Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

At the most, for now, it could mean more than one rider a day will take it back and fourth. hahaha - seriously! Yeah, I still don't know how useful the streetcar's going to be as it's currently aligned. It's the starter. To be relevant as transportation, it's gotta loop back to Union Station. Bisho...

Perhaps later down the line when there is a bigger population and more people are willing to commute without cars, we can add those stops back in. But I think speed and convenience should be the priority right now. Speed and convenience should always be the priority! That's how you make a useful tr...

Looking at the before and after, I don't really see what your complaint is, Hannibal. They kept the same number of travel lanes. It seems likely that the bad traffic you've experienced is more the result of significant population growth in the Deep Ellum/East Dallas area rather than the redesign dec...

I'd bet you a hundred bucks that they have hired consultants to perform that analysis and they disagree with you. Hopefully the people selling the properties don't need to hire consultants for that kind of analysis! I don't work in real estate, but I have taken a couple of RE development classes to...

5-6 story buildings are plenty tall enough to get decent density. But when the building itself only occupies 1/3 of the land, it makes it not particularly dense.

20 years ago when DART ran its first train, people said the system was such a waste of money. Fast forward to today and look at all of the high dollar, very dense development that it is spurring. What we are seeing is New York City density being built around these stations. Considering the epicly l...

Museum Tower sold another three units in December 2016. I think this brings them up to 75 sold, only 40 left. 65% sold 49 months after the building opened. They continue to plug along right at the 1.5 per month pace. IF they can continue this pace of sales, they would be sold out in a little more t...

I have a theory that the suburbs will be the future slums. Dallas' northern suburbs would be an exception due to the fact that so many corporate headquarter relocations are moving out there. Nonetheless, the suburbs will be the future slums because the city is where the money and young professional...

It's a meaningful distinction because a true urban system eliminates "edges." If location near a stop is important to urban development (which I don't actually think is true in Dallas), then the outer edge of what constitutes "near" will be much less appealing to build or live be...

Although see were your coming from I do have to comment that spacing of the DART rail stops has nothing to do with it being a "legitimate public transit system". I lived in Chicago for 6 years and frequently rode the "L" train a which is very legitimate transit system and in den...

Let's not all freak out now. Keep in mind that the first (more attractive) picture is the one that Hillwood itself submitted for the DMN article in July. Considering that design also fits more with all the other info they've been putting out about the project, I'd put my money on that one. They do a...

562' structure height? Hey now! That's more like 45 stories, no? Crazy thing is that even if this lot and the Hillwood lot next to it get filled in with 40+ story buildings (or whatever), the area is still an insane surface parking wasteland. So many more of these could go in there! http://i63.tinyp...

To be honest, that just makes this layout even more obnoxious to me.

The proximity of the two stations I think has created a synergy (along with with Medical District being right there obviously), because you can build a TOD within a large area and still be within, at most, a 10 minute walk. I don't know anything about this area, but it at least has the stop spacing...

1.3 million square feet in only 20 stories would be quite something. A tank of a building. Gotta say I like the one from the DMN story much better.

Do any of the monitoring groups try to track commuter movement? Are commuting suburbanites going for lunch outside their building more? less? ...staying downtown after work at all? longer? Well, they do track where people commute to/from. This is from https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/ This map shows...

Interesting. Could you provide a link to the ACS numbers? Yeah, it's kind of tough to navigate, but here's where the data is from https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t And you can use this site to see maps of what the census tracts are http://www.socialexpl...

Also, could you clarify how you're defining City Place, South Side, and Cedars? Southside and Cedars (as defined by DCH) are both included within CBRE's downtown area. City Place (as defined by DCH) overlaps CBRE's downtown and uptown areas, so I applied the higher of the two occupancy rates (uptow...

Here's what I'm assuming is a way preliminary design study. Though HOK signed on 2.5 years ago, so who knows. Regardless, all they're doing is getting everything prepped so that if/when they find some anchor tenants they can get started right away. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2016/07...

Also, could you clarify how you're defining City Place, South Side, and Cedars?

You should probably use more than 1.4 people per unit for the new construction. Just between the '10 census and the'11-'15 ACS, average household sizes in occupied units jumped from 1.42 to 1.51 and 1.52 in DTD Inside the Loop and Uptown/Harwood, respectively. In Victory Park, it went from 1.58 to 1...

I should note that the colors on those maps are only relative to each other within each map.. they can't be compared across maps due to difference in scales.

It's interesting to see where those 121/DNT area workers live: mostly in the immediate area of Frisco and Plano, as well as other places north of the office space in McKinney and Little Elm. http://i66.tinypic.com/2i9ov86.jpg Compare that to those working in Greater Downtown, where there's a clear d...

I think most developers use the term "transit-oriented" only to mean that their project is walking distance or right across the street from train. Realistically speaking that's all they can really do besides a direct connection to the station, which would probably be unappealing for those...

Looks fine along Hudnall, but the surface parking between it and DART is less than appealing. Whole project feels a little underutilized and not exactly "transit-oriented" development.

What are the chances of it actually leaving though? I'm pretty sure there is a similar one in Chicago that is sitting on some very valuable land, and if Chicago can't redevelop that McDonald's, then Dallas has no chance. That one's a famous one, though. Essentially their flagship store (McD's is HQ...

Here's a first-hand account of the OLC meeting, where they voted to support this version: http://candysdirt.com/2017/01/04/toll-brothers-returns-oak-lawn-committee-brings-high-rise-controversy/ Also, personally I love how Dallas allows larger buildings on smaller streets because it makes it much mor...

I don't know... I'm really struggling with this one. This type of building should be on Oak Lawn proper. There are a ton of lots along that street that could (and should) support this. But putting it on the itty bitty two lane road surround by owner occupied townhomes just doesn't seem right. I als...

Who sets the "cycle ceiling"? Are you just talking about developers and (especially) lenders being leery after a certain (too low) level, or is there some sort of city policy that restricts it beyond a certain point?

I think a lot of times when people hear "reduce/eliminate parking minimums" they think that it means imposing parking maximums or otherwise requiring a reduction in parking. It doesn't. It merely allows the market provide how much parking people are willing to pay for rather than the gover...

The move to eliminate parking minimums has been picking up steam, and in a lot of places that mirror Dallas's population growth and high level of auto use. Seattle and Portland eliminated them for non single-family areas, and Oakland eliminated them downtown and drastically reduced elsewhere (like 0...

Too tall and dense was the objection? The Renaissance is 22 stories tall, and massive at 612 units. This would be a little needle tower. Which I have a hard time imagining in Dallas, but still! I'm only familiar with the development process in the Bay Area (100% discretionary approval, strong neighb...