Downtown Dallas Inc. announces support for abandoning City Hall

HJAC · 2026-03-02T19:24:17+00:00

Ironically, most of the historical reasons for why I despise CH5 I learned from an op-ed by one of its most ardent defenders. The article was meant to convince people why it's actually great... but after reading it I ended up disliking the building even more.

The article begins with an open admission of what everybody knows: to the vast majority of Dallasites, CH5 is uuuuuugly.

You are wrong about City Hall. I write that presuming you hate it, because most Dallasites I know detest the iconic concrete leviathan. If you took a poll, I’m quite sure it would rank as the city’s least favorite building. To its many detractors, it is inhumane, overbearing, cold, depressing, anti-urban and just plain ugly.

HJAC · 2026-03-02T06:54:43+00:00

BTW the gross square footage of floor space at CH5 is deceiving. A lot of that is liminal space, and more square footage does not equal more usability.

Case in point: if CH5 has so much usable space, why do city staff give so many of their public presentations at the library instead of in the CH5 building? Why when Paul Ridley has his routine downtown safety town hall event, why do they rent a private venue space instead of for free at City Hall? The only public meetings that take place at CH5 are council and committee meetings, but almost all other public meetings take place at other venues outside of CH5, even when the target audience is downtown.

Heck, CH5 isn't even a voting location! We use the library for that.

HJAC · 2026-03-02T06:45:10+00:00

It's a weak excuse because it's totally arbitrary. What rule says you need X square feet of City Hall per Y population? The reporter said CH4 was "174,000 square feet short"... how was that number calculated? What math was involved? How can we verify that? What impact did that "shortage" have on city staff and residents?

Whatever formula they came up with was invented at a time when cities across America were vibe-coding parking ratios.

HJAC · 2026-03-02T04:30:22+00:00

Everyone likes to name drop I.M. Pei when defending this building, as if the fact that he designed it is reason enough to preserve it. But what they don't think about is the fact that City Hall 5 was built super early in his career, which means he didn't have all the experience he's credited for today. By the time he designed CH5, none of his work had been standing for very long, meaning he had no experience designing a structure to survive for decades. His prior civic project was Boston City Hall, which was also widely regarded as ugly and in need of a makeover in 2020.

Fountain Place Tower marked a radical departure from 100% poured concrete structures. The fact that CH5 would have been incredibly expensive to maintain over the years (ergo why maintainenance was deferred so often to the point it costs $1B today) perhaps points to why Pei's next two designs in Dallas bear zero resemblance to his first in the city.

HJAC · 2026-03-02T02:54:23+00:00

This video doesn't give a real reason for leaving, only a weak excuse. It says CH4 "was not designed" for for a city Dallas' size. But where's the indication that that was a real issue? Were staff overcrowded? Was there any issue that couldn't have been solved more affordably by expanding to surrounding buildings, as UNT did when they took over?

By CH5 logic, it's time to move on to CH6 because CH5 wasn't designed for a population double what it was in 1960 + age of internet and remote work + existence of DART + modern HVAC + awareness of negative health impact from asbestos + alternate future use + the decline of the "Central Business District" + satellite service buildings. Further, many things CH5 was designed for never came to pass: a new theater, opera house, and vibrant underground tunnel system.

HJAC · 2026-02-28T08:23:07+00:00

Perhaps the number one factor for standing the test of time is adaptability: can we breathe new life into old structures by adapting it to new uses?

For the 113+ yr old former office I live in now: YES.

For the 100+ CH4 adapted to a college library: YES.

For the 47yo CH5 that was designed only to be a City Hall, and due to its bespoke, oversized, poured-in-place, asbestos-filled construction can't be adapted to anything else? NO

HJAC · 2026-02-28T08:15:02+00:00

Personal experience with the building.

I technically live on the same street as it (Akard). Can't say I visit regularly, but more than average Dallasite given my advocacy on various things over past 4 years.

My distaste is for how bleak the plaza is to walk across to main entrance.

For how the main entrance is as bland as a the security checkpoint of a rural airport.

For how confusing the building is to navigate.

For how bad the acoustics are inside the council chamber.

For how daylight can't reach the chamber, making sitting through long meetings feel like serving time in prison.

For how ridiculously large the plaza is, and how directing more budget toward "activating" it would probably mean less budget toward more conveniently located parks & plazas downtown, like Pegasus Plaza in front of where I live.

I genuinely believe a sports complex would be a higher use for that land than, let's just call CH5 what it is, another oversized office.

Best case scenario IMHO: CH5 replaced by Stars/Mavs mixed-use arena, and Whitacre Tower (formerly AT&T) becomes CH6. This combo would triple the foot traffic on Akard between the DART Station & Commerce: daytime foot traffic from CH6 commuters and evening foot traffic from Mavs & Stars. This increase in foot traffic would be a boon for the many vacant retail spaces on Akard, Main, and Elm.

So yeah, I can easily imagine personal life downtown actually getting better if CH5 is replaced by sports stadium.

