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Belo Garden, Dallas’ newest urban park, opens to the public Thursday

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:47:44 GMT

Dallas Morning News - by David Flick
Friday May 4, 2012

After almost two years of work, Belo Garden will open to the public Thursday. It won’t truly be finished for decades.

“The grasses and perennials planted this spring will take another two years to fully grow in. It will take 10 years for the trees to look like they’re mature and about 50 years before they really are mature,” said Jacob Petersen, the park’s principal architect.

For decades after that, as tall shumard oaks spread over the park’s southeastern grove, their canopy is to be pruned to provide maximum beauty and shade.

“Think of this as a 100-year park,” Petersen said.

When the construction fence finally comes down this week, Belo Garden will become the second downtown park in the city’s 2004 master plan to become reality.

The first, Main Street Garden, opened in late 2009 and has functioned as a sort of urban backyard where residents of nearby apartments can socialize while dogs romp and children play.

Belo Garden is meant to serve a different function.

“The purpose is to be an oasis in an intense urban environment. It’s a garden where you can feel a sense of quiet,” said Robert W. Decherd, chairman of The Belo Foundation. “Cities have to have places that respond to the human need for trees and flowers and beauty. We don’t have enough of that in downtown Dallas.”

Money for design and construction of the $15 million park came from the foundation and Belo Corp. City bond money provided for the purchase and remediation of the 1.7-acre space, a former parking lot.

As part of the total investment in the park, the private foundation of Robert and Maureen Decherd has endowed $1 million toward future capital improvements and repairs.

Decherd is chairman, president and chief executive officer of A.H. Belo Corporation, parent of The Dallas Morning News, and also chairman of Belo Corp., a television broadcasting company whose properties include WFAA-TV (Channel 8). A.H. Belo Corporation was created in 2008 when Belo Corp. spun off its newspaper assets into a separate company.

How well the park gets used will be the ultimate measure of its success, Decherd said.

“A park is a part of the city that speaks to all of its citizens,” he said. “We want to see people down there at all times of the day, every day.”

Hardy native plants

From the beginning, Belo Garden was meant to appeal to three constituencies, said Mary Margaret Jones, senior principal at Hargreaves Associates, which designed the park.

“It was important to respond to all the people who work in offices near the park and to the more and more people who are living downtown,” Jones said. “It also needed to be a gateway for people who are visiting downtown.”

Most of Belo Garden is covered by sweeping beds of grasses and perennials, most of which are drought-tolerant native plants designed to change hue and texture with the seasons.

Unlike most parks, in which three quarters of the space is lawn, Belo Garden will be less than a quarter turf, Petersen said. It will not be the best place to throw a Frisbee to a dog.

The largest expanse of grass will be on the southwest side, but the area will be interspersed with trees, making it more suitable for picnics than touch football.

To the north, a carpet of zoysia grass will cover a 9-foot-high mound, the park’s most prominent feature.

The mound will overlook a broad plaza paved with hexagonal slabs of native red granite that mark the point where the park’s pathways converge. Embedded in the walkway will be 72 spray heads that create three arching fountains.

The mound and the plaza will serve dual purposes, Petersen said. On ordinary days, they will shut out the bustle of the city.

“The mound acts as a visual and audio screen against city traffic. The fountains create a calming white noise that separates you from the sounds of the city, and the water will have a cooling effect on the plaza on warm days,” Petersen said.

The north side of the mound can also function as a platform for viewing parades on Main Street. When the fountains are turned off, the plaza can double as a performance stage, with the south side of the mound providing amphitheater seating.

Office workers may become the most frequent users of the easternmost part of the park, which will also function as a pass-through between two mid-block crosswalks on Main and Commerce streets.

The area will have tables and chairs on a carpet of crushed granite.

Defining the eastern end will be a wall reaching up to 12 feet tall. Residents of the adjacent Metropolitan condominiums had concerns that it would block their access to the park, but park supporters argued, in part, that it was necessary to create a sense of serenity, and promised it would be clad on both sides in decorative granite.

The stone chosen is an Indian granite, one of the few nonnative materials in the park.

“We wanted a yellow stone that will nicely set off the leafy shadows of the trees,” Petersen said.

Natural attraction

Petersen said the park, while not large enough to become an all-day draw in itself, will provide an additional destination for people visiting new amenities such as the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

The main entrance at Main and Griffin Street is specifically designed as an invitation for downtown visitors to pause within the park.

