You know when the City of Dallas and virtually hundreds of volunteers and professionals give a great deal of time and money to the revitalization of our downtown, it makes you crazy to see an impasse that results in a tragic and irreversible bad planning decision. We frankly, don’t have time for it, but beyond that is the damage done to the helpless citizens of Dallas by having to witness and endure the result for years to come.
I’m talking about the 12-foot-tall impermeable wall at the east end of Belo Park. It is the result of both the developer of The Metropolitan and Belo Corp., who funded the park, both being (at different times) inflexible (which is kind phraseology—boneheaded is the more accurate description). The sheer arrogance of allowing this Berlin Wall to exist between a public park and a nicely retrofitted residential building will forever memorialize both parties as having created a bad joke—one that will be told for decades.
The wonderful potential restaurant spaces in The Metropolitan that could have provided a park view, dining experience are now behind the impenetrable barrier, in the dark. Now pedestrians on their way to Main Street for lunch will walk a dark alley of hardscape. The park has no other retail face. The three other compass headings face the institutional façade of the Federal Building to the south, the stark office entrances to One Main Place to the north, and a surface parking lot to the west. The Park is now cut off from being a part of the special retail district to the east by its very creator.
The long-time goal of the neighborhood was to have a park at each end of the special retail district, sort of a landscaped denotation that would mark an entry into what is becoming a neighborhood. Now the residents and daytime inhabitants of the west end of the district have this substantial barrier between them and their park.
So ultimately, we all lose by such poor judgment. I for one will never go by the park, be inside the park, or hear about the park without thinking about this travesty.
Jack Gosnell heads up UCR Urban for United Commercial Realty. Contact him at [email protected].
