I’ve had an unhealthy obsession with one particular parking lot in Dallas for about 15 years. It’s underneath Woodall Rodgers. It’s a massive piece of land that connects Klyde Warren Park, Victory, the West End and the Design District. Right next to it are some incredible upcoming projects - the Klyde Warren Expansion, the Perot Museum Expansion, the new Goldman Sachs Campus, Y’all Street and the Continental Gateway to the Ron Kirk Bridge.
It could be a nice, open safe space to help connect these areas, but instead it looks like Escape From New York had a baby with Mad Max (and these pictures are during the day).
The red below = surface lots and the purple lots = those where the building sitting on the land is less than half the value of the land it sits on. There’s a lot of potential tax base around this lot.
Changes
I say…remove the parking lots under the highway, add lighting, paint the columns, pave some walkways. That’s it.
If you thought Juggler under the Overpass was bad, wait for my idea. Like any good toddler, I love dinosaurs. And given one of these lots is used by the Perot Museum (which is about to build a 6 level parking garage), I asked my AI friend to whip up some too good to be true renderings of how this space could be changed.
I’m not really serious about the dinosaur theme…I don’t think it really matters what the improvements are. Just remove the fences and make it a semi-inviting space and whatever it could become would be better than the black hole that it is now.
I think this would also improve the safety of this area. More long distance visibility, lighting and increased pedestrian traffic all make areas safer.
Connection
One of the problems with downtown is - when you’re within the loop it almost feels like you’re trapped there. Humans do not like to be trapped in urban spaces. Look at the map below and see if you can find one decent walk in or out of downtown (Klyde Warren being the exception).
Yes, you can walk in or out of downtown. Just like you can go down Niagara Falls in a barrel. People have survived doing it. But they don’t choose to do it.
The redo of I-30 and I-345 will help solve these issues on the east and south side of downtown, but Woodall Rodgers is not going anywhere anytime soon. The ability to walk between these areas with as little friction as possible would do a lot for this northwest area of downtown.
A Walk Around Dallas
When I’m visiting a city, I like to walk around. This route could be a perfect 1-2 hour walk around a lot of interesting areas in the center of the city.
Costs
I’m assuming the Perot Museum leases their lot’s space from TxDOT, who owns the land un the highway. The Museum charges $15 per car ($5 for members), and with roughly 300 to 390 spaces it could gross somewhere around $600,000 to $1 million a year, depending on how full it runs. That is gross revenue, not profit - depending on how much they pay for the lease.
With about 1 million visitors a year today, or roughly 2,800 a day, replacing $1 million would take about 200 more paying visitors a day, around 7 percent more than now. If the lease and operating costs are substantial, the number falls to perhaps 90 to 140 a day. The museum’s own expansion plan already projects 400,000 more visitors a year. And as I mentioned earlier, the Perot is building a 6 level garage with 566 spaces.
I believe making that space better would make up for the lost revenue the Museum gets for parking. My Nathan Fielderesque plan is to rope people in with free Dino content and soon they’ll be begging to pay to get into the museum for more.
Other Cities’ Under the Highway Projects
Other cities have already demonstrated what’s possible beneath highways. Toronto’s Underpass Park has playgrounds, basketball courts, and public art. Seattle’s I-5 Colonnade is a mountain-bike park beneath the freeway. Portland’s Burnside Skatepark turned neglected space into a legendary skateboarding destination. Boston’s Underground at Ink Block uses colorful murals and public space to transform the underside of I-93. And Miami’s Underline is creating a ten-mile linear park beneath its elevated Metrorail.
And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let those other crappy cities beat us!
