Dallas

[Plutonic Panda]

A subway system is being considered



as an elevated light-rail system

[Plutonic Panda]

Yeah, Dallas sucks with it's lack of mass transit and no desire to improve.... wait...


Here are pictures of the new DART Orange Line/DFW Terminal A station







Also keep in mind, when this done by this fall, you can step right off of the plane and head to downtown Dallas/Uptown/State Fair. Will be really cool!

[Plutonic Panda]

Update on the new State Farm Complex in Richardson:

State Farm Insurance’s 1.5 million-square-foot campus under construction in Richardson is already the biggest office development underway in North Texas.
But apparently it’s still not big enough.

Developer KDC said Friday that it’s adding a fourth, 500,000-square-foot office tower, which will also be leased to the insurance giant.
The 12-story office building will include a five-level parking garage and 30,000 square feet of ground floor retail space. It will be across Plano Road from where the first three buildings are going up.

“With this fourth building, the project will jump Plano Road and open up the whole development for other office, retail and apartment construction,” KDC president Toby Grove said Friday. “For the overall development, this is obviously a big deal for us and State Farm.”

Back in July KDC and State Farm kicked off the huge mixed-use development with construction of 13-story, 15-story and 21-story buildings on the west side of Plano Road at Bush Turnpike.
The entire 186-acre project KDC is building around State Farm’s office towers is called CityLine.

The CityLine development in the first phase will also include more than 90,000 square feet of retail, a 150-room hotel, 532 apartments, a 17,000-square-foot wellness and fitness facility and a 41,000-square-foot boutique office building just east of North Central Expressway.

Construction on the next State Farm building will start this summer. And the insurance company begins moving into the campus at the end of this year.
East-west connection

The fourth State Farm building won’t open until 2016, Grove said.

“We are in the design phase of that building right now,” he said. “The exteriors will be a little different but complementary of each other — we didn’t want to make them identical.”
KDC is also looking at ways to connect the east and western portions of the CityLine development across Plano Road. That might include a pedestrian bridge over the roadway.

“We are trying to tie both sides of the development,” Grove said. “The idea is to continue what we have done on the east side with more of an urban environment.

“We’ve talked with our apartment partner on the first phase, and they are looking at expanding on the other side of Plano Road,” he said. “We are actually looking at another hotel and talking to some other office users about sites over there.”

KDC has been working with Irving-based apartment builder JLB Partners on the first phase of its development.

And it’s been in talks with tech company Raytheon Corp. about leasing a big block of office space in the Richardson project, too, real estate brokers say.

When completed, CityLine is expected to have about 6 million square feet of office space, almost 4,000 apartments and more than 300,000 square feet of shopping space. Whole Foods Market has been mentioned as a possible grocery anchor for the shopping center.
Read more here: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/c...us-project.ece

Picture from the article



Man, I really wish projects in OKC would get upgraded, I'm sure they have before, but it sucks seeing how things here usually get downgraded. Hopefully those days are behind us and the maybe the new OG&E Tower will actually blow people out of the water, not in terms of height though.

[Plutonic Panda]

This was pretty amusing.... this is Rawling's(former mayor) goals for Dallas.

-Develop a greater tax base in southern Dallas than in the city’s northern region.
-Become the epicenter for the western hemisphere.
-Be a destination for the greatest artists of the world.
-Have the best public education system in any top 10 city in the country

.... yeah, Dallas will surpass the power of NYC and Washington DC.... right. If that ever happens in my lifetime, I'll start a hat only diet.

[Plutonic Panda]

Beautiful shot of Fort Worth

[Plutonic Panda]

This will probably get bashed here by all these anti-highway people.. but here are some amazing aerials of some beautiful awesome highways in Dallas, more specifically, the DFW connector!






this is building done right... the city of Dallas will only continue to grow and prosper because of amazing and beautiful highway construction such as this. Keep the investment going!

[Plutonic Panda]

update on the North Tarrant Express from DFWU2

[Plutonic Panda]

This is what our interchanges need to look like.



