Museum Tower Rises

Heading to the West End last night for a GiltCity Dallas event at the House of Blues, we had a good view of the 42 story Museum Tower rising on the skyline. Museum Tower will bring 116 luxury residences to the Arts District and for now at least gives the perception of a buzzing construction scene in the city. The nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science, also under construction, adds to that as well.  More on GiltCity Dallas in a later post.

New Trolley Turnabout Coming to West Village

PCC Car in San Francisco

A new turnabout in West Village will allow the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority to begin running PCC cars from Toronto. Currently only double-ended cars run on the line connecting the Art Museum with the West Village. The turntable also is being constructed adjacent to m DART’s Cityplace West subway entrance. It's expected to be a tourist attraction, as well as a practical tool to re-orient the streetcars. A recent article in the Dallas Morning News compared it to Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. Efforts are also under way to loop the streetcars through the Dallas Arts District.

The PCC name comes from the design committee formed in 1929 representing the Presidents of various electric street railways. The Electric Railway Presidents’ Conference Committee, or ERPCC, was tasked with producing a new type of streetcar that would help fend off competition from buses and automobiles. It hasn't quite lived up to that task, but is currently helping provide alternatives to automobile use. 

Studies have shown a positive impact on real estate values from streetcar systems.

Suburban Philadelphia Trolleys (PA) (Images of Rail)
Pittsburgh Streamlined Trolleys (PA) (Images of Rail)
San Francisco's Market Street Railway (CA) (Images of Rail)

Summer Kick-off in the Arts District

When's the last time you saw a line at an art museum approaching ten p.m.? Dallas kicked off summer with an annual block party Friday evening including a well-attended, free outdoor concert by The Polyphonic Spree. The Dallas Museum of Art stays open until Midnight the third Friday of each month.

Cities Boom as Boomers Fade

It wasn't driven by a Baby Boomer, but recently when the window of a Cadillac SUV came down and a voice asked me to move my Honda Fit so she could fit into a parking spot, I had to think this was the remnant of a fading world.

It's been clear for some time that Baby Boomers reaching retirement age are transforming--and will continue to transform--America's cities. Over the past decades many downtowns have been remade into more lively districts with condos for baby boomers. I remember back in graduate school when it was suggested the farthest ring of suburbs will eventually move in instead of out, to downtown, in the "donut."

And so it happened. Unable to move even farther from the city center and no longer needing more space, the movers began to populate the downtown. This is especially attractive since the aging and childless baby boomers now doing the moving don't need the big McMansions built not long ago.

A look at recent census data adds to the other side revealing that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million. That's more than double the increase in cities, of 16.7 percent.

Bring to this discussion a recent read of mine called The Age Curve by Kenneth Gronbach, and we can get our arms around the bigger picture of how changing demographic will impact development patterns, among other things. 

READ MORE AT THE NEW COLONIST

Vintage (and more) in Oak Cliff

On my first and most recent trip to Oak Cliff, I didn't make it deep enough into the Bishop Arts District to get a true sense of what a really great place this is! Today I was on the hunt for vintage stores and found several there-one of them even featuring mens wear. There are also plenty of eateries in oak Cliff and sweet shops. Check it out.

Find more vintage retailers on The New Colonist's Dallas page 

Flyover Country

Here is a video showing the park being built over a highway that divides the Arts District in Dallas from uptown. Looks great, but notice all the parking lots durning the flyover at the beginning. Lots more work to do!