Swank in The Arts; 130; Ponte plan - Vincent Ponte

The architects of Texas are this year sponsoring a series of town meetings over the state to try to find out what people think about the look and feel of their cities and towns and what they're willing to do about it. The Dallas event was a luncheon laid in October sponsored by the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Central Business District Association. It was heavily attended and the guest speaker was Vincent Ponti, an internationally known planner, most familiar here for the study and plan of the downtown area inside the freeway loop, which he and traffic consultant Warren Travers made in 1969 for the Dallas City Council. Mr. Ponti is nearly 10 years since we've received that plan. What have we been able to achieve in that time?

Quite a bit. Quite a bit. You realize that when that plan was submitted to City Council, Council had to accept it and then tell its departments to make their own studies so that we'd be legal documents made up out of this study. You have a pedestrian plan, which is legal, a parking plan, parks and boulevards plan. I think you may even have a trucking plan coming on stream. But in any event, from those official plans, we've already taken a certain number of steps in the downtown core. We've increased the number of parks. We've improved streets, Griffin, Pearl, young, had been widened. The pedestrian system is beginning to grow. It's about a mile and a half, two miles and a half of walkway systems that now lay underneath a lot of these buildings, and it's still growing for the amount of time that was involved up to the present date, a good amount has been achieved. Well, this photograph is the area that we are talking about. Now, that's how many acres?

That's 900 acres inside of the freeway loop. There's central RL Foughton, Stemons and the Woodall Rodgers, which is under construction right now. That'll be completed right up to central in 83. And you were involved with all of that, and I think you said in there that the heart of that was what is 200 acres in the loop. The 900 acres enclosed by the freeway loop, the 200 acres is this built-up area, the very heavily built-up area where you find all the office towers, the department stores, the restaurants, all shoot-horn together because they want to be within walking distance to each other. Then what happens outside of that 200 acre sort of core is a lot of parking lots. There's certain very important public improvements that are now beginning to take place. Well, where are the parks that we had then and where are the new ones that we've gotten since? We had, you remember, what we had on our mark these now, if you don't mind. We had Dilly Plaza, remember, and we had that one plaza that was, come on, it was called Kennedy Plaza. We had a Ferris Park, that lovely park opposite the Dallas Morning News, and we had Pioneer

Park, which is really an old cemetery. It represented something like seven acres of land, which is not very much for a big important city like Dallas when they have 900 acres inside of your freeway loop. So the program said that we should start out, and you see these little dock patches all around this map, acquiring more parks in the downtown, and sure enough, you did. The figure has now come up to about 21 acres, which is very good. The county added another park opposite the Kennedy Memorial, Kennedy Memorial is located. The city hall park is some three to four acres right there, but the Marilla Triangle has been put into green. We've got Thanksgiving Square, which is about an acre and a half, and we're now about to get the John Coppenter Park, but at this portal point here, which is about four acres, which is going to have a 700 foot long steel sculpture running right through the entire park. If you can imagine that. I have seen that. You have to be very excited, I'm sure. But actually what we've done is literally lifted from seven to 21 acres.

Now that's quite an achievement. Is that what I don't remember exactly, is that what was called for? We called for parks in various points of portals, and you see, for example, here at Ferris Plaza, we've asked for an extension of Ferris Plaza, and that will probably happen this year and next year. We asked for a park over here, a portal park at that end of town, and there it is emerging, the John Coppenter Plaza. We didn't know what it would call then, but that's where we asked for it. We suggested the doubling of the county courthouse park, obviously a great plaza in park in front of City Hall, and these things have emerged. The point now is whether you want to keep on going with parks if you have the money, or if you only have a certain amount of money, whether you're shooting a shift gears and go into trees on the boulevards. Well, how do you mean? You mean lines or groups? Well, just, for example, the improvements we spoke about in streets, Griffin, all the way from wood all rogers down to Thornton, has been improved. It's wide and it's a very pleasant street. Pearl has been improved from the wood all rogers right down to this point of central express

way. Young has been improved in the section near City Hall, and it's been finally pushed forward and connects now to Stemmens, and these and reunion, these streets, some of them have trees on which are recognizable as trees, but most of these are saplings, you know, it's going to take us 20, 25 years before we really see something there that we actually see that line of trees running down both sides of St. Griffin. I would propose that instead of putting in saplings, and instead of building more parks, we've got a decent number of parks right now. Let's put our money in the next six years, eight years, say up into 1986. Let's put our money into trees. Let's say it costs five million dollars, that sounds like a lot of money. If you spread that over eight years, and let's put in big trees, you know, with tree trunks that are about six, eight inches, so that then very next year after they're planted, we'll see them there.

