Between last week’s revelations that City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert began talking to the Mavericks about developing 1500 Marilla much earlier than previously reported and Mavericks CEO Rick Welts’s attempts to explain the team’s role in the fate of City Hall, a timeline is emerging.
We know that in 2024, the City Council debated placing a $29 million measure in its bond package that would address some of City Hall’s most pressing needs. Welts clarified this week that it was Tolbert who first mentioned City Hall might not be long for this world and could be redeveloped, and that happened a year ago. We also know that in May 2025, city staff began outlining the maintenance needs of the city’s $1.5 billion real estate portfolio, including City Hall. Last June, the guesstimate was about $81 million. It would balloon from there, reaching around $1 billion in March, when the Dallas Economic Development Corp. released its report.
Here are some other things revealed this week:
- Council members Paul Ridley and Cara Mendelsohn both questioned the $329 million price tag for repairing City Hall, pointing out, for instance, that the city just replaced the building’s entire heating system for $4.5 million. Ridley told Fox 4 that the system has 23 years left on its warranty, and Mendelsohn says that the price tag included asbestos remediation.
- Robert Wilonsky took a look at the art installed in City Hall Plaza, which also faces an uncertain future. Henry Moore’s 13-ton Three Forms of Vertebrae has been poorly maintained over the years and is currently surrounded by unsightly barricades in an attempt to keep it from being vandalized and/or peed on.. Marta Pan’s Floating Sculpture, donated by Stanley Marcus in 1978 in honor of his wife, Billie, is slightly better off because it is surrounded by the reflecting pool.
- D Magazine and pretty much every media outlet that isn’t the Dallas Morning News filed open records requests for the 5,000 emails the News received. The city referred that to the Texas Attorney General’s office.
The Council is not due to pick up the discussion about City Hall anytime soon. Welts alluded to that this week—his organization is “on the clock” and needs to have a site selected for a new arena by July, and unless the Council actually votes to develop the site, City Hall isn’t available to the Mavericks…