STREET TALK

Speaking in Dallas, state treasurer Ann Richards said she wished the North Texas area well in the quest to land the $4.4 billion Superconducting Super Collider project. As for Austin, Richards said, “Bill Clements is super collider enough for anyone. We’re on the Balcones Fault and we weren’t sure we could take another one”. . .

The City of Dallas’s deal with Pace Entertainment Group Inc. of Houston to build an amphitheater in Fair Park virtually flew through City Hall, but the arrangement left a few disgruntled souls in its wake. A Dallas-based entertainment group, 462 Inc., has filed suit against the city, crying foul because nobody but Pace gets a share of the action for the next forty years. The lawsuit hinges on a provision in the state law that says a public hearing must be held to determine the best use of public land. Now. the city council did hold a ten-minute discussion on January 27, but in the eyes of the owners of 462 Inc., ten minutes does not a hearing make. Councilman Jerry Rucker seems to agree. “It is really leasing out park land for minimal return to the city,” he said. “It may just be as illegal as hell”…

Plans for the long-awaited McKinney Avenue trolley, for several years now the obsession of Oak Lawn businessmen Phil Cobb and Neal Sleeper, just got a shot in the arm. The Urban Mass Transit Administration came through with its second grant-$1.2 million for construction of trolley lines along the brick-paved street. There has been some talk in the past about the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority (MATA) and DART “competing” for UMTA funds, so the grant may have stuck in the craw of Charles Anderson and his staff, who need $30 million of their own to pull off the much-ballyhooed rail system. . .