Downtown Dallas Revitalization, Crime, DART Woes, and the Neiman Saga…
The whirlwind of news surrounding the pending closure of Neiman Marcus’ flagship store in downtown Dallas has brought renewed attention to the city center and its prospects.
While a lot of anguish followed the announcement last month that the beloved retailer would be closing its doors to downtown shoppers, the broader future of the Central Business District and its vitality have been top of mind for a lot of people for some time now.
Between a multi-billion dollar convention center redevelopment, talk of a new financial district, downtown’s nagging crime problem, and uncertain office utility in the age of remote work, it seems the city center is at an inflection point. Still, some folks are bullish on downtown.
Consider this a roundup of some of the news and issues that could determine the future of the Central Business District, with a little added insight from Council Member Paul Ridley (District 14).
Is Washburne Playing Hardball With the City?
In early February, local developer Ray Washburne claimed he was planning to sell The Dallas Morning News’ former headquarters at 508 Young St. to a data center company. His original plan was to transform the property into an entertainment district that would play off the redevelopment of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, but after allegedly not hearing enough from the city about its changing plans for the convention center, he scrapped the idea, CandysDirt.com previously reported.
Speaking with DMN, Washburne said he had been open to selling the property to the city but now just wants to be rid of it. He said the data center deal is set to close in April, seemingly giving officials a rough deadline to figure something out.
The Dallas City Council has since met in executive session at least twice to “Deliberate the purchase, exchange, lease, or value of real property located at 508 Young Street because deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body in negotiations with a third person,” most recently on February 26.
Council Member Ridley, who represents roughly half of downtown, didn’t seem especially concerned about whether the city acquires the property.
“I think there’s a way to design the convention center around it,” he said.
While a data center isn’t exactly the most heartening thing to replace DMN’s former headquarters, other projects are reportedly in the works that could revitalize the city center.
Bank of America Plaza, for instance, is poised to get a facelift and anchor a future financial district. That wouldn’t be the worst place for the upcoming Texas Stock Exchange to sink its roots. Downtown has also been raking in its share of new residential properties.
“We’ve seen thousands of units of luxury rentals and condominiums that have been delivered in the CBD, many of them through converting unused office buildings,” Ridley said. “We’ve seen 100 leases signed for almost a million square feet downtown in the past 12 months.”
Downtown’s shedding of cubicles for condos may very well continue despite efforts by employers to get workers back into the office. That might have commercial real estate agents crying the blues, but overall, Ridley thinks the neighborhood’s growing residential population will be a net gain.
“Economically, I think it’s definitely on an upward trajectory, and we’re going to see, I think, increased activity downtown — activation of the streets,” he said.
Downtown Crime and Potential DART Cuts
There are still some sobering impediments to that upward trajectory, though. Downtown crime has been a nagging problem that has only gotten more attention in recent years.
Texas Monthly recently ran a feature on the city center and chose to highlight a reported spike in violent crime, and there’s been no shortage of local reports on the subject.
Ridley suggested that now that there’s a larger population living downtown, more people are feeling the impact as victims or at least hearing about it in the media.
“People are legitimately concerned about their public safety,” he said, pointing out that the Dallas Police Department has responded by deploying a new Central Business District task force working overnight hours Friday through Monday.
“They are addressing violent crime downtown, improving public relations, working on quality of life concerns regarding our homeless population, and establishing better relationships with downtown businesses,” Ridley said. “That team has e-bike patrols as well as vehicle patrols so they are very mobile and can cover areas of downtown very quickly.”
“I think that team, given that they’re dedicated to downtown, will not only deter crime but apprehend criminals in quicker order than they did previously,” he added.
Another possible impediment to downtown revitalization is the future of DART. Suburban municipalities in the transit network have been making noise about wanting to cut their contributions to the system, and lawmakers in Austin are appearing responsive.
Two bills have been filed in the state legislature that, if enacted, would reduce member city contributions by 25%. DART held a special meeting this past Friday on the matter.
“Well, I am hopeful that saner minds will prevail and the legislature will not change the funding mechanism and formula for DART. I think that would be a disaster for the whole metropolitan area,” Ridley said.
“What the suburbs are missing is that so many of their residents use DART to commute to downtown or other areas in Dallas for their work, for recreation, and for visiting other essential services in the city that just aren’t available in the suburbs, and so I think a lot of this is just posturing to get DART to pay more attention to the suburbs, to provide more on-demand services,” he added.
Still, it stands to reason that DART may be losing its leverage on the commuter front. The prevalence of remote work — a driver in the conversion of downtown offices into apartments — has undoubtedly had an impact. A reduction in funding will result in cuts to services that will likely impact downtown traffic one way or another.
However that ends up affecting the city center, Ridley said he’s still very optimistic about the area’s future:
“I see downtown not at a crossroads but on a steady, improving trajectory.”
City Leaders Will Be Meeting With Saks Execs Over Neiman Drama
If you haven’t been keeping up, Saks Global, which acquired Neiman Marcus Group last December, announced on February 14 that it was shuttering Neiman’s headquarters in Uptown and redeploying corporate operations to New York. A few days later, the flagship store emailed customers to inform them it was closing on March 31. The email cited failed negotiations with an unnamed landlord as the reason for the closure.
A consortium of civic and business leaders rallied in the aftermath to work with the landlord — later identified as Slaughter Partners — in a bid to keep Neiman’s historic building open to shoppers. On Wednesday, the consortium announced that Slaughter Partners was going to donate its parcel of land to the city as part of that effort.
Despite this, Saks said it was still moving forward with the closure. While a meeting between a company executive and the consortium is in the works, at least this much seems clear: one little lease cannot be the sole reason behind the shuttering of such an iconic location.
The fact of the matter is you can’t win them all, and external market forces and corporate machinations often trump community mobilization. As the U.S. arm of Canadian-based Hudson Bay Company, Saks Global has been working to consolidate its corporate operations in New York, including that of Neiman Marcus. The company also busied itself this past week laying people off to minimize redundancies and maximize return from its $2.7 billion acquisition. Whether to maintain the flagship store downtown was probably a question decided by the company some time ago.
Downtown Dallas may have never really stood a chance. Still, the consortium’s efforts are appreciated, and we’ll see what news comes out of the upcoming meeting.