They don't have to be like the high-five, but we can do this better. More flyovers and less outdated cloverleafs. The highway doesn't need to be that far apart, but just imagine this closer together on I-35/240.... how much better traffic would flow.

[Plutonic Panda]

here is the complete article and write-up

Texas 114 transformed into road of prosperity | Your Commute | News from Fort Worth, Dal...

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Love field renovation



cup holders and power/usb ports on every chair.... awesome


new skybridge



Baggage claim renovation

[img]http://media.nbcdfw.com/images/654*368/love_field_art.jpg[/img]

Next time I'm in Dallas, I'll need to take some pictures to post. I was there briefly a few weeks ago, but didn't get to take any photos

A cool picture from DFW

[Plutonic Panda]

New mid-rise planned(I think of anything under 30 stories a mid-rise(esp. in this day in age).

Hines is developing the 23-story Victory Park office tower designed by Austin-based Duda/Paine Architects

Developers working on the next building in Dallas’ Victory Park are tossing out the project’s old architectural themes in favor of a bold new look.
A sleek glass office tower made up of tilted geometric shapes is set to begin construction soon in the development on the northwest corner of downtown Dallas.
Hines, a Houston-based commercial real estate firm, will build the 23-story office tower on the east side of Stemmons Freeway.

The 470,000-square-foot high-rise was designed by Austin-based Duda/Paine Architects with sloping sides and vertical and horizontal metal fins on the exterior.
The planned tower is a sharp departure from other buildings in Victory Park, which favored light-colored concrete and brick exteriors in a similar design theme.
Hines’ Victory Park tower will be the first office-building project in the development in seven years.

The building will be next door to the One Victory Park offices, which Hines built in partnership with Victory’s original developer, Hillwood Capital. That building is almost fully leased with tenants including Ernst & Young, Haynes and Boone and Plains Capital.

Hines plans to open the new Victory Park building in early 2017. It will feature conference and fitness facilities, ground-floor retail space and a rooftop terrace.

[Plutonic Panda]

To those who think Dallas puts highways over everything.... even though I posted above how much Dallas is investing in rail

Tearing down 345 I-345 poised for fast-tracked study | Dallas Morning News

Building I-30 below grade and covering it up(what I think they should do with 235): Editorial: City leaders must push plan to lower Interstate 30 | Dallas Morning News


Proposed deck park over Interstate 30

[Plutonic Panda]

The Trinity River Toll is still a possibility and they are just now floating about the possibility of not building it at all. This editorial brings up a valid point of how it could be engulfed in a flood.

Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs has always been against planting a high-speed, six-lane toll road the city along the east levee of the Trinity River between Interstate 45/U.S. 175 to the Interstate 35E and State Highway 183 merge. His reasons are myriad. “For starters,” he said Monday afternoon, “urban design, mobility and environmental reasons.” But following today’s meeting of the Dallas City Council’s Transportation and Trinity Corridor Project Committee, Griggs said he has additional reasons to be dead-set against an unfunded road guesstimated to cost upwards of $1.5 billion.

Among today’s revelations: For much of its nine-mile length, the road will extend around 535 feet into the floodway; there’s a plan for a “flood separation wall” that’s not even as high as the existing levees; and in some instances the road runs almost right next to the river.

HNTB vice president Dan Chapman also told the committee during the presentation that there will need to be an evacuation plan of some kind should heavy rains fill the floodway to 100-year-flood levels.

“This is the first time we got a sense of how far the road goes into the green space,” says Griggs. “And the flood wall only halfway up the levees. If you live near the levees you know why they’re as tall as they are, and not half their height. It gets up there, like it did in 1990. And now I am concerned about the safety of people using the road during storms.”

Today’s briefing was intended to bring the council up to speed on the Federal Highway Administration’s final environmental impact statement, which was published to the North Texas Tollway Authority’s website last month in advance of a public hearing — the final one — scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. April 24 in the old Memorial Auditorium at the Dallas Convention Center. The Trinity River toll road discussion was intended to last 70 minutes, until committee chair Vonciel Jones Hill cut it short and ended the meeting at 2 p.m. because of Passover, which doesn’t begin until sundown.