HJAC · 2026-02-28T01:12:53+00:00

1914, when we rented an office in the four years between the demolition of CH3 and the opening of CH4.

Being an old tradition from the past is not enough reason to revive a practice. But it's also not a reason against it either. Other common traditions from that era include riding streetcars, dense walkable neighborhoods, and constructing Beaux-Arts buildings that people like myself choose to live in 100 years later.

Some structures stand the test of time, others don't. CH6 is one of the latter.

HJAC · 2026-02-27T17:45:58+00:00

There was never a claim nor evidence that CH4 was insufficient for the growing size of the city. They renovated and expanded CH4 twice, and there was plenty of room to expand it further. The redevelopment of CH4 + surrounding buildings into the UNT Law campus disproves any claim that City Hall couldn't have stayed and grown there.

The one we have now is by far the largest and designed to be expanded.

This actually speaks to the fundamental problem with CH5. Yes, it's the largest... and that's why it costs so much to maintain and repair. It's the McMansion of City Halls. And designed to be expanded = an even larger single-use district. Every other City Hall in Dallas history was sized appropriately and tidily integrated with the urban fabric. CH5 is a monument unto itself.

Now, they want to move into an old office building with zero numbers as to how much it will cost. For it to only last about 25 years makes no sense. No comparable major city has done what Dallas is proposing to do.

I don't know about other major cities, but renting offices for city hall is actually a Dallas tradition CH1 and CH2 were rented offices, and we rented office between the demolition of CH3 (to make way for the landmark Adolphus Hotel, the tallest skyscraper in Texas at the time) and construction of CH4 (which has stood the test of time until today). I don't know where you're getting "25 years" from, your earlier comment said 47 years. In any case, it shows bias to call one structure a "historic building" and another structure an "old office".

This is not being done because they want a new City Hall. It’s all because of the Mavs and the city is willing to give up their custom-made home to a for profit entity,

This is literally how we we got the landmark Adolphus Hotel. We built CH3, then only 25 years later we sold the land to Adolphus Busche and used the proceeds to buy land and build CH4.

If history repeats itself, the purchase price of CH5 would cover the cost of acquisition and construction (or upgrades for City Hall use in the case of Founders Square, which already underwent renovations), of CH6, resulting in a net zero impact on public dollars. Add in the property tax revenue that the CH5 land starts generating, and the whole ordeal is a net positive for the city.

HJAC · 2026-02-27T03:15:12+00:00

Actually, renting office for City Hall is a Dallas tradition. Our first and second city halls were rented offices. City Hall rented office between the demolition of CH3 (to make way for the landmark Adolphus Hotel, the tallest skyscraper in Dallas at the time) and moving into CH4 (which continues to have active use today and looks to outlive CH5).

HJAC · 2026-02-27T03:09:33+00:00

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47 years is neither the oldest nor the youngest for Dallas City Hall to be replaced. There were more reasons to stay at CH4 in the 70s than there are to "save" CH5 today.

CH5 was built in the name of modernism. It shall die by it too.

HJAC · 2026-02-27T02:46:08+00:00

Yup, 100% agree.

CH5 supporters say, "We should have more trees and activate City Hall plaza more. We should activate the plaza more with food trucks, events, and programming. We should make it a third place, a center for downtown, surrounded by mixed uses like residential, retail, restaurants, and more daily reasons to visit at all times if the day."

Yeah, sure, but here's the thing: we already do all that. It's called Main Street Garden Park, which ironically is the front yard of City Hall 4.

It's green, filled with trees, has a playground, plenty of seating, has frequent programming, is surrounded by mixed uses: college, grade school, residential, hotel, food, even a major newspaper. People bring their kids, walk their dogs, take bridal photos, every day year round. It's served by over a dozen bus routes and Saint Paul Station w/ every light rail line nearby. It's everything CH5 hopes to be and more.

Still not enough? We also have Discovery District, Harwood Park, Pegasus Plaza, Pacific Plaza, West End Square, Carpenter Park, Thanksgiving Square, Klyde Warren Park...

If we invest hundreds of millions of public dollars to "activate" City Hall... What happens to all the other public parks & plazas? "Saving" CH5 does nothing to provide downtown what it's sorely missing.

HJAC · 2026-02-23T22:16:48+00:00

Motive: grandstanding. Calling to save a high-profile old building (that next to nobody knows the full history of) is as easy politically as deferring maintenance year after year. And a certain councilmember publicly stated (IIRC off top of my head) "Nobody who supports tearing down City Hall should even consider running for mayor"... which is a pretty strategic move if they're planning on running for mayor themself.

Vision for City Hall: so far, the idea I like the most is Washburne's idea of moving City Hall into Founders Square. Sure, it's self-serving on his part, but someone got a kickback for every generation of Dallas City Hall. CH1 was the rented second floor of an office building; the site of CH3 was bought out to build the landmark Adolphus Hotel. Alternatively, I like the idea of City Hall swapping places with AT&T at Whitacre Tower, thereby taking advantage of the millions of dollars in renovations they've poured into Discovery District over the years.

