I don’t know who wrote this editorial the Dallas Morning News just published, titled “Will the $100M AT&T Dallas Discovery District be part of downtown Dallas’ big moment?” I assume it was either written by someone at AT&T or Phillip Jones at the DCVB. I can tell you no one edited it, because it is riddled with typos. They’ll be fixed but just know the first version said “in an out” and had stray commas and such throughout. Mostly, I call it to your attention because it is seemingly written by someone who has never been to downtown Dallas, even though the DMN offices are very prominently in downtown Dallas.
Downtown Dallas like in many other large cities is, for the most part, a business center. During the day, Main Street bustles with people heading in an out of Chop House Burger for lunch or shopping at Forty Five Ten or ducking the stare of the Giant Eyeball. Unfortunately, the bulk of that activity disappears at night and during the weekend when the surrounding offices go dark.
OK what? No offense to Chop House Burger, but if I had to name 10 restaurants in downtown, maybe eventually I would get to Chop House Burger. More to the point, whoever wrote this walked exactly one (1) city block to set this scene. I assume they went “in an out” of Chop House and noticed it was busy and then walked back to the office and saw the Giant Eyeball (lol) and there we are.
Also this is one sentence:
Still, what the downtown area has to offer today is much more than it had just ten years ago and the prospect of new construction and attractions will hopefully make downtown Dallas resemble at night and on the weekends what it does during work hours Monday through Friday.
Here is the press release:
AT&T wants to help lead the way, and they are doing so with a $100 million investment to revamp their downtown Dallas headquarters campus. Named Dallas Discovery District, AT&T hopes for it to be a popular downtown destination for more than just AT&T employees. The additions include 40,000 square feet of restaurants and retail space as well as a 2-story food hall with balcony dining. It will also feature space for outdoor gathering and performance areas as well as a water garden. The area will also feature a 6-story tall video wall that faces Commerce Street, the largest in all of downtown.
Wow, that got NC-17 pretty quick. Children read your site, guys.
You know what? I’m sorry. I don’t want to be too hard on this editorial. It does have some hard-hitting analysis.
The prospect of Amazon opening their second headquarters in downtown Dallas would boost the downtown prospects that much more.
And it finishes extremely strong:
The steps taken so far, however, paint a picture of optimism and one that we hope ends with more people in Dallas saying, “We’re going downtown.”
[dictated but not read,
Phillip Jones
“B_G Things Happen Here!”]