“It will be hard to walk by and not be drawn into Belo Garden,” Petersen said.

The third of the planned downtown parks, Klyde Warren Park, will open on a deck over Woodall Rodgers Freeway in the autumn.

The fourth, Pacific Plaza, is still unfunded. Creation of another park, Carpenter Plaza, on the eastern edge of downtown, is under discussion.

Late last month, the city accepted a $150,000 donation from the Decherd Foundation and an additional $15,000 from Robert and Maureen Decherd to update the 2004 downtown parks master plan.

Supporters of the parks hope that, beyond improving the quality of local life, the green spaces will bring residents and economic vitality to downtown Dallas — and maybe spur developers to invest in good architecture.

“The hope is that eventually someone will build on the parking lot across Griffin Street, and that it will be a building that reflects the beauty of the park,” Petersen said.

“That may be 20 years from now, but 20 years in a city’s life is not all that long a time.”

JetBlue begins flights between D/FW and Boston airports & Spirit Airlines adds flights to 3 cities from D/FW Airport

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:41:02 GMT

Dallas Business Journal - by Lance Murray
Wednesday, May 2, 2012

JetBlue Airways has launched its three-times-a-day service between Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Boston Logan Airport.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Tuesday's first flight from Boston carried two VIP passengers -- a pair of live lobsters to be given as gifts to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price.

The airline initially will use 100-seat Embraer ERJ-190 on the route, but said it will increase capacity to the 150-seat Airbus A320 during the summer, the Star-Telegram reported.

Spirit Airlines announced today that it is beginning flights between Denver, Tampa, Fla., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

The airline will offer four nonstop flights per week between D/FW Airport and Tampa. The Seasonal service to Myrtle Beach will be three flights per week, the company said.

Spirit's daily service between Denver and Dallas/Fort Worth will begin with one daily flight and the airline said it will add a second daily flight starting on May 17.

Spirit (NASDAQ: SAVE) is the seventh busiest airline operating at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport base on the number of passengers.

Website ranks Dallas as best in Texas for public transit

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:37:07 GMT

Dallas Business Journal - by Lance Murray
Monday, April 30, 2012

Dallas is the 16th best city in the nation for public transit, according to a listing by WalkScore.

If you've been thinking about leaving your car parked in the driveway and taking public transit to work, then Dallas is one of the best places to do it.

Dallas ranked as the top city in Texas when it comes to public transportation, according to a ranking by WalkScore, a website that scores homes and neighborhoods for walkability.

USA Today reported that Dallas ranked No. 16 among the 25 cities on the list. That ranked one spot ahead of Houston and three spots ahead of San Antonio. Austin ranked 21st on the list.

No. 1 on the list was New York City, followed by San Francisco in the second spot.

The website touts the benefits of leaving your car at home, saying that using public transit can save you more than $10,000 a year.

DFW leads the nation in financial sector job growth

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:35:27 GMT

Dallas Business Journal by Lance Murray
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The 100 largest metropolitan areas lost a total of 459,400 jobs in the financial-activities sector in the past four years, but the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area bucked that trend and led the nation with an increase of 7,600 jobs.

That's according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by On Numbers.

DFW was one of 11 metropolitan areas out of the top 100 that managed to grow the number of jobs in the financial-activities field. San Antonio, Pittsburgh and Nashville were the next in line for job growth in the sector.

The top loser was New York City, which lost 48,600 jobs, followed by Los Angeles which was down 40,300.

Historic Downtown: Preservation efforts under way for 508 Park structure

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:33:00 GMT

Dallas Morning News - by Robert Wilonsky
Tuesday April 24, 2012

Harry Wilonsky
Demolition began Monday on a storage facility adjacent to 508 Park Ave. in downtown Dallas.

Crews began demolition Monday on an old downtown storage facility at the corner of Young Street and Park Avenue as part of a project to preserve an important piece of music history.

Next door to history: Heavy equipment was used to begin knocking down the old Columbia Pictures storage facility in downtown Dallas. The structure is next door to 508 Park Avenue, where legendary bluesman Robert Johnson recorded in 1937. Texas swing maestro Bob Wills also recorded there long before he was an icon.

