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CONNECTIONS

Bridging the Gaps Downtown
By D Magazine |

“DALLAS HAS TOSSED away its nostalgia,” says Bennett Miller, real estate developer and pioneer of intown housing. “We no longer have memories downtown to connect us-the old trees or old buildings or old sidewalks that make a downtown feel familiar and safe.

“Downtown needs connectors,” he says, “so that if someone leaves the Convention Center, there’s something familiar or interesting within their sight-a line of trees, somewhere to shop, a sidewalk cafe. They have to see the next one and the next one and the next one if they are going to keep going. There are too many places downtown where they can’t see anything- so they don’t go any further.”

Miller is not the only observer who recognizes connectivity as one of the central challenges to downtown’s revival. Though pockets of energy exist, there are very few areas where the energy flows from one pocket to the other. Without those bridges between the life spaces, people won’t walk from one area to the other, and a downtown will appear lifeless and unfriendly. This Balkanization hasn’t gone unnoticed, and many plans are in the works to help connect the dots downtown.

The most obvious connector is one that downtown boosters prefer not to emphasize- the tunnels and skyways that connect most of die major daytime population centers within the freeway loop. In April, a link between the southwestern and northeastern sectors of the system was completed, making it possible to get from the Texas Club near the West End to Bank One on Main Street or the Fairmont Hotel to the north without ever touching foot to outside pavement. While that’s a lifesaver for workers when it’s pouring rain or blazing hoc outside, the pedestrian system keeps people off the streets and out of sight, doing nothing for the image presented to visitors, the general vitality factor, or the street-level retail that struggles to stay alive downtown.

DART’s light rail downtown is a highly visible connector at street level. Making numerous stops between the eastern end of downtown and the West End, the train has already become the lunch express for both downtown workers and visitors. And in November, DART will start “hard rail” service on Union Pacific tracks, from Union Station to the Apparel Man and the nearby medical buildings. And that’s not the only downtown rail: The McKinney Avenue Trolley is slated for a $10 million expansion that will link the McKinney Avenue corridor to the West End.

Longtime trolley stalwart Phil Cobb says the project is about a year away from construction. The trolley, which opened in July 1989 with a route running along McKinney Avenue from Hall Street and over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway to Ross Avenue, had 68,000 riders last year. When the expansion to the West End is complete, Cobb expects ridership to more than triple. Operation hours-now 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. weekdays and until midnight Fridays and Saturdays-will also expand into the morning rush hour to accommodate Uptown residents who work downtown.

Since the trolley and DART’s Hop-A-Bus offer free transfers between systems, when the expansion is complete ridets will be able to travel from McKinney Avenue to anywhere downtown within minutes. Long-term plans would expand the trolley north from Hall Street to Cityplace and perhaps from the West End to the Convention Center,

Of course, bridging downtown’s gaps doesn’t always take a people mover.

Major developments, destination restaurants, mural art, even landscaping and lighting can fill in blank space. A prime example is JPI Texas Development’s 480-unit garden-style apartment complex, Jefferson at Gaston Yard, which will be complete in January and is already 50 percent leased. Talk about connections: People will be able to leave work at Baylor Hospital, travel a few blocks home to Jefferson at Gaston Yard, then walk to dinner in Deep Ellum.

Destination restaurants downtown can have the same effect of keeping people on the streets after quitting time. With Seventeen Seventeen, the Dallas Museum of Art and dani Foods recently made a big investment to create a museum restaurant that will be a hot spot at night. Corporate executive chef Kent Rathbun, DMA executive chef George W. Brown, Jr., and dani pastry chef Katie Brown have made Seventeen Seventeen a culinary oasis in the heart of downtown. The restaurant, which opened serving lunch only, started evening service in early September, making it possible to walk to dinner from the office, then to a concert at the Meyerson.

Another “connection” can be an inreresting visual image that encourages use of the sidewalk. The Downtown Improvement District (DID) has been hard at work in partnership with building owners to make downtown parking garages art instead of urban blight. The DID’s first project, in partnership with Prudential Realty Group and Chavez Properties, was “Mass Transit,” which features the Southwests tallest toddler pulling a wagon. The 26,000-square-foot mural by Dallas artists Chris Arnold and Jeff Garrison of EYECON, Inc., covers the west wall of the Renaissance Tower Parking Garage and draws interest from die West End north toward another pedestrian-friendly pocket. Fountain Place.

Hall Financial Group commissioned the same company to paint “Resources,” a 274-foot-long, 37-foot-tall mural on die western face of the Cotton Exchange parking garage at San Jacinto and St. Paul streets. The mural, which received a grant from the DID, features children sitting at school desks superimposed on a barren landscape. A secondary image, the silhouettes of adults nrrounding a desk, graphically underscores serious debate: What are we to do about hildren, our most precious resource?

In the early ’80s a nonprofit organization called Treescape Dallas, funded in part by he Junior League of Dallas and downtown property owners, planned extensive andscaping that would have provided visual links from downtown’s major entrances along primary thoroughfares and in pocket parks. The organization was just beginning to make an impact when the real estate market crashed and extra funding from property owners dried up. Today the landscaping of downtown continues on a smaller scale, thanks primarily to the DID, the Dallas Parks Foundation and Trammell Crow.

The city of Dallas Department of Planning and Development is thinking about connections downtown, too. On Oct. 17, “CBD Gateways: Linking Neighborhoods with the Center City Charette” will begin. The French term refers to a varied group of professionals who are interested in creating new visions and design strategics for a particular community, in this case downtown. The goals-to focus on mitigating the negative effects of the highway infrastructure around the core of the CBD-are exciting. But without funding for solutions, that excitement will quickly die. Director of planning and development Cheryl Peterman says one of her departments goals is to include implementation strategies with all of its plans.

“I don’t see planning as an end in itself,” Peterman says. “I think if we can build up a constituency and get them committed, implementation will be much easier.”

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