plans to the nines. Two, that you don’t name it after me: name it after Mort [Meyerson], because he represents EDS, so much of what built the company. I want to recognize the employees. And, three, I want a portrait done and hung in the hall of Margaret McDermott because she taught this city how to give.” And I called Margaret, and Margaret said, “You tell Ross Perot that it’s high time someone said no to the man”—which I love.

As it turned out, I had to call Ross back several times. I told him that I would keep him informed. We didn’t have enough money for the marble floor. That was going to be $2 million or $4 million, I forget what it was. I called Ross, and he said, “I’ll give you two of that if you’ll match it.” I said, “Ross, people cross the street when they see me coming,” because I’d been doing so much fundraising for so long. And he said, “Okay.” So he gave. He didn’t want it published, but he gave $14 million.

American Airlines was one of my accounts, and I called the CEO, Bob Crandall, and they flew that marble in from Rome to make the opening. As the symphony was rehearsing for the grand opening, I was going around asking, “How are the acoustics?” I asked just enough to irritate Johnson, and he said, “Liener, if you stop listening for the acoustics, and start listening to the music, you’ll come to the conclusion all by yourself.”
Today the hall, the acoustics, and the symphony are recognized all over the world.

Liener Temerlin is a longtime Dallas advertising executive and president of Temerlin Consulting.

Even fewer can point to one family that made it all happen, the way Fort Worth can look to the Basses and all they’ve done. It started in the early 1980s, with a two-block project that became Sundance Square.

We have always believed, from the time we started with the restoration of the initial two-block area in the early 1980s, to today with 20 redeveloped city blocks, that Sundance Square is both a financial investment and an investment in the future of our hometown. Cities really need to be re-energized with every generation in order to thrive, and I am proud that our generation is giving the next a healthy, vibrant downtown to enjoy and work with going forward.

I love Fort Worth. I believe it is one of the finest places in this country to live, work, and do business. I cherish the friendliness and the quality of life, and I appreciate the vitality and sophistication. On a very personal level, I have also enjoyed tremendously living downtown since 1984. Year by year, I have been joined by more people, seen more activity, and experienced more energy, and that’s what makes it all the more fun.

It has taken more than 30 years of continual work, patience, and perseverance to create Sundance Square and its environs. We could not have achieved what we have without Fort Worth’s unparalleled spirit of cooperation. When it comes right down to it, it is the people of Fort Worth who have made Sundance Square a success. They have played the most crucial role of all, joining in and coming downtown to partake in all we have to offer. We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Edward Bass is a developer and an environmentalist.

Before the David Schwarz-designed shopping mall (and city hall) opened in 1999, the phrase “new urbanism” meant nothing to the average North Texas suburbanite. Now it has spawned imitators across the country, as people have learned to appreciate development on a human scale, with a sense of place.

Shortly before the opening of Southlake Town Square’s first phase, in March 1999, I said that I believed the grand opening would serve as a “passing of ownership” from our vision to the reality of Southlake finally having a downtown of its own. We knew we’d gotten it right when, as the barricades came down, letting the public in, children were playing in the park, throwing Frisbees, and dipping their hands into the fountain. From that moment, the community took ownership of its downtown.

Though many people considered the idea of creating a small downtown “from scratch” novel, the only novelty was the plan to do it over more than 20 years instead of more than 100 years. All downtowns have to start somewhere. I said in 1999 that within five to 10 years, when the shininess wore off and the trees had grown and the project began to show some wear, it was going to be a real head-scratcher to figure out when it was built. It didn’t take even that long. Less than two years later, a visitor walked through Town Square and remarked that it was the best renovation of a historic downtown that he had ever seen.

What we tried to create was something that allowed people to naturally come to this place and not have to think why they were coming, but provide enough destinations that when they got here, they would fulfill any of those desires. In March 1999, Southlake Town Square included about 250,000 square feet of retail and office uses. In 2009, Town Square has grown to more than 1.3 million square feet of mixed uses, including the City/County Town Hall and Library, the Southlake Post Office, a downtown Hilton Hotel, a state-of-the-art Harkins movie theater, a deep lineup of retail establishments, 26 restaurants and other food and beverage operators, and more than 250,000 square feet of office and service businesses. Retail sales in 2008 exceeded $200 million, a testament to the project’s regional draw.  And we’re not done. The Town Square master plan accommodates more than 3 million square feet of mixed-use development, leaving an estimated 2 million square feet yet to be built. We’re currently planning for the next 20 years of development at Southlake Town Square.

Perhaps one of the best testimonies to Town Square’s special place in the community came in December 2008, when Forbes.com ranked Southlake the most affluent neighborhood in the country. In the writeup, Brian J.L. Berry, a dean at the University of Texas at Dallas, was quoted as saying that what separates Southlake from its white-collar counterparts is undoubtedly its town square. “It is an upscale community with an expression of that status in its town square,” Berry said. “If there is anything special about the suburb, it is that square.”

Brian Stebbins is a founding partner of Cooper & Stebbins, the developer of Southlake Town Square.

For years, it appeared that Frisco was located on the wrong side of State Highway 121. While its neighbors to the south flourished, Frisco had stalled. Families new to the area—many of them priced out of Plano and elsewhere—were starting to move to the city in the 1990s, but commercial development was slow to follow. Not from lack of effort: there is a story, possibly apocryphal, about the mayor hiring someone to bulldoze a field to create the illusion that things were happening. (Depending on whom you believe, he was actually driving the bulldozer.) But such theatrics were no longer necessary by the time Stonebriar Centre opened in August 2000. The city was well on its way to becoming a dominant economic engine in the region.

When I started as Frisco’s first city manager on November 1, 1987, Frisco’s population was approximately 5,000, and the city had adopted its home rule charter in May of that year calling for a council-manager form of local government. I had just come from Columbus, Texas, a town of 4,000, which is located approximately 70 miles west of Houston.

Much like today’s economy, the stock market had just taken a huge tumble in October 1987, and the economy around Houston at that time was in a complete freefall. Within a few days of starting work in Frisco, a local real estate agent took me on a tour and pointed out two fairly large subdivisions being developed (Plantation Resort and Preston Vineyards), along with the Frisco Jetport. Compared to what had been happening in Columbus, Frisco looked like the promised land.

Within a year or so, Plantation Resort and the Frisco Jetport both ran into financial trouble. Though Plantation Resort would ultimately be developed out, the Frisco Jetport was never completed and eventually went away. So, though I was initially impressed that Frisco had the looks of immediately taking off, it became apparent that the impetus for development would go away as the Resolution Trust Corporation started taking over property after property.

In the early 1990s, the economy started coming back, and the biggest issue facing Frisco was to get major development to cross the State Highway 121 barrier. It seemed at the time that an invisible wall had gone up along the north right-of-way line of the roadway. The first crack in the wall occurred in 1995 when the Collin County Community College District Preston Ridge campus in Frisco opened.

The wall was completely torn down when Stonebriar Centre mall opened in August 2000. Though Frisco had been growing during the 1990s, the opening of Stonebriar Centre appeared to be the catalyst to confirm that Frisco had indeed arrived as a major player in the Dallas economy.

Though I have a difficult time identifying only one event that destined Frisco’s growth, there is no doubt that Frisco’s success has been built upon a combination of being in the right location and having elected leadership with the patience it took not to settle for anything that happened to come our way, but instead demanding quality growth.

The result has been that Frisco is today a city of more than 97,000 with the sixth-largest tax base in North Texas and is in the top 20 in sales tax receipts in the state.

George Purefoy has been the city manager of Frisco since 1987.