Amphitheater coming: The Columbia storage building will give way to an amphitheater and connect with 508 Park, likewise on its way to restoration as many things: museum, recording facility, art studio and exhibition gallery.

Saved by Presbyterians: 508 Park was long neglected and faced demolition when it was purchased by First Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Bruce Buchanan, executive director of The Stewpot, the church’s nearby ministry that serves the homeless and needy, said last year that the plan was to build a small grassy amphitheater to be used for worship or concerts.

Presiding at the demolition: Buchanan presided Monday, blessing the Columbia building before it was torn down. Another event is planned at First Presbyterian on June 19 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Johnson’s two-day recording session at the building formerly known as the Brunswick and Decca Records offices.

New datacenter firm based in Dallas

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:28:53 GMT

Dallas Morning News - by Steve Brown
Wednesday April 18, 2012

A new data center company will be based in Dallas.

Compass Datacenters was formed by a former top officer of Digitial Realty, one of the country's largest developers and operators of such projects.

Chris Crosby said Wednesday that his new firm will provide dedicated modular data centers for companies' telecommunications and data processing and storage.

“The bulk of current investment in the U.S. is concentrated in only six markets with data center products that meet the needs of a very narrow set of customers," Crosby said in a statement. "That approach ignores 98 percent of the potential overall market, which means there is a huge untapped market for an innovative company."

Compass Datacenters said it will concentrate providing facilities for companies not located in the largest U.S. markets already served by large datacenter projects.

Dallas City Council passes permanent twice-weekly watering restriction

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:27:24 GMT

Dallas Morning News - by Steve Thompson
Wednesday, April 18 2012

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday voted to permanently prohibit residents and businesses from using sprinklers to water lawns and shrubs more than twice per week.

In the wake of one of the worst droughts since the 1950s, the Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to permanently prohibit residents and businesses from using sprinklers to water lawns and shrubs more than twice a week.

Mayor Mike Rawlings and most council members applauded the plan as a way to conserve water and extend supplies about 10 years — to perhaps 2045 from the current estimate of 2035.

The mayor said political will for such a move tends to come and go.

“When we talk about water, it is difficult because it’s long term,” Rawlings said. “It’s easy when there’s a drought; we all get behind it. And then when there’s not a drought, we don’t care about it.”

But such conservation measures are critical to the region’s economic future, he said.

“We’re taking the hard choice here, but for our kids and the folks that are going to be dealing with Dallas in 2040, they will thank us for this,” Rawlings said.

The twice-a-week restriction is already in place temporarily because of last year’s drought. Under the new ordinance, residents and businesses are prohibited from using sprinklers more than twice weekly, but they can use soaker hoses and drip lines, or water by hand as often as they like.

The idea is to cut down on the amount of water lost to evaporation during watering. City officials say the measure could reduce outdoor water use up to 16 percent.

“We have gone to a lot of sprinkler systems, we’re a hotter place to live, and it’s an inefficient way to water, really, so a lot of it’s going in the air,” Rawlings said.

Two dissenting votes came from council members Ann Margolin and Sandy Greyson. They voiced concerns that the restriction will hurt area landscaping and bring down quality of life in neighborhoods.

Margolin, who represents northwest Dallas, said the city was jumping into the restriction without enough thought.

“I, too, support the goal of reducing water consumption,” she said. “But I am also concerned about the damage we’re going to do to probably millions of dollars of landscaping throughout the city.”

Greyson said her constituents in Far North Dallas appear adamantly opposed to the idea.

“I don’t always get a lot of input from my district on various issues that we discuss down here at City Hall,” she said. “This one has grabbed their attention in a way that has generated a lot of email and phone conversions.”

City officials point out advice from experts that watering deeply and infrequently can be healthiest for landscaping. According to the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, most lawns should be watered about every four days.

The same might not be true for newly planted sod, shrubs and trees. Officials say the new ordinance allows for variances in cases of new landscaping and other special circumstances.

“We are working on unusual circumstances that we can give assistance to and variances to,” City Manager Mary Suhm said. “Most every one that’s been brought up, we’re willing to talk about. People should call 311, leave their name and number, and the water department will get back with them on it.”

Several council members thanked the mayor for working with other mayors to gain regional support for the plan. Rawlings held a news conference last week to endorse the measure alongside the mayors of Fort Worth, Arlington and Irving.

