Because, I’m pretty sure, Jim Schutze wasn’t there. But Mayor-for-just-a-little-longer-please-God Laura Miller was, and so were some hardy souls from the council willing to slowly bake in the 90-ish heat and corresponding humidity during hour-long dedication ceremonies at a working construction site in the southern section of the 6,000-acre Trinity Forest. In attendance for the horseshoe: Pauline Medrano, Ron Natinsky, Steve Salazar, Gary Griffith, Don Hill, and the ever-dishy Elba Garcia. Other big names to set in official motion the 140-acre, $10.8 million center (a former illegal dump site) partly funded by the 1998 Trinity bond issue: Gail Thomas, Rebecca Dugger, Linda Perryman Evans (of the $1 million-donating Meadows Foundation), Mary Cook, Mary Suhm, iconic Dallas naturalist Ned Fritz, and classy-looking architect Antoine Predock. Didn’t see Angela Hunt. Looked.
Did I mention it was hot and that there was zero shade if you didn’t find a spot under one of the two tents? And that caterer Eatzi’s briefly ran out of water and substituted nonalcoholic mimosas? But the hottest folks there were probably the guys in the Herbie Johnson Jazz Group playing cool licks on a bare stage. Apart from Mayor Miller’s remarks, which for some reason my fingers found it impossible to transcribe, the highlight of the morning was the unscheduled fly-by of a single Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Ultimately, that’s what this was all about. Be there next year when it opens.
