Back Talk Far North Dallas

Council subcommittee considers a smoking ban in bars, billiard halls

A city council subcommittee is considering expanding the city's current smoking ban from restaurants and workplaces to bars, billiard halls and within 15 feet of entrances to publicly accessible villages, according to the DMN. A majority of the six councilmen on the subcommittee seem to be leaning in favor of the proposal, according to the News story and more comments on its blog.

I have to admit that when the city council first decided to restrict smoking in restaurants and other public places a few years ago, I had my doubts: It seemed like a draconian measure, and it seemed likely to drive business out of Dallas. Today, though, I haven't seen a single study indicating that significant business was lost to the more smoking-friendly suburbs, and the air in most places I go these days is cleaner and clearer.

Easing credit crunch puts the convention center hotel back on track

Good news for fans of the taxpayer-owned downtown convention center hotel, as well as for the pending DISD bond issue: The credit market, at least for public works projects, appears to be easing enough to allow AA-rated and above public entities to obtain financing. A DMN story indicates the city of Dallas intends to close on $253.3 million in water improvement project bonds this week; a few weeks ago, this and just about every other bond project in the country were frozen due to lack of capital or political will or lenders — take your pick. The $550 million convention center hotel, which Mayor Tom Leppert and many city councilmen have vowed to fund in January, requires issuance of municipal revenue bonds to generate the cash, so now that the market is coming back, lack of available funding shouldn't hold back Leppert or the council. I guess we'll see if the May referendum on the project causes the council members any heartburn when it comes time to approve the bonds in January.

It's holiday time at Krispy Kreme

I was buying donuts at a Krispy Kreme store Saturday, and while waiting for the box to be filled, what did I hear but holiday music wafting from the overhead speakers. They must have cranked up the holiday theme the second the clock struck Nov. 1; at least the sign on the door hyping the "holiday" collection of donuts indicated they wouldn't unveiled until Nov. 28. On one hand, it was pretty disconcerting to be already listening to holiday music, but on the other hand, given all of the bad news we've been absorbing for the past few months, maybe it's time to start thinking of something happier?

Leppert says our votes count. Except for the convention center hotel?

Here's an interesting juxtaposition: Mayor Tom Leppert is circulating an email with the top headline saying "Convention Center Hotel Critical to Dallas' Future", while the second item is headlined "Vote! It's Your Voice!" (Click here to download tom_leppert_email.pdf and see the email.)

The irony: At least one Leppert spokespuppet on the council already has chortled out loud that even if Dallas residents vote in favor of a potential referendum scuttling the $550 million taxpayer-owned convention center hotel downtown, those votes won't stop the council from moving forward to build the hotel.

So whose voice is Leppert talking about?

A credit card solicitation every week — what's up with that?

Not surprising news from credit card firms is that they're tightening credit, raising interest rates and taking cards away from some people. But buried in the story about the credit crunch is this interesting tidbit: "Mail offers to new and existing customers are on pace to drop below 8.4 billion pieces, the lowest level since 2004." A little quick math shows that 8.4 billion credit card solicitations divided by 300 million U.S. residents means that each of us, on average, received 28 mail solicitations this year. And if you further parse the numbers, eliminating about half of the population that is (or at least should be) too young to receive a credit card and people who don't have any income, that means that the rest of us receive about one credit card solicitation per week. No wonder so many people have more credit than they need or can handle.

Dallas home resale price drop is minimal compared with other U.S. cities

Another of the many stories in the good news/bad news vein these days: The DMN headlines its latest residential real estate story "U.S. home resale prices dive 16.6% as Dallas' dip 2.7%." Further good news for our area from the story: Among the 20 major U.S. cities tracked in this particular study, our area had the smallest decline in home prices compared with sales in August 2007, while Phoenix and Las Vegas both reported drops exceeding 30%. More bad news nationally was that the results from 13 of the 20 markets surveyed had worsened from the month before, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area (but by a pretty negligible 0.2%). Bottom line: Things aren't great in the rest of the country, but we're doing pretty well here on a relative basis. I couldn't find the DMN link for its story, but if you want to look at the actual study, click here and then download the August study pdf.

Now what's going to happen to those retail banks on every corner?

Quick quiz: You see construction at a key neighborhood retail corner, and you wonder what's being built.

For the past few years, the answer would have simple: Another bank! But those days are over now, thanks to the multi-billion-dollar bailout of the banking industry, which has been leading to mergers galore the past few weeks.

Tom Leppert: 'Doesn't give a darn about the citizens of Dallas'

So, do you think Mayor Tom Leppert cares about the citizens of Dallas or not? Councilman Mitchell Rasansky tells the Observer Leppert doesn't care — "doesn’t give a darn about the citizens of Dallas". Rasansky goes on to mention that Leppert was on the board of directors of Washington Mutual even as that financial institution bit the dust, saying Leppert's comments about WaMu's financial health a few weeks prior to its bailout — “the feeling is that there's sufficient capital and good things ahead" — is indicative of Leppert's go-for-broke actions with the convention center hotel, regardless of a possible pending referendum on the project and a disintegration of the bond market. It's worth clicking on the post, written by Sam Merten, because it has a whole list of interesting information and story links. As for me, I tend to think that it's not that Leppert doesn't care about the rest of us. I think he just believes he knows better than everyone else what's good for us. Come to think of it, that was the prevailing attitude on Wall Street for a few years, too, and look what happened to those guys...

State Fair wrap-up: Just off a record coupon-sales pace

Amid all of the bad economic news, here's something positive: After getting off to what the DMN reported was a horrible economic start, it turns out the State Fair of Texas was selling coupons at a near-record pace ($28.6 million vs. $29 million during the 2007 Fair's record pace). For whatever reason, people found enough money (or enough credit) to down plenty of corny dogs and fried bacon at the Fair; let's hope the rest of the economy follows suit shortly. Click here (download season_wrap.pdf) to read the summary press release yourself.

Victory after 10 years: Iconic but not helping downtown

Not long ago, the DMN published a series of stories titled "Partial Victory", which was a rather ingenious way of highlighting the big, new "Times Square for Dallas" surrounding the American Airlines Center downtown. The good news, according to the story: Ross Perot Jr. says that Victory is farther along, development-wise, than he thought it would be at this time. The bad news: Apparently, if you don't live there (and not many people do), you don't know what's happening at Victory and you aren't participating in terms of spending money.

As it stands now, about 10 years into what Hillwood describes as a 25-year process, there are about 13 restaurants, a dozen retailers, more than 750 residential units and quite a bit of office space, including WFAA-TV's Times Square-like station on a corner near the AAC. But the place has become more upscale, to the exclusion of everything else, than the developers apparently planned, so while it's easy to find a $1,500 hotel room and a $400 dress, you can't find an inexpensive lunch, a drugstore or a grocery store, according to the News.

Interestingly enough, that's the same complaint that the people living and working downtown — and I mean the original downtown — have, too. And it's interesting to remember that one of the sales pitches we were given when the developers floated the $230 million arena bond in 1998 was that Victory was an important step in downtown's revitalization. As we can see now, that hasn't been the case — the distance between Main Street and Victory is too far for the average person to make the walk, and whatever good is happening at Victory isn't trickling over to downtown.