Chapman reiterated what we’ve known all along: The FHWA, NTTA and the Texas Department of Transportation say the city can either go with so-called Alternative 3C (the “least environmentally damaging alternative” of the road-building choices) or do nothing at all. The city has been hoping since 1998 to build a road, insisting it’s a necessary reliever route (for those trying to get around Dallas). But it needs the FHWA’s OK, as well as a sign-off from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will release its own EIS Friday in advance of another council briefing.





- Trinity River toll road planner to Dallas City Council: Parkway could be swamped in a flood | Dallas Morning News

Just FYI, I do NOT support this and hope they don't build it to be honest. I'd rather support and underground four-lane high-speed tollway and develop ground level.

[Plutonic Panda]

Dallas Complete Streets Initiative:

WHAT ARE COMPLETE STREETS?

The vision of the Dallas Complete Streets Initiative is to build streets that are safe and comfortable for everyone: young and old; motorists and bicyclists; walker and wheelchair users; bus and train riders alike.

the city launched the complete streets initiative in June 2011 with the goal of instituting a new approach to designing and building streets. Complete Streets is a relatively new term for an idea from decades past. long before regulations and requirements promoting rapid automobile movement began dictating street design, streets were built and developed to serve the destinations surrounding them. some of the greatest streets in America still maintain this centuries-old character. new great streets – built to evolving standards – are being built throughout the country through complete streets programs.

complete streets make it easy to cross the street, walk to shops, and bicycle to work. they help buses run on time and make it safe for people to walk to and from train stations.

- here is the .pdf presentation. Very good read if you have awhile with a bunch of awesome photos of streets in Dallas

http://dallascityhall.com/developmen...AFT_091713.pdf

A couple of cool screenshots





Here is the website: http://dallascompletestreets.wordpress.com

[Plutonic Panda]

HSR Update for Texas

High-speed rail could be coming to the Metroplex by early in the next decade.

Plans were announced Wednesday in Fort Worth to bring the fast means of transportation from Fort Worth to Houston.

The commission for high-speed rail in the DFW region said they are only in the beginning stages of the project, but they feel bringing this form of transportation here is a strong possibility.

However, money is always the first obstacle.

“Financial problems is billions of dollars in an environment where billions of dollars for transportation infrastructure are difficult to come by,” said high-speed rail commissioner Bill Meadows.

A Japanese company has already started initial plans to bring high-speed rail from Houston to Dallas. The commission in DFW wants to make sure Fort Worth and Arlington are connected to the plan.

“We have to put our big boy pants on and think of the entire state at one time,” said North Central Texas Council of Governments Director of Transportation Michael Morris.

If the high-speed rail is brought to DFW, the 200 mph train could get you from Fort Worth to Dallas in roughly 18 minutes. If you want to travel from Fort Worth to Houston your trip would be roughly 90 minutes.

Commissioners said the Metroplex, which is supposed to reach a population of 11 million by 2040, needs more options for transportation.

“You work hard because it’s important,” said Meadows. “It’s important for moving people of this region and this state."

Meadows said the Japanese company has a goal of getting a high-speed rail from Houston to Dallas complete by 2021 or 2022, but said there is no timetable to connect the Houston line to the rest of the Metroplex.

- Plans Announced for High-Speed Rail to Houston | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

[dcsooner]

Just why do we care about what is happening in Dallas?

[BrettM2]

Just why do we care about what is happening in Dallas?

Maybe you don't, but others will. I have family there, so it's nice to keep up.

Don't open the thread if you don't care.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mkjeeves]

Dallas was mentioned as desirable to millennials in this story posted in the New Urbanism Library thread.

Why Americans Are Fleeing The Suburbs

Is It Time To Stop Subsidizing the Suburbs

[kelroy55]

update on the North Tarrant Express from DFWU2

I wish they would get I35W finished or fixed. That Interstate is a nightmare and I always take 820 if I need to go to the northside.

[Plutonic Panda]

State Highway 183 expansion approved.

Texas Transportation Commission gives expansion of State Highway 183 green light

State Highway 183’s long wait for an overhaul is over.

