Study Tour Day 7- Dallas, TX

Paul Dyer, Director of Parks & Recreation

On the last day of our great study tour around Texas we visited Dallas. At the beginning of the day we visited with many people at city hall. The first person we talked to was Paul Dyer who is the director of parks and recreation. His department deals with many projects. Mr. Dyer said it is hard to convince council members to do projects downtown. To set up goals and help the council see things that the parks and recreation need through different tiers they created a master plan. The master plan for this cost the city 1.5 million. It was so good that Chicago invested in the same plan. The parks department uses a lot eminent domain to get land for its parks. Mr. Dyer talked about the properties taken for the main street park which is going to be developed into a little “central park” for Dallas. Dallas was the first city to buy urban property. When the parks came into to buy the properties the prices rose up to 50%. To get property and develop it the parks department got 16.7 million dollars of stimulus money. The parks are always looking for partnerships to get projects done. A big project that is in progress is the Trinity River development. The parks department bought it for 3 reasons flood control, parks, transportation. The parks are spread throughout the city. Two thirds are in the south and one third is in the north. The park and recreation department has its own construction company. An interesting fact told by Mr. Dyer was that the parks department owns the Cotton Bowl.

Mayor Tom Leppert

It was a surprise to have the mayor come and talk to us during this meeting. He used to be the CEO of the largest building company so he has a lot of experience in the real estate sector. He talked about how in the past ten years downtown Dallas has become the place to be. Unlike other cities Dallas has land available for industries to come in and start business. Mayor Leppert talked about how the city needed to have a bigger commercial tax base. They are trying to get companies into the south and southwest using incentives. Over the next 10 years, $10 million will be made by combining two TIFF districts. The Bishop Arts district is doing well. Today Dallas is a leader in the nation of being Green. 40% of all energy they have is green and it comes from the wind. The city has 2000 alternative fuel vehicles. 35% of materials in the dump are construction materials so if construction companies Go Green then this will cut down a lot. People have been brought in from construction and design companies to help come up with sustainability regulations instead of the city just coming up with them. Dallas is for the most part following the LEED system. The new municipal buildings will need to be built to LEED Certification or LEED Silver. The mayor stated that Green building is privately driven. Dallas has the vacant building initiative in which they are bringing buildings up to code. They are watching to make sure that the costs are not too high to meet LEED though.

Tracy, Sustainable Redevelopment
She has been involved in real estate and development since 1970 and has brought North Texas out of recessions. Permits usually bring in $2 million a year. There are normally 3500 permits a year and now there are only 700. One-third of house builders are hurt badly by the recession. Most of the projects going on now are publicly financed. New Plan Forward is focused on redevelopment and density. Dallas is wanting to be like Chicago which is flurishing instead of Detroit which is rotting. The city of Dallas is landlocked; the future of Dallas is redevelopment. Their medical district is the second largest career district. They have a strategy to target the bad parts of the city through bonds. They demo old apartments to put in libraries and schools. Dallas purchases their property and doesn't take it by eminent domain. The fire marshall is very flexible when working with historic buildings. Older buildings are being used for storage. $70 million was spent on the Merck building to revitalize Dallas. They want denser development not urban sprawl.

David Whittle, Urban Design Structure plan

Is the director of a new department in city hall. Its function is to be an advocate of design. Mr. Whitle said that about every 7 years DFW adds about one million people to its population. The department is in the process of developing a list of what the city wants to get out of projects. A big project right now is the Trinity River development. The former planning director of Vancouver came in to help plan this project. This development has made developers come in and buy property around the area.

Carl, Economic Development

You work with what you have. The community doesn't have a dominant developer. In order to get things going people need to have confidence and be interested in the neighborhoods. It's hard now to get developers interested because of the economic times. He talked about a project where if a foreign investor invested $500,000 then they could get a green card for them and their family. 75% of the people in this program are Koreans. He said that they have not done much with brownfield programs in Dallas. Also, Dallas is a big logistic hub.

Aloft

There are 44 alofts in the country. 30 are scheduled to open by the end of the year. Aloft falls under the W brand. It competes with hotels such as the Hilton Garden. Starwood came up with this brand to compete in the midmarket range having a rate of $100 to $150 per night. The building they chose is a historic building that was used by the Santa Fe Railroad. The project was feasible because they got historic tax credits and TIF funds. This is their first re-adaptive use site. They want to find more like it in the future. Many people showed up to the meeting we were having. The part owner, president, and the architect of the building. The owners have owned the property since 1998 and late in that year, the hotel business was not good. Even now room rates are dropping because of the economy, but the occupancy rate is going up. The occupancy rate is currently 65% which is better than the city rate which is 55% occupancy.

The hotel has been open for 8 months and has 193 rooms. It has a basement which serves various functions. The demographics for this hotel is that it is for younger people because older generations would not understand their style as much. There are four sales people that work for Aloft in Dallas, TX. The areas they concentrate on include entertainment, conventions, and federal employees. OTAs play a major role in hotel room purchases. They get 30% of their business from OTAs and 8 out of 10 people search expedia.com or hotel.com before purchasing a room.

There are 17 room types on each floor. This project was about $110 million and brand new Alofts would be around $137 million. Most Alofts are quick in and quick out. All artwork around is regional.

David Craig, Craig Ranch Chairman/CEO

Mr. Craig has done many different things in real estate throughout his life and he came upon this land when he was a broker for ranches and farms. That's when he purchased the land. He didn't at first believe in the new urbanism, but John Kessle planted this seed in his mind. At first Mr. Kessle wanted Mr. Craig to memick the Legacy project. Craig Ranch is a new urban community built on 2200 acres. It took 2 years to get zoning taken care of in order to get what he wanted there. At Craig Ranch many amenities can be found. Examples include an athletic training center, baseball field, volleyball courts, ice skating rink, and a PGA owned golf course. Having all of this available before other things is unusual and has a lot of upfront costs.

250 lots have been sold this year at Craig Ranch. The community there is meant for all ages. The visitors center was really nice. It's ranked the number 1 visitors center in the United States. This project was on a huge scale. It was interesting to see the different research that Mr. Craig went through in order to have everything right in the model and sustainable.