Every citizen can drive bound this marvelous boulevarded tree without waiting 25 years. That will take about 1,250 trees. I figured it out. Along boulevard that are already marketed here. You know, that cord I showed you earlier is roughly an area like this, just 200 acre core. And there's our 700 acre frame around that core contained by the freeway loop. I would suggest that since the private enterprise sector is putting in lots of trees, you know, those lovely trees that you see outside of 2001, each newspaper has wonderful trees outside of it, outside of saying a Harris, there are a lot of trees. This portion will take care of itself. The private sector will put the trees in. I think we should put the trees in, say along the northern side of Griffin, the southern side of Griffin, a young street. By the way, young street now does this. Ross running through the historical district, over to Delie Plaza. Ross from Pearl, over to Central Expressie, and Pearl. And these two down here, Howard, and the other end of what is young, with really his

Canton. This is where I put my trees. Well, now to be hard on us about it, would that be worth $5 million? Absolutely. In what way? First of all, you know, if we had that picture back here, but you'll remember having seen it, this whole area around the core is basically slabbed over with concrete, not unlike what you find around a shopping center. The reason is because it's parking lots and streets. We have about 200 acres in parking lots, 120 acres in streets. You see, that's nearly 50% of the entire area is in asphalt. Now, there's nothing wrong with those parking lots, frankly, except their appearance. They're absolutely essential to make this core live. In other words, if you couldn't park downtown, then you couldn't get people to come in and do business. Therefore, you have to have the parking lots. But we have to start sopping up these parking lots, it's sort of like spilling something by building garages. We have about 50,000 cast bases, parking spaces, inside of the 900 acres. About 25,000 of those are in garages.

The garages occupy 20 acres of land, but the parking lots occupy 180, 50, 50. There's the answer already. The significance there is that we have to start building large garages so that we can then free up the land now in parking lots for a better use. What better use? Certainly, it's not going to be a lot of office buildings. All new officemen are going to keep on growing inside of the core to be within walking distance of what I know. Therefore, we have to start preparing this land for housing, in town living, walk to work housing. But no housing is going to come in until you start improving, setting the stage for it. And this is what these trees will do, not only setting the stage for these areas to go into housing, but also providing the citizens of Dallas with a very handsome city center that people can drive into and out of because these are the ways you get into and out of the city center and you're a very handsome boy about it. Well, that's going to screen your parking lots as well, is it not?

I want to screen it completely. What we could do in that, that's an interesting problem there. Several parking lots recently put into the downtown, have done some nice things. They've actually taken the edge of the parking lot on the in-board side of the sidewalk and actually planted bushes. Sure, you'll see the cars on the other side, but it's not naked concrete steel. There's that nice, softening touch of green in between you, the pedestrian, and that hot steel of the car. So that's what I propose that all the parking lots in the downtown should do now. We should have an audience that says, within a year, every parking lot facing on a main boulevard street like Young, or Griffin, will one foot back from the sidewalk, and put in earth and plant it with bushes at the cost of the parking lot operator, or the owner of the land. And then let the city maintain those bushes, keep them watered from then iron, but that would really green up at footpath level the entire city area along the main axis of going

through the town. Well you also mentioned in this plan another means of getting through the town and that was the pedestrian ways and I think those are, that program is perhaps the least understood of any of the ones that we've talked about. Well, we go back to this quarry again, you remember the other map that we showed that 200 acres. That core has, by the way, the white 200 acres you might ask, or maybe one of your listeners is thinking about 200 acres, why not 300, 400 acres. The core of any downtown in North America, including Dallas, of course, doesn't grow much larger than 150 to 200 acres, because that's the magic distance out from the center that you can walk, say five, ten minutes, to get to meet your lawyer, your accountants, or if you're in town shopping to go from one department store to the other. It's the magic circle of a walking distance, every use that gets built and tries to get built inside of that area.

