Downtown Dallas is going through a rapid transformation, and later this year, the city council is expected to cast decisive votes on a plan that could help shape the city over the next several years.
Earlier this year, the Texas Department of Transportation introduced a proposal to reconstruct Interstate 345 (I-345) in downtown Dallas with the goal of reconnecting the Central Business District to the entertainment hub of the city, Deep Ellum, and for the past few months, this year has been surveying the feasibility, cost, and impact of the project.
Kenna Mitchell, Public Information Officer for the TxDOT Dallas District, told The Real Deal
that the study is still being conducted and that this project is not officially funded nor programmed, by the city, and will need to be officially voted on by the city council before any progress can be made. But there is decent confidence that the city is on track to review the proposal soon.
Back in 2009, the Dallas city council launched the 360 Plan, which was a partnership between the city, non-profit business booster Downtown Dallas Inc., and other organizations as a multipart plan to advance and push the city’s rapid growth and support transformative means of making Dallas more interconnected, convenient and livable as it continues to grow.
“We embarked on an update to that plan in 2017,” said Dustin Bullard, chief of Urban Transformation with Downtown Dallas Inc. DDI is a non-profit organization in Dallas founded 64 years year ago that exists for the purpose of advocating for and mobilizing the city’s development efforts, particularly in the realm of improved mobility and infrastructure, advancement of the city’s cultural development, community programs, and other such actions.
It helped to launch the 360 Plan with the City of Dallas and managed the Downtown Improvement District, located in the middle of downtown, which serves to fund supplemental services and improvements to the Central Business District, which has seen an increase in development of both commercial and residential projects.
The I-345 reconstruction is just one of many projects in production in the name of this plan, another being the recently approved reconstruction of the depressed portion of the I-30 Canyon that, similar to I-345, aims to reconnect several of the city’s disconnected communities. Bullard stated that this project will begin sometime next year.
“We began to set out urban mobility principles. and the plan acknowledges that downtown is the center of regional mobility,” Bullard said.
The proposed reconstruction of I-345, Bullard says, has been an ongoing project spearheaded by DDI’s Mobility Committee, a think tank dedicated to making changes to the city’s mobility and accessibility between its various districts, especially as the population continues to grow.
Migration to the city proper and moving interest have gone up considerably this year, and the population of the suburbs is only continuing to rise with each passing month.
“I got probably 2,500 units in late-stage planning already. You start looking at that residential population, and you’re going to see a lot more services like retail, restaurants , and bars because you begin to have a larger critical mass. You start getting into these other echelon numbers, you start talking about a small town,” Bullard said.
This plan would bolster Downtown by accommodating the growing needs of the city and overcoming the mobility challenges that come with this rise, according to Bullard.
“Regional or larger infrastructure should not harm the local community. Acknowledging that, we do have these arteries that cross or go through downtown, and those always have not been helpful for the community,” he said.
When TxDOT first introduced the project and conducted its feasibility study back in May 2022, it included a variety of options for how the construction could go. The proposals included at least five different design concepts, four of which would actually change the configuration of I-345, but the so-called “hybrid alternative” was considered by far to be the most popular in the public reviews of each.
An overview of all the recommendations and the study was released by TxDOT shortly after the presentation occurred.
In a letter to the Department following a May 26 meeting meant to gauge support of the reconstruction, the DDI Mobility Committee presented several recommendations for the proposed design plans. While they all varied, each essentially boiled down to a call for design “with particular focus on restitching the urban fabric between Downtown and Deep Ellum through enhanced pedestrian amenities, multi-modal connections, and improved mobility.”
Multiple modes of transportation between the neighborhoods are seen as necessary, with a focus on pedestrians, bikes, and scooters alongside regular public transit services.
In fact, DDI’s letter was issued specifically in reference to the hybrid alternative after it determined that it met 9 of the 18 necessary criteria for the project, according to the published study. These included pedestrian mobility/connectivity, coordination with the city of Dallas guidelines, positive property tax impacts, and others.
While the design fell short on several factors, including the impact on parks, ease of access between freeways, and a sustainable design, it also provided mainlanes that could easily connect North Dallas and southern Dallas, the latter of which has been considerably less developed than the rest of the city for years and has only recently been seeing residential and commercial investment.
The City of Dallas itself has already taken considerable steps this year alone to invest in the growth of downtown as more people move to the city, including a ‘smart district’ in one of the city’s forgotten land districts, approvals on four distinct mixed-use developments to facilitate new communities, and making efforts to extend affordable housing options for city residents.
As the study moves along, DDI estimates that if the council makes a decision on the I-345 remodel sometime this year with progress moving as it is now, the reconstruction could begin by 2028.
Bullard said that it will be incredibly important for the council to consider both the current needs of residents as well as the future needs of the city to ensure that this remodel not only meets the goals of enhancing mobility for all, but make Dallas overall a better city in the long run.
“I think when we look at 2028, we will have easily hit, just within the downtown core, probably 20,000 to 23,000 residents,” he said.
“When we construct these facilities, we’re really talking about a 30 to 40-year life span. You have to think of what 2050 will look like. There’s also an opportunity for these facilities to explore footings and engineering loads in and around these corridors, so you may not get everything on day one, but what you can do is create it so that future generations have the opportunity to do those other enhancements as our city continues to evolve.”
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