World Cup Fans Give Fresh Perspective on Downtown Dallas

The prospect of being a World Cup host city is being met with dread by North Texans who aren’t soccer fans, anticipating the whole experience will drive up prices and jam up the region’s already brutal traffic.

But the influx of international fans has also had a wholesome unintended consequence at a time when Downtown Dallas needs a morale boost: As folks from around the world come to DFW, they’re are sharing trip diaries on X (formerly Twitter) that cast the city’s struggling downtown in a vastly different light than recent news of heavy hitters fleeing the scene.

A fan from Japan is giving Dallas the tourist treatment with a visit to Reunion Tower, posting photos of the vast sky visible from within the ball atop the tower. He also took a joy ride on a DART train, visited the John F. Kennedy assassination site at Dealey Plaza and was charmed by the red brick streets and structures of Downtown Dallas’ Historic West End.

As he posts about his travels on X, Dallasites are providing suggestions in the comments for his next stops — Klyde Warren Park, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Perot Museum, Fountain Place — and musing about the steps along his journey.

“So many dates there; our honeymoon, our 10th wedding anniversary. Is the revolving restaurant still up there? We haven’t been back in 28 years,” one user commented on a post about Reunion Tower.

Visitors’ enthusiasm for Dallas, mixed with Dallasites’ excitement over seeing newcomers appreciate their city, provides a much-needed surge of pride in the city’s cultural offerings on the heels of news that office anchor AT&T, the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars are ditching downtown.

AT&T Stadium in Arlington, temporarily known as Dallas Stadium for the tournament, is hosting 9 games, the most of any host stadium.

Houston Astros buys Salvation Army shelter

It seemed like the Houston Astros could finally start working on the entertainment district it announced in 2023 when it bought a Salvation Army shelter across the street from Daikin Park. But, it turns out the team nabbed the 0.6-acre property for a parking garage, a spokesperson for the Astros confirmed. The Salvation Army will continue to lease the space through September, It’s not clear what happens to the shelter after the fall.

What about the entertainment district? No word from the team on an updated timeline. When the Astros shared plans to develop a mixed-use project across the street from its ballpark, it aimed to start construction before the end of 2024. Initial plans included partnering with Houston-based developer Hines to build a hotel, 60,000 square feet of retail and a gathering space where people can watch games on a big screen.

Abbott pushes data center regulations

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did a hard pivot from his pro-business stance with a letter recommending regulations for data centers, whose development has proliferated rapidly across the state in the last few years. In the letter to the Texas Legislature, he recommended forcing data centers to pay for their own grid interconnection, mandating closed-loop water systems, annual reports and to spike sales tax exemptions and other “unnecessary incentives,” the Texas Tribune reported. In January, the state was setting pace to become the largest data center market in the country within just three years. The state comptroller’s office estimates that Texas is set to lose $3.2 billion in sales tax revenue to data center tax exemptions.

Silver Star files for Chapter 11 again

Silver Star Properties is back in bankruptcy court, less than three years after its last Chapter 11 filing. The Houston-based real estate investment trust is still reeling from its first bankruptcy filing in September 2023, which stemmed from a $259 million CMBS loan default that Silver Star blames on the mismanagement of former CEO Allen Hartman. Now, the REIT is trying to preserve its assets amid a pivot from office investments to self-storage. Silver Star reportedly has four loans in default, $75 million in liabilities and $100 million in assets.