Merriman Associates/Architects 2010 Grand Design Concept

Merriman Associates / Architects is located in downtown Dallas just across from the Akard Street DART station. Below is their newly released concept visualization of the Dallas Grand Hotel and surrounding Main Street Garden park. The Dallas Grand, formerly the Statler Hilton Hotel,was put on the 2008 list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.



This video showing the rendering of the hotel lobby and rooms are a hopeful sign that Merriman & Associates are bidding for the job of restoring the once majestic hotel to it's former glory.

Arts District Architecture Walking Tour

Date:	April 3, 2010
Time:	10:00 AM
Location:	The tour departs from the ceremonial entrance of the Dallas Museum of Art on Harwood.
Details:	The Dallas Arts District and the Dallas Center for Architecture are proud to present an architecture walking tour of the largest urban arts district in the United States. Our 90-minute architecture walking tour is led by a trained tour guide and will examine buildings from the 1890’s to the present day.  You will explore the architectural detail of the District as well as the institutions, individuals and visionaries who are a part of this fascinating story. Tours are held on the first and third Saturdays of each month, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at the ceremonial entrance to the Dallas Museum of Art (Flora and Harwood).  The tour is held rain or shine. $10.00 for adults $8.00 for Dallas Arts District and AIA Dallas members $5.00 for seniors 65 and over and students with valid ID’s Children under 12 are free when accompanied by an adult The tour lasts approximately one and a half hours. You may park either at the Dallas Museum of Art Parking Garage or at the Trammell Crow Center Parking Garage (entrance on Olive Street on weekends and pay the guard at the desk on the ground floor before you leave) or at a nearby surface lot or meter. This is an outdoor tour and includes both historical and architectural information about the venues and organizations in the Dallas Arts District. The tour does not include the interior of any of the buildings in the Dallas Arts District. To make reservations, please register through PayPal here or e-mail artstour@downtowndallas.org if you would like to submit payment in the form of cash or check.  Reservations and payment must be made in advance.  Due to the necessity of scheduling docents, we are unfortunately unable to accommodate walk-ups.

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For More Information

Contact Name: Dallas Center for Architecture
Email Address: info@dallascfa.com
Phone Number: 214.742.3242

Street Cars to Return to Downtown Dallas

The City of Dallas received a $23 million discretionary funding grant from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) group to move forward with plans to re-introduce streetcars to Downtown Dallas.

(right: Looking down Main Street in downtown Dallas; circa 1951)



"This project will improve transportation within downtown Dallas by creating a seamless transit connection and providing a multi-modal link between jobs and residents," said Mayor Tom Leppert. Mayor Leppert. US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited Dallas himself to see how the city's streetcar plan would improve interurban transportation, help boost local businesses and lower Dallas's carbon emissions.

"This project specifically targets commuters in mixed use districts adjacent to downtown and will help create a transit network linking urban areas by providing multiple transportation alternatives," said Councilwoman Angela Hunt, whose district includes downtown.

The proposed line originates in Downtown Dallas at Harwood and Main Street. The line includes stops at the Convention Center Hotel, Trinity River Park, and Union Station, and continues into the North Oak Cliff Methodist Medical Center District.

"Clearly, this project will link walkable, mixed use neighborhoods in the urban core with employment centers throughout the region, as well as create hundreds of new jobs in Dallas," said Councilwoman Linda Koop, Chair of the Council's Transportation and Environment Committee.

The Recovery Act application, submitted in coordination with the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) and the City of Fort Worth, included a total budget request of $96 million. The City of Dallas requested $48 million for its portion of the streetcar project, with a total project cost of $58 million.

"To me, this is the next evolution in downtown Dallas," says Councilwoman Angela Hunt, who helped push the idea for Dallas after visiting Seattle and riding The S.L.U.T. The unfortunate yet hilarious acronym for the Seattle Lake Union Trolley. 

The City of Dallas and Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) are pleased to receive the grant money to fund the new street car system since the idea is to allow riders to ride the system for free.

"It needs to be free," Hunt says. "You want people to ride it and if it's free they're gonna jump on it. They're gonna leave their car behind."

Woodall Rodgers Park:

THE PARK: Or as it's known to the locals, The Woodall Rodgers Park has just released a pre-visualization fly-through of their new public space which will span the Woodall Rodgers highway making a tunnel beneath for existing traffic to flow.

The park will connect Uptown and Downtown Dallas creating a unified public area for residents and visitors to enjoy. Along with three other downtown parks in the last year either being completed or slated for construction, THE PARK hopes to provide a visual connection between two parts of the city which has been divided by a busy highway for years. Just North of the Dallas Arts District, THE PARK is a much needed escape for the urban residents of Dallas.

Check out the video and visit THE PARK DALLAS website!

Main Street Garden Park

Main Street Garden (which opened in this month) now has it's Christmas tree up and ready to ring in the holidays! I snapped this picture while taking a morning walk with the fam and thought it looked a little postcard-like. So I posted it.

I'm looking forward to spending more time here since it's only three blocks from home, and it's sure to be a great place to sit out in the sun during the summer for a little R&R.

RE:Vision Dallas Winner: Entangled Bank

The winner of the RE:Vision Dallas competition has been named. The North Carolina firm Little has won with their Entangled Bank design.

From the UrbanRevision.Org website:
Something incredible is about to happen in downtown Dallas. Soon, a single block will be transformed into a place that creates economies, supports community, facilitates relationships and generates resources. The winners of Re:Vision Dallas have created plans that challenged us, engaged us, and inspired us. And their ideas, from local materials and vegetated screens to integrated greenways, will shape how people will live and work here in the future.


Entangled Bank is a complex yet simple network of elements. Each piece whether it is the bird, the plant, the worm or the soil personally contributes to the growth and ultimate survival of each. They are all very different from one another but each is very dependent on the other. For without them the bank would unravel and fail. Within the network still a very personal cycle of life persists that starts with conception, continues with growth and ultimately flourishes or sometimes fails. But the bank itself is meant to sustain and offer every opportunity for its constituents to succeed. This same notion can be related to the natural environment as well as the social landscape of Dallas and also our site.

 

What if we not only sought to teach and educate about the importance of living sustainably out of respect for the environment but we actually sustained and rehabilitated those among us who were struggling? What if we welcomed them back within the comfort of the entangled bank and as they grew and flourished we watched them begin to contribute to the bank themselves? It is our belief that true sustainability relates not only to the environment but also has key economic and social impacts.

 

Read more at the competition website.

Terrorist Plot on Fountain Place

Yesterday Dallas FBI agents intercepted a Jordanian terrorist in an attempt to detonate a car bomb to blow up the Fountain Place building. Fountain Place is a 1.2 million-square-foot office tower of green reflective glass rising 60 stories from a beautiful water garden located at the corner of Ross Avenue and Field Street in downtown Dallas. This is one of my favorite modern buildings in downtown Dallas. I see it everyday on my way to work and on the drive home.

Designed by I.M. Pei & Partners, the original plans were for the development of a second twin tower that was not built. It's location was just north adjacent to the existing tower. The second tower was also to include the famous plaza and water gardens with connections to the first tower. Although it was not built I can only imagine what the two towers would have looked like peering over the Dallas skyline.


The alleged terrorist mentioned during the planning stages of the attempted bombing that he wanted to blow up the tower because it reminded him of the World Trade Center in NYC. An eerie thought for sure. It makes me happy to know that the F.B.I. are diligent in their mission to seek out and uncover terror activity, and we can all see the value in their efforts especially on a day like yesterday.