Dallas City Officials Weigh Future of “Obsolete” City Hall

It’s possible that Dallas’s City Hall building might not survive the flight from the city’s downtown area.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called the City Hall building at 1500 Marilla Street “obsolete” in a Friday interview with the Dallas Business Journal, and is advocating city government and employees move out of it. Dallas city officials will discuss whether to relocate City Hall on Wednesday morning or move forward with modernizing the aging building.

Updated estimates peg the cost of modernizing and operating 1500 Marilla Street over two decades would run anywhere from $1.49 billion to $1.6 billion. Those estimates were prepared by the consulting firms Gresham Smith and WM2 Company. Moving out of the building would potentially tee up redevelopment projects for the site, and save taxpayers some money, according to the publication.

Putting the City Hall location on the market could set off a revitalization of the struggling Downtown Dallas area. However, it might be too late to recapture the full scope of the area.

Downtown Dallas was dealt three body blows last week. First, the flagship Neiman Marcus department store, a fixture and anchor in the area’s retail sector, announced that it would close its doors later this year. Then, the pair of professional sports franchises that play at the American Airlines Center — the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and the NHL’s Dallas Stars — announced plans to move to Valley View and Plano, respectively. Valley View is technically within Dallas city limits, but the site is right on the border, and definitely not central to the urban core the way the American Airlines Center is.

Moving out of the City Hall location could incite one of the two sports franchises leaving the area to stay and redevelop the site. The Mavericks, specifically, were looking at downtown locations before settling on the location of the former Valley View mall. No shovels have as of yet hit the dirt in Valley View or Plano.

— Hunter Cooke