HOMING IN ON DOWNTOWN

It was a sign of things to come when the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects recently presented its annual design award to a group of architects who came up with a “humane approach to a very dense [residential] development” in the West End District downtown. Downtown housing already is a hot topic among city officials and should become even hotter this month when city council members are presented with staff recommendations for a city-wide housing plan.

Last December the Dallas City Plan Commission gave its ble>sing to a rezoning plan for the State-Thomas area just north of the downtown central business district, a proposal that would permit the construction of more than 8,000 apartments within walking distance of downtown employment, shopping and entertainment. City officials also have been eyeing an eight-acre tract of land currently owned by MKT Railroad on the western fringes of downtown, bounded by Record and Houston Streets on the east and Woodall Rodgers Freeway on the north, as a possible site for downtown housing. In addition, city staff is studying an area near Old City Park, known as “The Cedars,” as another possible site for housing.

Yet downtown housing remains a tough proposition: The cost of land is often prohibitive and the social costs of displacing inner-city residents are higher. Also, says Larry Fonts, president of the Central Dallas Association, many Dallas residents are not willing to overhaul their lives just so they can be close to their workplace. “It’s a totally different lifestyle,” Fonts says, “almost an Eastern style of living: six- to eight-story apartments, elevators, high density, no grass, no trees and no open space. The suburban lifestyle is hard to counteract. A person who wants to live downtown appreciates an urban setting, lots of people and activity. 1 think the move to downtown living is an evolutionary sort of thing-the growing up of a city.”