Expansion work will begin later this year on the highway that connects Dallas and Tarrant counties as well as dozens of cities to the southern entrance to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It will be the first time since 1973 that the east-west corridor, also called Airport Freeway, will undergo a substantial upgrade.

The project, which will include upgrades to State Highway 114 and Loop 12, won’t add any new free, main lanes to any of the highways. All of the expanded capacity will come from the toll express lanes.

The work is scheduled to be completed in 2018.

“It was unfortunately overlooked for quite a few years,” said state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, whose Irving district includes Airport Freeway.
The Texas Department of Transportation will rebuild 10.6 miles of the highway in Irving and Dallas and 1.5 miles in Euless. It also will add an 18.3-mile toll express lane in each direction from State Highway 121 in Bedford to Interstate 35E in Dallas.

The work is part of an $847.6 million contract that the Texas Transportation Commission unanimously awarded Thursday to Southgate Mobility Partners.
Southgate also will add toll express lanes on 2.5 miles of Loop 12 and 10.5 miles of State Highway 114, including through Las Colinas. There also will be minor upgrades to portions of 114 and 183 that aren’t being completely rebuilt.

Direct connections from the new 183 and Loop 12 toll lanes will be added. That interchange also will get new direct ramps from eastbound 183 to northbound Loop 12 and southbound Loop 12 to westbound 183.

“There are many transportation needs within these corridors,” Ed Pensock, TxDOT’s strategic projects director, told transportation commissioners Thursday.
The toll portions, also called TEXpress lanes, will operate with fluctuating prices like the similar lanes on LBJ Freeway and the DFW Connector. Toll rates will fluctuate based on congestion, with the goal of keeping motorists moving 50 mph or more.

Project details
Construction projects on State Highway 183, State Highway 114 and Loop 12 will start later this year and are expected to finish in 2018.
12.1: miles of rebuilt roads
31.3: miles of new toll lanes
$847.6 million: Budgeted cost of the project

- Texas Transportation Commission gives expansion of State Highway 183 green light | Dallas Morning News

[Plutonic Panda]

Here is a great list of some awesome museums in the DFW area.

See the sights at D-FW's most eclectic museums | Dallas Morning News

[Plutonic Panda]

Another cool list from Dallas Morning News to catch some good views of the Dallas Skyline

10 great spots to catch a view of the Dallas skyline | Dallas Morning News

[Plutonic Panda]

A really good read about the office market in Plano

The Encana tower in West Plano could easily house 1,000 workers.

But these days, fewer than 100 folks are employed in the 12-story high-rise.

Last fall, Canada-based Encana Oil & Gas decided to pull out of the new office tower as part of a company consolidation. The building in Legacy business park has pretty much emptied out since then.

In the past, the sudden addition of a big block of empty office space would cause some hair-pulling in the property market. But that’s not the case here.

Legacy was one of the country’s hottest office markets even before Toyota announced last month that it would relocate its North American headquarters there. Since then, the West Plano office market has caught fire, developers of new buildings and leasing agents say.

“Our momentum is huge,” said Greg Biggs, the managing director with commercial real estate firm JLL who’s heading efforts to rent the Encana building. “We’re averaging three tours of the building a week to potential tenants.

“And we are in lease negotiations for three full floors of office space.”

Encana recently decided for the first time to break up the more than 300,000-square-foot office tower for multiple tenants. Biggs said the building will now be available for as small as a single-floor lease.

“Since we decided to do that, the activity really increased,” he said.

The area that includes Legacy business park and West Plano already accounts for about 40 percent of Dallas-area office leasing activity, according to a new study by JLL. That’s more office leasing than downtown Dallas and Las Colinas combined.

Toyota’s move, which starts this summer, is expected to accelerate demand for office space in West Plano and Frisco. The company leased 120,000 square feet of temporary office space on Legacy Drive east of Dallas North Tollway.

Along with the automaker’s 4,000 workers, thousands more office employees who work for companies that do business with Toyota are likely to be located in the area.