“Mr. Mayor, you are to be commended for taking a leadership effort in the region,” said council member Vonciel Hill.

Suhm and council members said the measure will help Dallas in its quest to acquire more water sources.

“We must find new reservoirs,” Hill said. “Part of the reason that we’ve had so much trouble is that we are seen within the state context as water hogs. This helps us blunt some of that criticism.”

Rawlings promised to continue his efforts to get other cities, including those that buy water from Dallas, to implement the restriction.

“If we’re going to be selling them water,” he said, “we want them to be right with us on this.”

Dallas planner: Houston Street bridge to close for streetcar line construction

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:23:04 GMT

Dallas Morning News - by Roy Appleton
April 19, 2012

The city of Dallas’ transportation planner said this week that he’ll soon present a routing plan to close the Houston Street bridge to motor vehicles during the construction of a streetcar line.

Keith Manoy also says he will be checking the public’s pulse on forever closing the bridge to all but bicycles, pedestrians and the like after the streetcar service starts in October 2014.

“I need to lay this all out and present it to the community,” Manoy said Wednesday.

The bridge must be closed during construction, set to begin early in 2013. During that time, the parallel and nearby Jefferson Boulevard bridge will become two-way, picking up the load.

Oak Cliff-bound traffic will exit at the Marsalis Avenue ramp toward Colorado Boulevard, while traffic from Oak Cliff will connect with the bridge via Jefferson Boulevard, according to the plan.

The routing plan will be presented at public meetings in the next few months, Manoy said. The changes will require City Council approval.

Council member Scott Griggs says he supports the idea. And Manoy said he has received positive responses from council members Delia Jasso, Pauline Medrano and Linda Koop.

After the Houston bridge closes, “that’s probably the way it will stay until the Jefferson Memorial Bridge is built,” Manoy said.

The project, involving a new river crossing between downtown and Oak Cliff with ramp links to Interstate 35E and the proposed Trinity Parkway, remains unfunded. But the state is preparing to hire a consultant to review the plan, which now calls for a six-lane bridge without bicycle or pedestrian lanes. Manoy said he hopes those latter amenities would be added.

And he would like to see the century-old bridge nearby left to calmer forms of motion: “Hopefully, Houston will never reopen to [motor] vehicular traffic.”

America's Fastest-Growing Cities (DFW #2)

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:22:00 GMT

Forbes.com

Wednesday April 18,2012

David Sucsy/istockphoto

Click for full photo gallery: America's Fastest-Growing Cities

There was a time in the early 1990s when Austin, Texas, was the quintessential see-through city, with empty office towers downtown and vacant subdivisions meandering through the surrounding limestone hills.

No longer. Austin realtor Kevin Elliott says buyers are snapping up houses as companies like Apple, Progressive Insurance and Whole Foods add hundreds of jobs and out-of-staters gladly pay up for what, to them, appear to be ridiculously cheap homes.

“My last three listings I’ve had multiple offers, and they sold for either full price or more than full price,” said Elliott, with the Home Resource Group of Keller Williams Realty. “They were all under contract within 48 hours.”
11 images Photos: America's Emptiest Cities
Best Cities For New College Grads Susan Adams Susan Adams Forbes Staff
Why Austin Wants to Be The Next Motor City Micheline Maynard Micheline Maynard Contributor

A revived home market is just one side of the boom in Austin, which ranks first on Forbes’ list of America’s Fastest-Growing Cities for the second year in a row. The Austin metropolitan area — including the northern suburb of Round Rock, home to Dell Computer — is expected to have an economic growth rate of 6% a year through 2016, according to Moody’s Analytics, more than double the nation as a whole. Apple is likely to sign off soon on plans to build a $304 million operations center that will employ as many as 3,600 people.

As usual, Texas dominates our list of the fastest-growing cities, with Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio all in the top 10. Seven of the top 10 cities are in the South, supporting the idea that low taxes and inexpensive real estate are still drawing jobs and economic activity from other parts of the country.

To construct the list, we ranked the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas according to projections of economic and population growth from Moody’s. We then factored in median income, unemployment rates and employment growth, to discriminate between cities like Austin, which are getting larger, and rebounding economies like Las Vegas. This filtering also knocked out fast-growing cities like McAllen, Texas, where a No. 4 rank on economic growth was countered by a bottom-quartile performance on median household income.

