Dallas City Hall needs to hit the brakes and reconsider its support of the state’s trench plan.
City leaders should ask more questions about how to pay for a deck park.If you haven’t been following the saga of how Dallas will replace the 1.4-mile stretch of road that is Interstate 345, you’re going to have to crane your neck to catch up with the cost estimates.
Construction costs are bound to increase with inflation. But even in the world of big government budgets and big government spending, $1.6 billion isn’t pocket change.And that’s just the cost that the Texas Department of Transportation will have to pay to remove the highway and sink it in a trench dividing two central city neighborhoods. It doesn’t account for whatever eye-popping sum the city will have to raise to build a deck park — the sweetener that sold the council on the deal.
We worry about the city’s and the philanthropic community’s capacity to commit to another deck park with so many others still in progress. When we last checked on phase 2 of Klyde Warren Park, the project was facing delays because of rising costs. About half of $110 million for the first phase came from individual donors.
Dallas is also working with TxDOT on two capping opportunities along Interstate 30, one near Old City Park, and another by the convention center. Those projects are in the very early stages.to win federal grants for three of these projects. But the federal government isn’t an inexhaustible piggy bank, and funding priorities may change across White House administrations. The Dallas philanthropic community, too, can only bite off so much.
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