- http://www.okctalk.com/current-event...tml#post792401

[Plutonic Panda]

3 Pacific Plaza Proposals


http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2...ic-plaza.html/

Including:

1. A huge 100 million dollar parking garage with a massive media screen covering it

Dallas has spent millions over the years acquiring a downtown parking lot it wants to turn into a park but doesn’t have the $10 million in fertilizer it needs to make the grass grow on Pacific Plaza, which remains little more than a car-crowded slab of blacktop.

Downtown developer Shawn Todd says he’s got a plan that doesn’t just plant a park, but also a sprawling eight-level parking structure stretching over Pacific Avenue that will alleviate the parking shortage in that part of downtown — and bring in a grocery store as well.

The “iconic structure,” in Todd’s words, would be covered with a massive media screen with a digital ticker-tape scroll like the one in Times Square and cost upward of $100 million. He insists he can and will fund the whole thing by himself.

“This is an expensive project because you’re spanning over a road system, you’re never touching the Pacific Plaza designated land,” Todd said. “And I am not asking the city of Dallas for one tax incentive, not one abatement, not one cent of TIF money. I’m not asking for anything. Nothing. This is new construction, and it doesn’t need it. When you’re buying old buildings, you need it. This doesn’t need it.”

What it does need is an existing park: 31-year-old Aston Park, a triangle of cracked concrete, desiccated tree trunks and dirt at Pacific Avenue, Harwood and Live Oak streets.

- Proposed $100M parking garage could plant seed for downtown Dallas park | Dallas Morning News

2. Two 70 story residential towers valued at $600 million

A week from Thursday developer Shawn Todd will present his $100-million Pacific Plaza proposal to the Downtown Residents Council, which will certainly have a lot to say about the plan, which involves not just the three-acre park bound by North St. Paul, Live Oak and North Harwood, but an eight-level parking structure with a massive “media screen” stretching over Pacific Avenue that could include a grocery, restaurants, retail and even residential towers.

But Todd’s isn’t the only proposal floating around Dallas City Hall.

Turkish developer Mukemmel “Mike” Sarimsakci, who’s overseeing the redo of 211 N. Ervay, is behind a second Pacific Plaza that would include underground parking (with room enough for about 1,855 cars, plus or minus a bunch), two residential skyscrapers at least 70 stories tall and high-end retail with a grocery store imported from Eatly. There would also be a park, of course, though city officials say they’re concerned Sarimsakci’s proposal eats into the hoped-for green space.

“We’re trying to accommodate parking and a park,” says Sarimsakci. “It’s a concept being used a lot in Europe and overseas. I haven’t seen anything like it in the States.”

The city has said it can’t afford the $10 to $11 million needed to build the park. So far, the two proposals say they will pay for Pacific Plaza. There is a third proposal also being pitched to city officials by so-far unnamed developers. But do stay tuned. Anyway.

Back to Sarimsakci’s proposal, which he says will cost $600 million and involve a public-private partnership that involves the city becoming a “20 percent partner in the deal.” That right there might be a sticking point: City officials killed an earlier proposal involving an underground parking structure when they told Tower Petroleum and, for now, Corrigan Tower owner John Kirtland they didn’t want to be in the parking-lot business.

- For $600 million, developer proposes garage, ?fancy? grocery and two 70-story residential towers for Pacific Plaza | Dallas Morning News

3. An underground automated parking garage not yet appraised

The city of Dallas says it does not have the $10 million to $11 million it needs to plant a long-proposed three-acre park on what is now a downtown parking lot bound by North St. Paul, Live Oak and North Harwood streets. But the city has received a handful of proposals for the park, each one of which comes with a parking lot.

Two downtown developers, Shawn Todd and Mukemmel “Mike” Sarimsakci, have already made public their plans involving parking garages, grocery stores, retail outlets and skyscrapers. Now a third party has emerged: Former Dallas City Council member Ron Natinsky tells The Dallas Morning News he is spearheading a group – 4P Partners – that hopes to seed the would-be park with a retail development, shops and a parking garage that will hold 1,632 cars.

Natinsky and his partners want to put their parking structure entirely below ground. And, they say, it would be entirely automated, making it the first such structure in Dallas.

