Major topics discussed:
* Studies undertaken and underway to determine the needs and improve the city's parks and recreational facilities,
* Current park developments underway,
* Planned parks and recreational facility developments in the city,
* Use of eminent domain to acquire property for such developments,
Mr Dyer during the discussion...
Meeting with the Dallas Mayor, Mr. Tom Leppert:
Topics discussed:
* Current development and redevelopment efforts underway,
* Extensive nature of public-private partnerships, coupled with large scale public projects like the convention center hotel development,
* Current efforts towards sustainable development and efforts to integrate such endeavors in all municipal related developments,
* Efforts to redevelop currently empty buildings across the city; about seven such buildings were acquired by the city, three of which have been sold to new developers,
- Forward thinking and prospective challenges facing the city.
Here we are with the mayor…
.and...
We also met with M/s Teresa with the city sustainable development, Mr David from the city design studio and Mr Karl from the office of economic development. We discussed wide ranging development and redevelopment related topics including:
* Master planning for development and redevelopment needs,
* The Trinity River Project development,
* Transition to Form-based zoning and its impact on development activities,
* Homelessness issues and city's efforts to tackle the challenge,
* Intra-governmental relationship with neighboring municipalities particularly with respect to development issues,
* Relative comparison of city's development, redevelopment efforts and overall investment attractiveness compared to other cities,
* Outlook towards the future.
We also visited two projects in the afternoon:
The first project was aloft, a trendy hotel a block or so away from the city hall.
This project represents the first re-adoptive use of a historic building for aloft hotel. Per the owners, it is the 44th aloft hotel of about 54 total to date with 30 or so more to come through the end of the year...
The Project:
* was built on a warehouse bldg built by SantaFe railroad as a warehouse,
* utilized historic tax credit a s a result of the historic nature of the bldg,
* is targeted to be a mid market range hotels ($100-150/night),
* has about 193 rooms, about 17 different room types on each of the nine floors,
* has about 60% occupancy rate currently (average city wide occupancy is about 50%)
* currently about 30% of occupancy comes from OTA(Online Travel Agents),
* Utilized historic tax credits and TIF funds,
Here are some snaps of the 'exposed'...and trendy look and the rooms.
We then Visited Craig's Ranch in McKinney:
This is a project based on the new urbanization concept:
The project:
* started with an initial 1,125 acres of land purchase back in Sep 2000,
* Is planned to become self sustaining upon completion,
* incorporates professional golf course, residential, commercial, employment, recreational and educational facilities,
* is being developed in phases; most of the single family residential development is close to completion,
* utilizes multiple public-private partnership including TIF, 380 agreement and municipal districts.
* appears to have been effective both in concept planning and development approaches
* principally utilizes private funding sources.
Here's a snap of the overall development concept model...
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