Dallas-Fort Worth came in second, with a projected economic growth rate of 4.9% through 2016 and a population increase of 2.2%. San Jose, Calif., ranks third, thanks to robust projected economic growth of 4.7% and a Silicon Valley-fueled median household income of close to $84,000, the nation’s fourth-highest. On raw population growth, San Jose doesn’t measure up: Moody’s projects a mere 0.9% annual population increase through 2016, as sky-high property values and limited land for expansion hinder the city’s to grow in a physical sense.
Full List: America’s Fastest-Growing Cities

Houston places fourth, as the city’s proximity to booming Latin America economies and cheap real estate promise to continue a decades-long expansion that has seen the Houston MSA’s population climb 65% since 1990 to a current 6.3 million. Moody’s projects Houston will add another 484,000 residents — the equivalent of Kansas City, Mo. — by 2016. Houston’s economy, powered by energy and health care, is expected to grow at 4.6% a year over the period.

In sixth place is perennial fastest-cities contender Raleigh, N.C. Raleigh tops the list in terms of raw population growth with a projected rate of 3.8% through 2016, almost four times the national average. The city’s economic growth rate is projected to be a less robust 2.4%. But Raleigh has continued to draw businesses to relocate into the region as well as retain high-paying employers like software merchant Red Hat, which agreed to stay in town and will add 540 jobs; Xerox’s Affiliated Computer Services unit, which announced plans to add 1,650 jobs; and Biogen Idec, which is hiring another 300.

“We tend to see a lot of relocations, particularly from the Northeast,” said James Sauls, Raleigh’s director of economic development. “Whether it’s cost of living, cost of doing business, overall quality of life, we seem to have an advantage.”

The Raleigh MSA in 1990 had a population of 332,000, making it a third the size of Rochester, N.Y. By 2016 the city is projected to have a population of 1.4 million, making it larger than Rochester by the equivalent of one Omaha, Neb.

Austin’s advantages foretell a future of steady growth. State capitals nationwide tend to perform better economically then most other cities, and Austin is also home to the prestigious University of Texas. The state also doesn’t have an income tax (although property taxes on homes in affluent areas like Austin make up for it since the state compels them to shift some of that revenue to poorer parts of the state). There’s also plenty of land surrounding the city for expansion, and it doesn’t hurt that Austin went through a real estate binge in the 1980s that left it with massive amounts of office and industrial space that the U.S. taxpayers helped pay for for through the savings-and-loan bailout.

Austin is expected to grow its population at 2.8% a year through 2016, almost triple the national rate. Since 1990, Austin has added 1 million residents, more than the entire population of the city of Detroit. The city pulled in 35 corporate relocations last year, adding 6,000 jobs, and the city and state governments this year approved some $30 million in incentives to induce Apple to build a new campus for its Americas Operations unit.

Austin beat out Phoenix for the new operations center, and Apple’s filing with the city details what a coup that was: The company estimates its jobs will average $54,000 a year, ranging from $40,000 entry-level positions to 270 managers and executives making $114,000 to $211,000 a year.

Austin’s commercial real estate market, long suffering from an overhang of space, is recovering. Brokers Jones Lang LaSalle report 438,000 square feet of office space was absorbed in the central business district in January. The vacancy rate in the once-empty office towers is still at 17%, but rents increased 3.1% year over year and some downtown tenants are signing leases at 32% above last year.

Brokers have long bemoaned the lack of international flights out of Austin’s airport, which they believe limits the city’s attractiveness for corporate relocations. That may change. A Formula One racetrack 15 miles outside of town, boosters say, will finally provide enough traffic for the airlines to add Austin to their routes.

DART Orange Line light rail testing starts

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:42:14 GMT

Friday, April 6, 2012
Dallas Business Journal - by Matt Joyce

Dallas Area Rapid Transit will run its first test of a light rail train on the 5-mile extension of the Orange Line into Irving on Monday.

The Orange Line train will travel from Bachman Station to the Irving Convention Center.

“These initial tests will check train movements, the overhead electrical system, and vehicle clearances prior to the start of integrated testing and safety certification,” DART said. “Because the train is still in test mode, it will stop frequently to conduct clearance measurements and other tests as needed.”

The 5-mile segment of the Orange Line opens to the public on July 30. DART plans to complete construction o of the line to its terminus at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport by the end of 2014.