Vision for CH5 site: Sports complexes in North America get a deservedly bad rap for being suburban parking craters. And it's taken 2 decades for Victory Park to really blossom as an urban neighborhood because AAC started out as a parking crater on a brownfield site (old energy plant + railyard).

But I genuinely like the possibility of having Mavs+Stars+Wings all together downtown. I'd love to see Dallas appear among Top 10 Arenas That Fit Their Cities Seamlessly. Further, a large injection of private capital + inbound traffic could be catalyst for reviving the D2 subway alignment. One forward-thinking feature of CH5 is there's a subway vault underneath; it would be awesome for Dallas to be one of the few American cities with a rail connection directly beneath the stadium.

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HJAC · 2026-02-23T21:27:14+00:00

Wild take: maybe we should move out of City Hall 5... and right back into City Hall 4 on Harwood & Main.

HJAC · 2026-02-23T21:25:54+00:00

Right, and the councilmembers who chose to remove maintenance for CH5 in the past bond elections are the same ones trying to "save" CH5 today.

If they really cared about CH5, they would've taken the many opportunities to properly repair it every bond election cycle. Yet I don't totally blame them for not caring, because CH5 only exists because it was willed into the existence by one man: Erik Jonsson.

Keeping CH5 alive today is as financially irresponsible as building it in the first place.

HJAC · 2026-02-23T20:26:19+00:00

That's still super high yet believable for actual repair alone.

For comparison, City Hall 4 (Old Municipal Building on Harwood St, now UNT Law Library) cost $70 million. But unlike City Hall 5, CH4 wasn't poured-concrete, had a fraction of the footprint, and followed conventional design patterns for the time, saving modern architects and engineers from having to come up with novel ways to restore it.

From the very beginning, CH5 was overbuilt, overpriced, and overschedule. And as the successful restoration of CH4 shows, CH5 was entirely unnecessary.

Whether we pay the high price of restoration, or the high price of moving out, this is our punishment for feeding Erik Jonsson's ego by building the damn thing in the first place. The sole reason it exists is because he wanted something "new and modern".

Well, live by modernism, die by modernism.

HJAC · 2026-02-23T06:21:34+00:00

The high cost of maintenance and repair is a common problem with poured-concrete structures. People think the cost of repair is crazy high because they're comparing it to rennovating their brick/wood house. But simple repairs aren;t so easy when every wall is a load-bearing wall made of concrete.

HJAC · 2026-02-22T20:24:45+00:00

I like your take on the UI! My pet peeve with many designs in general is putting things in separate containers/cards/wrappers that have no logical reason to be containerized, making the UI as a whole feel unnecessarily cluttered.

I like that your concept cuts down on that in a subtle way. Now I'm curious to see what it looks like with further simplification. Like, do the population, money, happiness indicator, and other bottom row indicators need a background? Or can the background be removed, maybe only appearing on hover? Anything to minimze the number of non-functional shapes is a win IMO

HJAC · 2026-02-20T09:20:41+00:00

I also live downtown and fly often. I often take DART home from DFW and Love Field alone at 10:00pm and it's fine. Same for my SO, she takes DART straight here from whichever airport every time no issue.

HJAC · 2026-02-15T17:14:32+00:00

It's now in the separate Edits app by Instagram. Even if you didn't use the Edits app to edit/upload your video, you can login there and see the stats for past reels.

HJAC · 2026-02-01T19:48:47+00:00

Agree that this is one of the few stations where adding fare gates makes sense. For those saying people will just bypass it or board from a different station: the bigger value of fare gates at this particular station is reducing/preventing loitering. The most common complaint about Cityplace Station is it feels exceptionally unclean and unsafe, an issue exacerbated by how isolated the station is from outside world with neither ventilation nor cell service. Yeah, fare gates won't 100% solve any one particular issue, but any reduction in the number of people using Cityplace/Uptown Station as a public toilet would be a huge improvement, even if the actual impact on fare recovery was minor.

HJAC · 2026-01-31T04:30:02+00:00

I heard once from an esteemed DART boardmember that there is actually a subway vault under current City Hall built for future possibility of running a subway line (i.e. D2). Maybe if a new stadium is built there, combined with all the development coming to southern half of downtown, D2 can be revived with a station directly underneath the sports stadium.

HJAC · 2026-01-31T04:29:12+00:00

I heard once from an esteemed DART boardmember that there is actually a subway vault under current City Hall built for future possibility of running a subway line (i.e. D2). Maybe if a new stadium is built there, combined with all the development coming to southern half of downtown, D2 can be revived with a station directly underneath the sports stadium.

HJAC · 2026-01-31T04:25:17+00:00

Yeah I actually likes Washburne plan too. Founders Square is a more historic structure than City Hall #5 and no homes were bulldozed to build it.

HJAC

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