Mayor Rawlings Proposes Partnership to Get Trinity River Park Built. Next week, the city council will be briefed on a strategy to form a group that will be tasked with getting the Trinity River park done. It would be a public-private partnership and would take park planning away from City Hall.

Neiman Marcus Plans to Cut 225 Jobs. Neiman’s said yesterday that it needs to reorganize to reflect shifting customer shopping habits and will cut 225 jobs, with less than 20 in Dallas. This is following job cuts the past few years as well. The retailer, dealing with $5 billion in leveraged buyout debt, is also taking stock of its Last Call outlet.

Woman Alleges Daughter’s Assault in Lawsuit Against Jewish Community Center. In a lawsuit against the Aaron Family Jewish Community Center of Dallas, a woman says her 14-year-old daughter was repeatedly raped by a fitness center employee. Allegedly the assaults began in 2014 after the teen was being stalked by the employee, who was her trainer at the gym. 24-year-old Randy Lee Adrian is a suspect in the assaults.

Chip and Joanna Open a Second Rental Home. The Waco Fixer Upper power couple announced the opening of another vacation rental house: The Hillcrest Estate in Waco. It was built in 1903 and sleeps 12. My guess is this one will be sold out for years, too, so good luck booking it.

In light of the LGC news, let’s look at two quotes from the mayor. Here’s from the DMN today, regarding the Trinity park:

“You can’t build something this big or this quick with that sort of restraint on you. I’m just very excited about this. We’re going to get this park done. We’ve got the organization in place. Everybody wants the park. Let’s just kind of grab each other’s arms and let’s get it done.”

And then there’s this from the DMN, from back in 2014:

“I was having a meeting the other day, and people were telling me that my position has not been clear. And I was very offended about that because I thought I was always clear. But I want to make myself terrifically clear. … The more I get challenged on the parkway, and the more I study it, the firmer my feet get in the concrete about this being an important thing for the city of Dallas.”

What am I implying by juxtaposing these two quotes? Nothing. Not yet. I’m just thinking about them. As you should.

After the demise last summer of its bookstore, BookEnds, now the site of the madhouse that is the Office of Vital Statistics on the first floor of its downtown branch, the Dallas Public Library turned to moving its surplus stock with biannual clearance sales. The summer sale is set for Aug. 12 and 13 at the J. Erik Jonsson central branch, the library announced today.

There’s an interesting read over on newgeography.com by John Sanphillippo, a San Francisco-based writer and developer who visited Dallas a few years ago for what sounds like the Congress for the New Urbanism, though I could be wrong. He writes about the challenges of urban renewal in places like Deep Ellum – places that, on the surface, seem primed for the kind of small-scale, mom-and-pop, “placemaking” developments that make cities feel welcoming and vibrant. In Deep Ellum, Sanphillippo discovered more than the average amount of opportunity. Not only are there historical, human-scale buildings and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, but the effort to tear down the elevated highway — I-345 — that ravaged the neighborhood and disconnected it from downtown when it was constructed in 1973 holds the potential of unleashing lots of land and economic potentiality for large-scale urban redevelopment.

If only urban renewal were so easy. The problems start, Sanphillippo argues, when you start running the numbers on the land and creating projects that are marketable in a car-driven society:

The mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth, along with the mayors of Texas’ three other largest cities, are conspicuously absent from a list of city leaders meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott this week, the Austin-American Statesman reports.

Mike Rawlings and Betsy Price were among the 18 mayors to sign a letter last week asking to meet with the governor, “whose specific concerns with Texas cities” have been characterized as a war on local control. More than a few issues on the agenda for this special legislative session, including proposed caps on municipal spending and other bills aimed at local ordinances, have pitted leaders in Texas’ blue cities against conservative state lawmakers.

Abbot, however, will not snub every mayor who requested a meeting. He’s set to speak with the mayors of Galveston, Corpus Christi, and San Marcos today, Lubbock, Amarillo, and El Paso on Thursday. Next week Abbott will sit down with the mayors of Arlington, Frisco, McKinney, and Irving. Maybe they can put in a good word for their neighbors in Dallas.

The Latest and Greatest Bathroom Bill Passes the Texas Senate. And by “greatest” I mean “even more pointless than ever before.” The most important thing to tell your trans child on the first day of school is that he will not be arrested for using the bathroom of his choice, but, and you can leave this part out while kissing him on the forehead and helping him with his new Pikachu backpack, Ken Paxton can sue his public school if it tries to adopt a formal trans-friendly bathroom policy. It should be no surprise that Texas law enforcement and school districts are speaking out against the bill, and it’s expected to have a hard time getting through the House.

More Bad News for Carrollton’s Spa Castle. The owners were arrested for tax fraud in March, then several women accused the mega-spa’s employees of being peeping toms, and now, reports are coming out about an incident involving feces in a women’s pool, which was spot-cleaned with bleach, but not drained and thoroughly sanitized.

Did You Watch Yesterday’s Cowboys Press Conference? Don’t. It was a bit of a beating for everyone. All questions revolved around Lucky Whitehead, and Jason Garrett was not willing to stray from a PR-ordained “we stand by our decision” mantra. But my favorite moment of the 56 seconds I watched before I just couldn’t take anymore, was when Dale Hansen asked, “Do you have some people working for the Dallas Cowboys who are just too stupid to be working for this team?” For a good summary of yesterday’s events, read this. And I will echo Tyrone Crawford’s hope that Lucky Whitehead will find a team with which to play and “ball out.”