Slow Ride

[ricco67]

http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2004-...ws/schutze.html

Slow Ride

Try getting to Toronto on DART light rail some day

BY JIM SCHUTZE

jimschutze@mindspring.com

"What am I, the Flying Dutchman?" I'm sitting on this DART train wondering. Outside I see a flat rolling moonscape, crumbling cinder-block walls, ranks of dusty 18-wheelers, an endless procession of small tumble-down frame houses. The back yard of Dallas. Add some minarets, I could be in Fallujah.

And me, I'm looking for Toronto. Imagine how disappointed I must be.

I came out here last week and rode every single mile of light rail in the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System, looking for what they promised us when DART began operations 20 years ago. Toronto in the Southwest. That was the promise.

The whole dream was that DART would change the way we live by sucking people in from scattered huts on the prairie to live instead in glittering towers. Step off that evening train into a cool little gas-lit cobblestone village of shops, pick up dinner at the deli, say hi to your doorman, zoom-zoom up 14 stories on the elevator to your crib and gaze out over the endless prairie where the munchkins live. That was the dream.

I don't see it. Not here. What I see out these train windows is bleak, man. I am gazing at backs of U-Store-It warehouses. I see vast parking lots full of automobiles that belong to munchkins. Where am I, Dorothy?

Wait, wait, it's coming to me. Aha. I think I know where I am after all. I'm on the bus.

That's it. This vast rail system in which we have invested billions of tax dollars is just a big sprawling version of the bus. It has changed squat.

I don't see no Toronto. Do you? I just see buses on railroad tracks, plowing through exactly the same shotgun spray of low-rise cheap-ass development that was here before they launched the first choo-choo.

No, no, hold on, there I go leaping to conclusions again. Bear with me. Wait another minute. This has been a long journey. I'm stepping off the train at Mockingbird Station, and I'm riding up the escalator, and I'm standing on a mezzanine. And I think I see something.

I do. I see the Angelika theater. I see a cafe where I could get a latte. And I see the Mockingbird Station lofts, which would be a very cool place to live.

So I could step off the train here in the evening and stroll through a very happening neat little village of things going on, pick up some carry-out or walk the other direction to Kroger and get actual food, then ascend to my fashionable loft. I could be even cooler than I am now, if that were humanly possible.

Does anybody here really do that?

Ken Hughes, who developed and still operates the Mockingbird Station lofts, tells me lots of people do exactly that.

"I have 211 rental apartments in that project," he said from a cell phone somewhere on the planet. "It has a separate parking garage. If you go to the typical suburban garden apartment parking lot during the daytime, the lots will be substantially vacant.

"That is not true at Mockingbird Station. Our garage is 50 to 60 percent occupied at that time of the day. We know just from our own observation that our residents are using the train.

"We also have a way of metering it, because we get people coming in from out of town that want to rent apartments and go through our Web site. They specifically are looking for places on transit, because they may be coming from Philadelphia or Chicago, and they're used to having that."

So I was wrong. It's not that there is no Toronto there. In fact, I should be looking at Mockingbird Station as a little tiny babykins Toronto, a seedling striving to stretch up out of hostile soil.

We do have a fledgling population of cosmopolites living the good life almost without cars. And as I keep traveling the rails for the better part of two days--where in the heck is the bar car, by the way?--I do discover other bits and pieces of cool here and there.

Downtown Plano, of all places: It's just on the verge of quite nice, with some neat "transit-oriented development" right at the station stop. Not high-rise, of course, but attractively urban all the same. Keep this up, and they'll have to change its name to Not-So-Plano.

Now, whoa up here, what is this business? I am not prepared for this at all. At the rail terminus in Garland, I don't see Toronto, but I do see an inviting civic center of theaters and other facilities. It's sort of barricaded by fences and parking lots, but if you squint your eyes just the right way and tilt your head, you can imagine an amusing destination of theater and dance and public events reachable by train.

It's not that there are no beginnings out there. The question is why the beginnings haven't begun more in the 20 years since DART launched operations. I talked with another developer who didn't want me to quote him by name, because he's afraid of getting in Dutch with DART. He says DART can be very regal and vindictive.

He said the question is why DART didn't develop Mockingbird Station to be even bigger and better--or any of its other developable station sites. Instead of surrounding its stations with huge surface parking lots to keep the hut people happy, why doesn't DART move the parking a block or two away and sell or lease the land right next to the stations for high-rise development?

I tried to get through to DART to discuss these issues and failed. There was some phone tag between us, and I'm not sure whom to blame for our ultimate failure to communicate--them or me. I wanted to ask about high-rise residential at DART stations.

But I went back to Hughes with that question. Instead of redeveloping existing mid-rise structures the way he did, why not also do major high-rise development where the DART parking lots are?

