Tearing down highways is long and difficult work, particularly in a city with a culture that is so wedded to the automobile. Consider this: it has been five years since the Texas Department of Transportation released the CityMAP study, which analyzed the implications and logistics around tearing down Interstate 345, that little strip of connective concrete that cuts off Deep Ellum from downtown. D Magazine devoted an issue of the magazine to the I-345 removal idea way back in 2014. And can you believe it has been nearly eight years since urban planner Patrick Kennedy proposed the then-radical concept in a column in D? Since then, highway removal efforts have gone mainstream. The country’s new transportation secretary is even using them as policy talking points.

Enter a new study that attempts to kick Dallas’ highway removal project into a new gear. It refines some of the plans outlined in CityMAP. This 90-plus page report is being called the I-345/45 Framework Plan (admittedly not as catchy a title as CityMAP), and it was developed by the Toole Design Group, LLC, an engineering and urban design firm that helped plan the I-375 highway removal in Detroit. It attracted an extensive list of partner organizations and individuals and produced the report following a substantial amount of public input. This plan refines the CityMAP study in three key ways:

1. It provides a more holistic view of the reasons for removing I-345.
2. It dives more deeply into how such a removal would affect mobility, including a fascinating analysis of how a reconstituted street grid could handle traffic.
3. It offers a land use vision for how to maximize the potential benefits of the highway removal.

Now, full disclosure: the report is also dedicated to the memory of the late Wick Allison, the founder of D Magazine, who had been a champion of the I-345 project since Kennedy first raised the possibility in our pages. The Coalition for a New Dallas, an organization co-founded by Wick, is also a driving force behind the completion of the “Framework Plan,” and tomorrow the Coalition is hosting an online symposium that will both present this new plan and outline its policy priorities heading into this May’s city council elections.

The timing of the report’s release is significant for another reason. There is a lot of transportation planning happening in and around downtown Dallas right now, and top city and regional planning officials want to plan all three major downtown projects—Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s D2 downtown subway connection, the I-30 canyon rebuild, and I-345—in tandem. At a recent council briefing, Michael Morris, the transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said that TxDOT expects to complete a I-345 traffic study sometime soon.

The Toole study—which I will refer to as the Framework Plan for the rest of this piece—offers an important counterpoint to that TxDOT study. It provides broader vision and technical comparisons to help check whatever TxDOT’s assumptions turn out to be.

Let’s dive into some of the details:

Under normal circumstances, this sort of thing wouldn’t rise to the level of justifying a post here on this august blog. But we’ve got ourselves some unusual circumstances, so here we go with a tale about two guys getting into a kerfuffle one night in 2019 at the Lakewood Landing.

Our players in this drama are the previously mentioned District 9 city council candidate and chiropractor John Botefuhr, and a lawyer and political activist named Barry Jacobs. Before we get to the story from the bar, you need some context. Let’s start with Botefuhr.

When LaMarcus Aldridge was a senior at Seagoville High School, players could still jump straight to the NBA. I think I had seen a short piece on him in the Morning News, and being new to full-time feature writing after a long stint being the music editor at the Dallas Observer, I got the idea to follow him through that season, leading up to him deciding whether to go to college or enter the NBA draft.

I went to as many games as I could and interviewed him a few times. I remember introducing him to The Grey Album, since I knew he was a huge Jay-Z fan and I was a huge dork, I guess. I remember talking to him in his coach’s office a couple of days after Chris Bosh’s brother Joel hit a last-second shot at SMU’s Moody Coliseum to knock Seagoville out of the playoffs. Talking at him mostly—he was still gutted, could barely do more than mumble a few words. I remember him struggling in the McDonald’s All-Star Game and feeling bad for him, knowing that performance more or less making his decision for him.

Here is the story that resulted from all that, which I think about fairly regularly, not just because I see LaMarcus on TV but because I wrote it in the weeks after my son was born.

LaMarcus went on to the University of Texas and then the Portland Trail Blazers, where he excelled. I thought when he became a free agent, LaMarcus might have an inclination to come back to Dallas to team up with Dirk Nowitzki. But it was never close. He went to San Antonio to play with and then replace Tim Duncan, and then, earlier this season, after he fell out of the Spurs’ plans, he signed with the Brooklyn Nets.

And now, today, after seven All-Star appearances, five All-NBA teams, and what feels like tens of thousands of 20-foot jumpers, LaMarcus has announced his retirement from the NBA, following a scare with an irregular heart beat. Is he a Hall of Famer? Who knows, and that’s a discussion for another time. He did just about everything he set out to do, and that’s more than enough. I hope the next stage goes as well for him.

