If you’ve been waiting to see what changes are coming to Dallas St. after the street-tree-chopping event earlier this month, here’s your scoop: the Downtown Redevelopment Authority is redoing the streetscape from Milam St. to Discovery Green with hopes of identifying Dallas St. as an actual shopping district. The plan was hatched back when one of the buildings facing Dallas was Downtown’s lone remaining department store, but it’s still going forward with the Macy’s out of the picture (actually, its former site is just behind and to the left of the view in the rendering above).
Instead, the repaving and re-treeing plan is intended to allow a bit more pedestrian activity and street parking for the remaining retail — including the entire northern flank of GreenStreet, the Houston Pavilions redo — and encouraging more to move in.
The changes will shrink the number of car lanes on the one-way street from 4 to 3, but add a parking lane to its north side.
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Here’s as it was (until the trees-in-the-street were chopped down a couple of weeks ago):
And as it’ll be once construction is complete:
Separate plans show the zigs, zags, and paving patterns from Milam St. to Main:
From Main St. to San Jacinto:
From San Jacinto St. to Austin St.:
And on to Crawford St., at the southwest corner of Discovery Green:
- Previously on Swamplot: Stumped but Guarded: Looking at the Street Trees Chopped Down on Dallas St. Downtown
Drawings: Downtown Redevelopment Authority/Clark Condon Associates. Photo: Peter O.
When is this supposed to be completed?
I love the street narrowing but wow that is an incredible blank wall. Tough to work with. Maybe they could get the owner to allow a bigger Destiny’s Child mural on it.
this is a stupid idea that will be a disaster unless they can get some sort of retail on the north side. i don’t think they should proceed until they have signed commitments for something on that side, or at least until they have a solid plan for something there. Otherwise, it is just retail on the south side of the street, and even then, almost all of it faces towards the interior of houston pavilions. and this is to say nothing of the narrowing of one of the most important west-to-east arteries in the city (dallas is what allen parkway becomes).
this sure seems ill conceived.
htownproud,
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Dallas dead ends into the convention center. Most of the drivers are going to turn on Smith or Louisiana as those two streets have the lights timed best for north south travel in downtown.
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In your estimation though, where are people taking Dallas street?
The drug dealers at the corner of Main and Dallas will finally get some much-needed shade and landscaping to help their business. Kush sales will thrive.
It’ll be a flop…
Not to state the obvious, but they take Dallas to the other 12 north/south streets beyond Smith and Louisiana, which are the first two major streets.
I still wonder about the timing of these various projects. They are about to do the ribbon cutting on the bike path although there will be a gaping whole in the middle of it by the Hilcoorp construction project for the rest of the year. No sooner than these trees were cut down to start work on the street scape, it looked like a crane was being set up between Fannin and San Jac. presumably for the work dismantling Yao’s and tuning it into a hotel which will take a couple of years and impact street scape for at least a block or so.
Tree murderers!
I like it. More on street parking in downtown is a step in the right direction. Maybe some of the businesses below ground will rise from the tunnels to fill on street retail.
Allow room for trolleys of some kind like they have in New Orleans. Think about the heat…..