Lesley

[Lesley @financinggal]

@MichaelTHolman @BeachFrmFL Managing money and having her own without her husband’s name on it are two different things.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@_steve_o_ @TimCowlishaw They went luxury retail, and people coming to hockey games are not looking for luxury shopping or dining. Victory Place has enough length and retail storefront to pull off a shopping district. Dallas is not wealthy enough to support luxury there and Highland Park Village.

[Barrett Linburg @DallasAptGP]

Dallas and Los Angeles both run 15-member city councils, and in both cities you need 8 votes to move anything important.

That is where the similarity ends.

LA is trying to climb out of a civic hole defined by homelessness, crime, affordability, fire recovery, and deep public frustration with how the city works.

Dallas is not in that hole, yet.

In many ways, Dallas is winning the macro fight. Goldman Sachs is building a major campus here. The Mavs may be leaving downtown, but they are staying inside the city limits, anchoring 104 acres at the old Valley View Mall site.

People and companies keep voting with their moving trucks. They are leaving California and New York and choosing Texas.

But the Mayor made an important point this week: Dallas is in a generational fight with its own neighbors for residents, businesses, and capital.

He is right.

Downtown Dallas is entering one of the most important redevelopment windows in its modern history. A new convention center is coming. TxDOT is rebuilding I-30 and I-345. The I-30 cap can stitch The Cedars back into the urban core with a Klyde Warren-style deck park.

The bones are excellent. The momentum is real.

A deck park is just a park unless the city allows the housing, density, restaurants, offices, hotels, and street life around it. A convention center is just a building unless the surrounding district becomes somewhere people want to walk, stay, eat, invest, and live.

Infrastructure does not build a city on autopilot. Council decisions do that, along with permitting, zoning, public safety, and a homelessness strategy that works. Basic competence, in other words.

That is the lesson from LA.

Cities do not break overnight. They break one deferred decision at a time. The permit gets delayed. The zoning fight gets punted. The hard vote gets avoided. Bad process becomes normal, and the normal becomes permanent.

Then one day everyone acts shocked that the city is stuck.

Dallas still has a head start. Our problems with crime, homelessness, permitting, and bureaucracy are real, but they are still fixable.

That is the point.

This is not a doom post. It is the opposite.

Dallas has the assets, the location, and the private-sector momentum. It has a real chance to become the clear urban winner in North Texas.

But only if City Hall acts like this moment is real.

Which brings us back to the math: 8 votes.

In November 2027, every Dallas council seat and the mayor’s office will be on the ballot. Because of term limits, at least six of those races will be open seats with no incumbent. More could open if members retire or jump into the mayor’s race.

The horseshoe could look very different by the end of that night.

And for the first time, Dallas will hold its city election in November instead of May. That changes everything.

May turnout was embarrassing, often less than 10% of registered voters. It was the ultimate inside-baseball electorate.

November turnout will be much larger. That sounds healthy, and it probably is. But it also changes the campaign math.

When more voters who do not normally follow City Hall show up, door-knocking and neighborhood relationships matter less than name recognition, money, and a sharp message.

So the next council may be chosen by an electorate that includes thousands of people who have never voted in a Dallas municipal race before.

Those voters will help decide whether Dallas turns this infrastructure moment into a real city-building moment, or whether we spend the next decade arguing over process while the suburbs eat our lunch.

The opportunity is right in front of us, regardless of what the Mavs or Stars do next.

Dallas does not need panic. It needs focus. It needs council members who understand growth, public safety, housing, permitting, and execution.

Pay attention now, not in November 2027.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@allie__voss Same

[Lesley @financinggal]

@realest49919420 Yes, Main Street has too many restaurants and other businesses breaking up the ability to turn it into a shopping mile. Human nature…people will not turn corners and they give up shopping if they have to walk past a huge parking lot or too many non-shopping businesses.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@realest49919420 The city really needs to decide on a street that can be converted into a shopping block. If you go to Chicago Magnificent Mile, it’s shopping not restaurants. And not luxury because that is already up at Highland Park Village.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@lamibackup This is a good perspective. I’m sure they have data on the ZIP Codes.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@MeghanEMurphy At a women’s Bible study on 1 Cor 7 the verse about marital sex. The woman leader was in her 70s. There was discussion that in her 70s she was still having daily sex to satisfy her husband because she really was not very interested in it. Young women were upset it doesn’t end.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@rjchoppy The AA center was near the convergence of 114, 183, I 35, I 30, the tollway, and 67.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@starsfanerik The best part about the AA center is that it is literally at the crossroads of nearly all the highways in DFW. 114, 183, I 35, I 30, the tollway, 67.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@KennethRWebster Good! My aunt who is very likely a member of the DSA always voted in Republican primaries for the worst candidate she could vote for just to muck up the primary.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@YIMBYman Union Station is so nasty.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@DallasXCEO I would love to see them, bore a subway tunnel straight up the tollway to Connect uptown lovers Lane and the Galleria now also the Mavericks and then beltline

[Lesley @financinggal]

@gcollinstx All the buildings look so rundown. The owners and managers don’t even bother to power wash the sidewalks in front of their businesses. The exteriors scream decay.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@gcollinstx They’re too busy not cleaning up the homeless and sidewalk problem and worrying about saving a decaying architectural relic.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@CRELeasingLawTX I would prefer that it stay near downtown, but this is actually not terrible. If they develop it the same way they developed around victory, it will be great. In fact, an uptown vibe there walking distance to the Galleria would be pretty amazing.

[Lesley @financinggal]

@seanbuckley Can someone remind me why the AA center is no longer the place?

[Lesley @financinggal]

@FritzTheDev @Michael_Druggan I argued for years that an income tax is better than a property tax because nobody makes an annual income equivalent to the value of their property. But people do not have ears to hear. And they don’t get raises at the same scale that their property value increases.