So if there's another 10 million square feet, that means another 10 billions, a billions a size of, say, 2001, Brian, to be built over the next 10 or 15 years, it'll be built inside of this area. Now, what the streets inside of this area can't be widened, that would be an unbelievable expense. Obviously, you can't set all these big buildings back anymore. And yet, when you pull another 10 million square feet of office space, you're bringing in another 40,000 office workers. Because we will leave on the edge of the core by putting big garages in, hopefully. But the people, once they're on the street, the sidewalks don't get wider. And the same number of roadways given to more cars having to pass through, then the best way of relieving traffic is to go to an ancient idea that Leonardo da Vinci had, which was to separate wagons from walkers by putting them on two different levels. Leave the wagons of cars where they are at street level, and give people another option, another way of moving through the core. And that is the pedestrian walkway systems, which will lace their way from block to block

through individual blocks and connect up from one block to the next, either below grade or in bridging above grade. And in that way, you can relieve traffic at the intersection, which is where the problem occurs, maybe from 20 to 40%, that is, cars will be able to move through more faster. And so what people I would think? Yes, what people, you see passing in a bridge above it, don't have to wait at the corner for the light to change, in the heat, or be standing there in all these fumes coming in from the traffic. Well now some of those are already in. Yeah, of course. For example, in the main place, Frist National Area, I draw you a line safe from the holiday end, this goes underneath Griffin, and then you connect up with the insurance company here, which is a United Fidelity, I believe it is. Then to number one main place, then you connect into Frist International, or continue on to Frist International Garage, always passing under the street, or you continue from Frist also, number one main place over to the Column Building and the Metropolitan Building, and back to Frist National.

That's all one system. In other words, it connects something like seven blocks of land, about three, about seven, six office buildings, and a number of garage buildings. Do you think people are generally accustomed to that idea? Well, you may not think so, but you know, it's the trend now, and it's more so than the trend, a core area in the city center like Dallas, as important to the city as Dallas is, and growing the way it is, has got to have that kind of relief to traffic, and that kind of pleasant environment for people to move through, whether in the heat of summer, or whether it's raining, or simply just to get from one place to the other conveniently. You know, Houston has it already. Not Houston has it. But I can predict that if we go in the direction I think we should go, and we have the possibility of going, in the next six to eight years, we will out, we will out pass Houston in the elegance of this shopping promenade, because it isn't just tunnels, you realize. That's it.

You may have seen these in other cities like Montreal, or Minneapolis. These are pleasant walkways that align with shops. They're warmly lighted, they're air conditioned, they're fun to be in. They're like another sidewalk, only without the traffic. Well, where are they? These are the ones that are already in. This is one district around, that's in, there's a second one district, which is around Thanksgiving Square. It's already built in Thanksgiving Square and connects into the Republic Bank. And there's a little one, so within the block of south and center, you know, from the Sheridan Hotel. Now, construction is going on in this block, very shortly, it's just called the Atlantic Ridgefield block, the Mercantile Hunt block, Dallas center, one in two, and three over here. What we plan, what the city can foresee happening, is that this existing system, which you see is fairly small compared to this one, will then connect under Pacific, into the Hunt property, Mercantile Hunt, under Brian into Atlantic Ridgefield. And so on, under Paul St. Paul, throughout the Dallas center, one in two, so that this

whole system now will then embrace almost from, from south and center, down to Ackon Street. How do you be able to walk, almost from south and center, down to Ackon Street, without crossing a street? How do you look back on it in these past ten years, since that report was issued? What has happened here that you feel impacts on this the most? Let's see. The thing that's most important to my mind is activity, life, and action. Well, Mayor Johnson was in office when you were working on this with me. Mayor Johnson's administration was the administration that hired me for this job. At that time, I must say, since Johnson, Weiss, and now Folsom, those three administrations have been very active and aggressive in achieving a lot of this plan. Johnson, for example, under Johnson, the seeds were planted and then realized recently for the city hall.