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday gave the OK for developers to get going on a 31-acre mixed-use project in West Dallas, about a mile west of Trinity Groves off Singleton Boulevard. The vote was basically unanimous (one council member was absent, and another recused herself because of a conflict of interest) and occasioned some good-natured back-slapping and congratulations.

And why not? This will bring a lot of housing to a formerly industrial site that was otherwise sitting mostly abandoned. The development will include about 2,100 apartments, 15 percent of them meant to be affordable to residents making less than the median income. It’s the latest in a wave of redevelopment in the area, which began with the construction of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge last decade. (Although that same redevelopment has sometimes gone hand-in-hand with displacement, and what’s happened in West Dallas in the past has too often illustrated the twin crises of affordable housing and poverty in the city.)

Right next door to the proposed development is a townhome community from the homebuilding outfit Megatel, which is also behind this project. The Trinity Green apartments and park are nearby. Along with the five-story apartment buildings, plans call for restaurants, retail, and a spa. Oh, and a giant manmade lagoon.

“What is a lagoon — exactly, technically?” asked Mayor Eric Johnson at roughly the same time I was having that thought during Wednesday’s city council meeting. He mentioned the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon. I haven’t seen it, but it looks awful, and doesn’t seem to have much to do with the kind of lagoons we’re interested in.

A lagoon is “a fancy pond,” according to council member Omar Narvaez. More helpful.

Webster’s has it as “a shallow sound, channel, pond, or lake, especially one into which the sea flows; as, the lagoons of Venice,” which gets us closer.

An “ARTIFICIAL SWIMMING LAGOON means commercial amusement (outside) use that includes at least 1.5 acres of continuous open water area and regulated by State of Texas Department of Health and Human Services and House Bill 1468. This use is limited to water events and activities and accessory beach,” according to zoning documents from the city. Even better.

A lagoon is also a must-have for any self-respecting “world-class destination,” according to Rowlett city officials, who have spent years trying to get a lagoon to call their own near Lake Ray Hubbard.

They are “large, aquatic amenities being incorporated into master-planned communities across Texas and the U.S.,” and are either a “fad” or the source of “long-lasting value to residential communities and the homes that surround them,” according to Channel 8 in a 2019 story about the company Crystal Lagoons, which has built a lot of these. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Dallas Has Plenty of COVID Vaccines. Dallas County reported 20 deaths and 285 cases on Wednesday. The good news is that there’s plenty of COVID-19 vaccine to go around, and the county’s now offering same- or next-day vaccination appointments at Fair Park. If you’re 55 or older, you don’t even need the appointment. With the distribution of Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine suspended, homebound Dallas residents enrolled in Meals on Wheels can start getting Moderna doses delivered next week.

David Dewhurst Out of Jail. The former lieutenant governor, arrested late Tuesday night at a hotel near Love Field and charged with domestic violence, was released on a $1,000 bond Wednesday. A police affidavit says Dewhurst pushed a woman to the ground and held her head down near the outdoor entryway of the hotel.

Mean Green Pitcher Talks About Striking Out 21 Batters. University of North Texas senior Hope Trautwein pitched the perfect softball game Sunday when UNT beat Arkansas Pine Bluff 3-0. She says she’s glad her no-hitter is bringing attention to the sport. Making history will do that. CAW!

Mavs Beat Grizzlies 114-113. I am finding it hard to write about the last few seconds of the game without swearing or typing in all caps or collapsing into laughter, so let’s just watch “that shot” on repeat. Wild, absolutely fantastic stuff.

LUKA DONCIC ARE YOU KIDDING! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/C6wMhjerg8

— ESPN (@espn) April 15, 2021

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a continuing dustup at Collin College. Three professors at the community college say they’re losing their jobs in retaliation — for their opposition to the school’s reopening plan during COVID-19, for their political speech, for their labor organizing, for some of all the above. Many of their colleagues have been joined by free speech and labor advocates in calling for the professors’ reinstatement, and in decrying what they describe as a “culture of fear” driven by conservative politics at the college. At the center of it all has been the college’s president, Neil Matkin. Critics have attacked his seemingly cavalier approach to the pandemic as much as his overall approach to education.

The Chronicle of Higher Education went long this week on what’s going on at Collin College. It’s a good story, well worth reading in full. (There’s a soft paywall; you get two free stories if you sign up.) Some of it will be familiar to anyone who’s watched this play out over the last 12 months. But there’s a lot of valuable detail on Matkin’s background and leadership record at the college, and several (as far as I can tell) previously unreported accounts of the president making tasteless and insensitive comments.

Collin College employees told The Chronicle that Matkin made “penis-related jokes” at a faculty orientation in 2019. Matkin denies this happened. Others told The Chronicle that Matkin had on a separate occasion joked about being unable to tell apart two Black deans. The president said he couldn’t recall saying that. He did admit to a third story: