Cbdallas wrote:That article is so flawed. We have limitations here in height due to FAA restrictions due to being under Love Field flight path. Neither Austin or Houston have that. Also we have a much more urban experience surrounding downtown with much more density and more to come. I love a tall building but I would not want to sacrifice overall density for just a small looped downtown with supertalls that fall off into low rise neighborhoods as you leave it. To get more tall buildings in Dallas we need to convince more businesses and people to move to the center of our city, that is the real challenge not height.
The height restrictions are a challenge, but aren't a show stopper by any means for a serious developer, as this can be worked around on the edges of downtown (see the Portman and Goldman Sachs sites as examples).
I'd say these are much bigger hurdles for Dallas:
1. Houston & Austin have very quick permitting & rezoning (well, Houston doesn't really have much zoning) processes. In an era of high inflation and labor shrotages, time is money, and developers ain't got time to pussyfoot around for months with Dallas' slow & dysfunctional process.
2. Downtown Dallas is not the geographic nor population center of DFW (for now, Addison, Carrollton and Irving are) and it's bleeding workers/companies. Developers take note of this and become convinced the demand isn't there. Meanwhile, downtown's Houston and Austin *ARE* the geographic/population centers of their regions.
3. With Austin especially, they have a ton of Big Tech money floating around. In many cities, the skyscrapers that are getting built are primarily residential and these projects are only profitable for developers to buil if they can charge a price that only high income earners (which Big Tech workers are) can afford.