He said a couple of things. First of all, when he was pitching Mockingbird Station to money people in the mid-1990s, it was tough enough to do what he did. His basic vision of Dallas, he said, is "an East Coast city with a West Coast lifestyle," but that was not the first thing he wanted to say to the checkbook guys.

"We had to finance that deal based just more on its common market fundamentals: great corner, great neighborhood, good atmosphere, things which help any kind of development, whether it's transit-oriented or otherwise. But we sort of sold the financial end of the deal as, 'Oh, and by the way, there's this rail station.'"

So that makes sense. In the beginning there was light rail. But there wasn't enough light rail to talk about high-rise buildings full of people without cars. Pitch it that way in 1994, and the reaction would have been the fluttering whir of checkbooks snapping shut.

But this is 10 years later. Believe it or not, in 10 years a lot has changed. The Center for Transit Oriented Development in Oakland, California, published a report last September called "Hidden in Plain Sight," arguing that demand for Toronto-style living is going to grow dramatically in this country in the next decade, especially among people young and old who don't have kids. The Center is a joint venture of urban think tanks in Chicago and Berkeley.

Something I found especially intriguing in their study was a table showing that demand for transit-oriented housing will grow faster in Dallas than in any other city in America except Los Angeles--a projected increase of 364 percent from 2000 to 2025.

Whoa.

And there are major checkbook people now who see the same thing. Fannie Mae, the nation's largest supplier of mortgage money, is offering what are called "smart commute" mortgages: You can buy up to $30,000 more in house value if you live near transit and agree to limit the number of cars you own.

Guess what: Fannie Mae in Dallas told me the smart commute loans are available in Plano but not in Dallas, because Dallas doesn't have an agreement on it with Fannie Mae. Apparently Plano has been a bit more forward-looking about transit than Dallas.

Don't even get me started on that.

Hughes agreed with my unnamed guy that high-rise development right next to the stations makes more sense now than it did back in the day. He thinks it may happen.

"DART is now beginning to get the message," he said, "that the surface parking lots at Mockingbird Station that are close to the station are potential development sites. The parking can be placed a five-minute walk away, and it will not change their ridership from cars."

I asked everybody I talked to about downtown Dallas. If we can have Toronto some day at Mockingbird and Central, in Not-So-Plano of all places, then why can't it happen downtown? Everybody said the same thing: Find a way to get 50,000 people to move into downtown. Then downtown can become whatever you want it to be.

One guy told me DART is half-built. He said it's like looking at a 12-year-old and saying, "Where's the world-class ballerina?" The answer is that she'll be here in about 10 years. I just worry that when Toronto finally arrives, it'll be in Plano and Garland.

It's the vision thing. Meanwhile I'm back on the rails, and my vision is blurring. Did you know the DART trains have to stop for red lights downtown? The pedestrians are moving faster than we are.

And the trains go "ding-ding." I hate that. It's embarrassing. Please, somebody make something bigger happen. Soon.

dallasobserver.com | originally published: December 9, 2004

[UrbanLandscape]

Ah, can't beat our culture of instant gratification! God forbid we wait for anything. It's just oh-so-horrible when things don't happen immediately.

[MidtownCoog]

As if being the Manhattan of the Southwest is not enough, now they want to be the Toronto of the Southwest as well.

Too funny.

Anyway, the Dallas Observer and Houston Press are cry-baby rags, for sure.

[Sunstar]

Coincidentally, I spent the last week in Toronto on business and noticed the pattern of development that this guy seems to hold as the ideal. The landscape on the ride into town from the airport was dominated by high-rise clusters, which while I couldn't see it directly, I assumed all had direct access to mass transit. There was nothing remarkable about this style of development. As a matter of fact, I was expecting more from a city that boasts about having so many skyscrapers. Only the CN tower was impressive to me. Nevertheless, they seem to have found something that works well for them and have applied it on a grand scale.

I think that's one of the things that can be so frustrating about living in a Sunbelt city and what is the main source of this guy's disappointment. Attempts to imitate what has worked so well in other cities is usually doomed to fail or is at least tainted by realities that were never considered in the first place. It will be a great day when cities like Dallas and Houston stop trying to be like their northern counterparts and find solutions that work for them. After all, we're the ones that have to live here, not them.

[The Great Hizzy!]

It will be a great day when cities like Dallas and Houston stop trying to be like their northern counterparts and find solutions that work for them. After all, we're the ones that have to live here, not them.

I agree. In many ways, I think newer growth cities like San Diego, Denver and Los Angeles (I know, I know, but it's new relative to the older northern cities) are starting to get it.