And it's now about to be realized with a great central library, which is probably the most innovative library in the world. Convention center was expanded. Under Weiss, I'm dispatching a couple of these things under Weiss, I'm not mentioning all the sewers and the streetweights that had to place. But the structural things that took place, one of the most imaginative land swaps between the public and the private sector took place in the area of the Union Station, Union Terminal, which was all sort of gerrymandered up, jigsawed up when in some was public ownership and some was private. None of it was in the proper position to get a good development, whether for the public use or the private use. So the two, what was that corporation called, it was in the woodbind, sat down at the city and they simply said, look, this land here is obviously better for you as a public area. And this land here is already better for us as a private area. And if we build on that private area, the $25,000 in taxes which you are now collecting from this zone will be ten times as much, which is exactly what's happened. The construction, because the land swap took place, it was possible to build a 1,000-room

residency hire. Therefore, as a result, the income to the taxes drawn from this property now are ten times what they were before. Now, if that agreement, that kind of close cooperation that these various administrations always work out with the private sector hadn't been possible, we'd probably have nothing but parking lots down there, we'd have no hotel. And that hotel is very important to this town because it's near the convention center. And the convention center is very important because it brings a million and a half people a year to Dallas, visitors, conventioneers. And they bring nearly $400 million a year in income to this city in restaurants, clothes, the travel. They're really important. Absolutely. I remember that you, I believe the specifics of the party plan were to 1983 when the present buildings that are underway would be completed. But you have said that you feel strongly that this ought to move on to 1986. What I see is, since there's so much activity and building development going on in this area

right now, I see the pedestrian system being something to aim for in this enlarge sense. So the public and the private sector seat will be we get it by 1986. I see hope in 1986 means heavily treat up full advise leading into and out of the city. The 1986 will have enormous importance, not just for the downtown area. How does that affect what you've been talking about? It affects Fair Park. Specifically, I think, obviously, Fair Park, it'll be the 110th anniversary of Fair Park as well. 150th of the Republic of Dallas, the 100th anniversary of Fair Park. 150th of the Republic of Texas, I'm sorry, and then the 100th of Fair Park. The important thing is that I think that we have to start thinking of transit, some sort of rapid transit or mass transit. The car is important. We're going to have to park the car and have lots of larger quantities of it. But at some point, we're going to have to move into transit.

I think Folsom has pointed this out himself. And one of the first ways of getting a transit system built, and there's been a very extensive study made of a transit system, and one of those lines happens to be this one here, which is interesting. It's the one that comes from Fair Park. And it follows the Texas and Pacific tracks that use it there right away, and is planned as first as a paved concrete area that would run buses later on, I guess it would go to mass transit where rails. But I can see that if that were built, and I think that would be a proper thing to do, just for 86 to connect it into downtown. And in fact, why not extend it into the downtown as proposed by the engineers of this transit plan? And at this point, it goes underground. Of course, you don't want it running above simply stays underground for about a mile and a half, and we come out to the Union terminal with a Union station area. And then they just look, loop it right there. That would be quite an accomplishment. But then there's also talk of another event, and that's a world's fair.

Yes, I heard that. I don't think, for example, my personal opinion is that if you went for a world's fair, first class world's fair, given that the federal government says they don't mind it being entitled. They want one in the United States, and then you manage to get it over any other city. So I suppose it comes here. Where would you put it? There's some talk of putting it in Fair Park. But you know, when you think of it, first class world's fair, you've got to give that commission in Paris a wonderful setting. It isn't to say that Fair Park is a wonderful setting, but I just don't think that you can acquire more land around Fair Park big enough, say, for 30 or 40 foreign nations with their pavilions coming to that area, you'd have to clear out huge areas. And the one that they talk about is this one here, it's the town lake. No. Town lake can be built in three years. Whenever you decide to build it, it can be built. And I think roughly, this is the flood plain, I guess, yes. Town lake would be more in this shape. With a loop over here into the, and this is the area, I think, if you wanted to build

town lake and you got it, here's where you would put your pavilions. Your international pavilions would go here along the coast and maybe in a couple of islands. So there'd be, have that charming setting that makes an exciting fair. At that point now, our transit system gets extended so that it at least links into the fair. And then it takes you back through downtown underground, perhaps with a stop here and the model community of housing in one of our corners of the downtown, then back off to the fairgrounds for the celebration of the Republic of Texas. And that? How could that be financed? How could that transit be financed? Transit is heavily financed by the federal government. There you get lots of money for the federal government. It's like parking. If you supply parking on the edge of the core, well over 90% is paid for by the federal government and the state government. And in two hours, transit is concerned. The federal government pays almost 90 cents out of redol on that also. So once you decide to build it, you just have to have that extra seed money, which is