Unitronics, based out of the Ben Guirion Airport in Israel, would build the parking garage, which would be by far the largest among its handful of U.S. projects. Natinsky says the garage would pay for the development, which would include a retail-and-grocery structure with a grass-covered rooftop that’s being proposed for Aston Park, which is currently a city-owned triangle of concrete and trees surrounded across Live Oak.

The proposal calls for dead-ending Live Oak in order to connect the retail structure to the park. In between would would be car elevators — or “transporters,” as Natinsky calls them, “like in Star Trek” — that would move vehicles down to the garage.

- A third proposal for Pacific Plaza, from a former Dallas City Council member, includes an automated parking garage | Dallas Morning News

[Plutonic Panda]

New Renaissance Hotel rendering as part of a huge new development in West Plano branded Legacy West.



This is a nice article!

Sources: Toyota isn't going to be the last big fish to land in Dallas

Toyota Motor Co.'s new $300 million corporate campus could spur other large companies to land in Dallas-Fort Worth, with real estate sources saying at least two other big businesses -- at a million-square-feet or more -- are looking at the region.

"There are other relatively large corporations out there that are looking at this market," developer Fehmi Karahan told the Dallas Business Journal. He is working on the $2 billion Legacy West development that landed the corporate offices of Toyota and FedEx Office & Print Services.

"We have the best infrastructure for these types of projects," Karahan told me. "The suppliers want to locate near Toyota's new headquarters...I have been bombarded with emails and phone calls. The excitement is huge."

- Sources: Toyota isn't going to be the last big fish to land in Dallas - Dallas Business Journal

An overlook of the development

Another Uptown

By holding off on development of the property until now, Penney’s land will wind up looking more like Dallas’ Uptown district than a suburban development, he said.
“The timing couldn’t be better,” Shaw said. “We are in a hurry because there is a lot of interest.

“We want to make sure we are diligent and thoughtful with our development plans, but at the same time not miss opportunities.”

**This is what I really like! If OKC developers would just hold off if they loose financing or run into trouble instead of just automatically downgrading, we would end up with much better developments. I would rather wait 2-5 more years for a really nice development instead of having something like Belle Isle.**

Fed Ex also building here with some more specs

A luxury hotel tower, corporate office space, an urban shopping center and apartments — those are part of what’s planned for one of the Dallas area’s largest new real estate projects.

Developers who will break ground soon on almost 240 acres at the Dallas North Tollway and State Highway 121 in West Plano aren’t wasting any time getting the huge real estate project in gear. Construction will start in the next few months on the first phase of the Legacy West project.(PluPan Edit: mind you this article was written back in late March)

“There is a huge momentum to develop this site,” said developer Fehmi Karahan, who heads one of three local firms joining forces to build on land surrounding J.C. Penney’s corporate headquarters in the Legacy business park.

The property, divided into four huge blocks fronting on the tollway and Highway 121, has remained vacant since Penney built its corporate offices in the 1980s.

Now Karahan Cos., corporate office developer KDC and apartment builder Columbus Realty Partners will develop the land in partnership with Penney.

Just a month after committing to the deal, the firms are ready to start work on the first office buildings, and a hotel tower is on the drawing boards.

“We are doing site clearing now, and we will probably start full construction in about 60 days” on a new headquarters complex for FedEx Office, KDC chief executive Steve VanAmburgh said.
More than 1,200 FedEx workers will be housed in the campus that KDC is building on Legacy Drive.

“We are already talking to two or three other prospective companies that want to be in this project,” VanAmburgh said. “The entire office component could be anywhere from 3 [million] to 4 million square feet.

“It would be easy to envision anywhere from 10 to 20 midrise and high-rise office buildings that range from 150,000 square feet to 300,000 or 400,000.”
KDC has a lot of experience with that kind of office development.

The Dallas-based firm is building the huge State Farm Insurance regional headquarters in Richardson. And it’s done large corporate facilities for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Citigroup and, in Legacy business park, for Encana Oil & Gas, Tyler Technologies, Intuit and Denbury Resources.

- http://www.dallasnews.com/business/c...evelopment.ece

Another older article about the FedEx - http://planoblog.dallasnews.com/2014...to-plano.html/