[slfunk]

Its amuzing how facts are distorted for the sake of the argument. Sure Dart started 20 yrs ago with maybe a bus system or was it the construction of the rail line? What this guy forgets to mention is that the Rail line didn't even begin to operate until 10 yrs later. So in other words the rail line has only been in operation for 10 yrs now. Would have been completly different should Dallas had rail in 1984. He also misses the fact that in many areas of Dart stations where it is economically viable private investors have spent 3-5 dollars for every dollar Dart has spent in development. Almost all of it pedestrain development. This has also been exponentially growing. Where it was very slow the first few years, the last 5 plus years, a large chunck of new development has been centered around Dart and pedestrian oriented. This list includes Mockingbird station, downtown Plano, Richardson's new performing arts center, downtown Garland, all the new development at Park Lane station, proposals of new office at the 190 station (which fell through none the less), West Village as it approaches Cityplace, and Victory. Developers have also recently announced new development for the first time in South Dallas, and where is it at, but along the Dart Rail. A whole new master plan has been enlisted in Irving along the TRE. What he forgets to mention is development does not just spring up do to one entity, but comes from a reaction to different variables. Downtown Dallas is taking off by organic means and Victory is about to shoot through the roof working heavily with Dart to make this a prestine destination. Downtown Carrolton is working Hillwood I think for its masterplan to be built and ready before the arrival of the first train in 2011.

Now I don't know about Manhattan of the south or Toronto. I have lived in Dallas since 1983, and have never heard it come out of one's mouth that we are the Manhattan of the South, or Dallas wants to be NY. I've only heard in debates of Houston vs. Dallas when some people just grab at air trying for something saying Houston is NYC or Dallas is NYC. My own brother lives in Houston and tries to tell my Houston is the manhattan of the south. Granted he's never been to NY and I use to live in manhattan. Personally and from observation I would never want Dallas to be NY and think nobody here would want that. I also think the same hold's true for Houston. There's aspects of it we all like, but the quality of life is vastly different.

Also side note.... Its refreshing to read through your forum and see you guys are VERY proactive to shutting down the debates of who's city is better. I wish the Dallas page was as proactive.

[Dallasite]

Its aAlso side note....  Its refreshing to read through your forum and see you guys are VERY proactive to shutting down the debates of who's city is better.  I wish the Dallas page was as proactive.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Uhhhmmm, it is as proactive.

[BayouCityGirl]

I so DO not see riding the Dart Rail like Toronto. Where is the BEAUTIFUL lakefront Toronto has? Toronto has culture wherewas when I rode Dart Rail I didn't exactly see a bustling city with lots of people on DART. The only thing I saw that Toronto and Dallas have in common is a railway and bus system. I came back from Toronto in August and I saw a cluster of highrises from the airport, the birds flying overhead, the endless traffic, the city was bustling with interesting people, it was a bit cooler then the Texas humidity, everything was listed as Royality "Queensway", Queen St, King St. Etc, Royal "Whatever" place, etc..., the amusement park that sits near the lake front (for families to attend seasonly), I didn't see so many churches around, and I did go to the suburbs of Toronto. It was SO multicultural. Dallas may be or D/FW but I am sorry I can't share this guys views. I don't see how the cities are similiar.

BTW, I heard the Manhattan of the south at one time was Galveston Island when it was booming. Never Dallas or Houston.

[kory_krunch]

BTW, I heard the Manhattan of the south at one time was Galveston Island when it was booming. Never Dallas or Houston.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, in order for either Dallas or Houston to claim the title of 'Manhattan of the South', they would have to come up with some sort of multi-billion dollar project to pump a steady stream of urine onto the streets and sidewalks...

Don't get me wrong, my family originates from Manhattan, love the place, but it smells like pee.

[kory_krunch]

Ouch... I can't say I've ever smelled piss on the streets of Manhattan - and I've been all over that island! Maybe its those back allys that only the locals know about? Now, you want a street that smells like piss - Bourbon Street...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, that is certainly true...Manhattan is more like a "I peed here a few days ago" urine smell, whereas Bourbon Street is more like a "Hey dude, hold my beer while I pee" smell.

[N Judah]

Well, that's great. Dallas is the 'Toronto of the South' and Fort Worth has declared itself the 'Vancouver of the South.'

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Houston needs to hurry up and choose a Canadian city to name itself after before all the good ones are taken.

[MidtownCoog]

Houston and Calgary are one in the same ;-)

At least in the O&G world.

[zaphod]

and houston and calgary both have wimpy excuses for light rails that dont go anywhere.

not saying im into the kind of "toronto" lifestyle this guy is talking about, but its a pain in the ass driving in major cities, and i wish they would stop worrying about a car free lifestyle and start thinking about Park N Rides in the suburbs with light rail lines going to the city with destinations more for the average joe and not just neighboohoods for businesspeople and yuppies and hippies.