Members of the Dallas City Council remain divided over the fate of City Hall and are pressing their respective cases as to the integrity of the process underlying staff’s efforts to explore relocation and redevelopment options.
On Sunday, Mayor Eric Johnson offered his most forceful response to those who have been speculating that officials and private interests are colluding to stack the deck against a full repair of 1500 Marilla St. to clear the way for redevelopment.
As previously reported by CandysDirt.com, the report concluded it would cost as much as $1 billion across 20 years to get the job done, a figure many local preservationists, architects, and other skeptics claim is inflated. Others, including members of the city council, have also lambasted the process as rushed and lacking transparency.
“It is ironic that some of the same voices who most loudly demanded an outside facility condition assessment are now the loudest critics of the result,” Johnson said. “Perhaps it is they who only wanted a report that would support the position they had staked out while operating with — in their own words — insufficient information.”
Some council members indeed took a relatively hard stance early on, particularly Council Members Cara Mendelsohn (District 12) and Paul Ridley (District 14), who didn’t believe staff’s initial estimates and wanted a thorough professional assessment done…