the 10 percent. And that stays in place for every day or never? Yes. You use it for that one. Obviously with great pleasure when you have all the visitors from the rest of the world in Dallas. But then it's there to be used and to become an interesting focal point for, say, high rise housing at this stop and more high rise housing at that stop. And lots of wonderful housing on the edge of the lake after the fairgrounds are cleared. There's one other question that I would like to ask you. We are strongly focused on the revitalization of the downtown area. That downtown area is surrounded by neighborhoods that are some of them are beginning to resurrect again, but there's still a tremendous amount of blight in this whole inner ring. And yet we continue to zone on the outer edges of our city for retail uses for multiple fat for massive multiple family zoning. How can we balance this too? Can that, what is the effect? You see, the natural economic push is to go out there where the land is cheap and where

you can assemble huge chunks of it without dealing with 15 different owners, you just have to deal with one farmer or two farmers and you get the whole area. But the danger to the city and to the city's pocket bowl in the long run is that you have to keep extending these utilities, you know, they must keep on going out and out. Of course, the more dense the use of the land, the more you can justify the utilities. But when one in two-story houses or one-story ranch house type spreads out into the suburbs, the cost becomes enormous. So much so that the city like, for example, Oklahoma City has simply said, we were down zoning the entire outskirts, we just were not allowed this extended cost of our utilities. And if you want to build, you come back into the center where we will help you build by certain tax incentives or assembly of land. And that's the only solution, I think, is to turn the attention to the focus back into the center where the land needs an upgrading.

But you're not going to upgrade and get a lot of, well, you are doing it right now as a matter of fact. And I think it's a very courageous and exciting project by Fox and Jacobs building out there in East Dallas, the first 115 units. Now that's terrific. That means that housing is beginning to move back to other centers. Then there's Tatum over here, on the edge of the freeway loop on Woodau Rogers who's trying to convert some warehouses. That's a different kind of housing. That's probably more the area I would live in because it would be a loft with a huge room. But this would be $60,000 or $80,000 housing. And I see these as the first indications that it will start to move inside on those areas of our, around the core, that when we free up that land from parking lots. But you have to bring it into the center by encouraging it through law. And by that I don't mean forcing it, I mean offering tax incentives. What would you say is going to be the single factor that's going to have us a decade in advance, the kind of area that you propose?

You know perhaps the thing that I love most about cities, I think everyone does, who travels where the descent from Cisco and Montreal, let's not him bother up Paris and London. Let's talk about our own country in New York City, even in certain parts of it, New Orleans, is the life and activity, the certain joy of being in that city center at night, not the whole city center, just certain portions of it, that are full of life and fun. That's what downtown Dallas should have. That's what the convention is, completely don't find. The only way we're going to get that life and activity is to have the kind of activities that generate that. And we're on the way. By the way, I think that that sports arena is a well-opening good thing to bring into the downtown. That means 10,000 to 20,000 people, evenings and weekends, for whatever event that's going on, will be in the downtown area. Which in turn means that some of the restaurants will stay open late now, and maybe a few more good ones will open up. Which in turn means the convention needs to go back home after a visit to Dallas and says there's some obvious restaurants downtown. But perhaps the most important thing I can think of right now that should happen in the

next six years, and certainly by 86, the museum and the symphony, the ballet and the opera should not be allowed to escape outside of this freeway loop. It should all be in the downtown area, adding that same life and activity that the sports arena is adding. Do you think that's that vital effect? For example, I can't imagine when I hear people in Dallas say, oh, well, let's leave the museum where it is and make it larger and handsomer and better where it is. It's an idea. When I hear people say, well, this symphony really doesn't have to be downtown. We can leave it up in North Dallas or somewhere else, maybe on the edge of downtown. This is diluting the one thing that makes great cities. I can't imagine, for example, the Louvre Museum in Paris being out by all the airport, and all the great opera house being out in some suburb, all the Paris symphony tuning up somewhere out here where there are some motels. That's not the place for it. It's downtown where it creates that kind of environment, which great cities have always

had. Well, I hope it happens. I hope we're sitting here in ten years and it's already happened. And I hope so too. I really do. I'd like to see it happen. Thank you so much for coming, Vince Potty. Thank you for coming and good night.