City News Roundup

Dallas Love Field gates up for debate and more current city news

Two airlines are duking it out at Dallas Love Field.

Southwest Airlines

Excitement peaked early this week with a resolution on the budget for the city of Dallas. No more budget stories? How will we survive? With DART Rail, Love Field, historical buildings, and the district attorney.

Here are the biggest stories in Dallas this week:

Budget approved
At an extra-early meeting on September 22, the Dallas City Council approved the 2015-16 budget. The fiscal year begins October 1. Top priorities include streets, code compliance, animal services, multifamily inspections, and library services.

Council member Philip Kingston, who voted against the budget, had pored through it and found $8 million that could be trimmed, but his amendments were voted down. "We might have saved ourselves quite a bit of brain damage just adopting the thing in June," he said.

Downtown DART
DART cast its vote on the second rail line being plotted for downtown with an approval of the "Jackson" or "Modified B4" route. This is the route that begins on Young Street, then shifts over to Jackson Street. This vote follows the choice of the Dallas City Council, who recommended the same route.

The modified route accommodates the First Presbyterian Church and the new townhomes near the Farmers Market; not so much the Statler hotel or the Continental apartment building. Although the DART vote was unanimous, the door remains open to explore other routes.

Love Field battle
The battle for gates at Love Field goes on: Dallas, Southwest Airlines, and Delta Airlines have a hearing on September 28, when a federal judge will rule on whether Delta can, for now, remain at Love Field. Delta currently has five daily flights to Atlanta, which it flies out of two gates.

Delta claims that forcing it out of Love Field gives Southwest a monopoly. If Southwest gets the two gates, it'll have 18 out 20; the other two gates are operated by Virgin America.

Resilient Dallas
Dallas has hired a "chief resiliency director," former assistant manager Theresa O'Donnell. The position, which pays $232,000 a year, came up for debate during the city council's recent budget workshop, because it's being funded for only two years. Will the city be required to fund it thereafter? According to Fox, the city does not know what it will do with the newly created position once the grant ends but will worry about that when the time comes.

The grant is part of the Rockefeller Foundation's "100 Resilient Cities" project, a mucky-muck nonprofit whose goal is to "help cities become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century."

Although there was discussion during the city council meeting about who would get the job, O'Donnell would seem to have had a lock, because she was appointed chief resiliency officer in December 2014. She nets a $40,000 salary increase.

Demolition delay
Score one for Preservation Dallas, as the city council passed a delay on the demolition of historic buildings in and around downtown, to include the Oak Cliff Gateway. It will prevent surprise demolitions on buildings at least 50 years old within the overlay that meet one of the following criteria:

Located in a National Register District or individually listed
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark
State Antiquities Landmark
National Historic Landmark
Listed as significant in the 2003 Downtown Dallas Historic/Architectural Significant Properties survey
Listed as contributing in the 1994 Hardy-Heck-Moore survey

Griggs clear
A Dallas County grand jury decided not to move forward on the case against city council member Scott Griggs, who was alleged to have threatened a city worker. A statement from the Dallas Police Department claimed that Griggs tried to coerce assistant city secretary Bilirae Johnson. Supposedly he yelled, "You better not push those briefing materials out or I will break your f---ing fingers!"

The Dallas Observer theorizes that this would have happened more quickly were it not for the upheaval in the district attorney's office, where DA Susan Hawk is still not in the office.

city-news-roundup

Park news

New I-35 deck park in southern Dallas moves closer to spring 2026 debut

Courtesy rendering

Renderings for Halperin Park.

A massive deck park spanning Interstate 35E in southern Dallas is set to open in late spring 2026. Called Halperin Park, the five-acre community space has been under construction since 2017 and will be completed in two phases:

Phase One (finishing in late spring) will include the section from Ewing Avenue to Lancaster Avenue and will feature a pavilion, amphitheater, playground area, interactive fountains, a second level overlooking the Dallas Zoo and the highway, and a large event room for every dining and special events.

Phase Two (to be completed over the next five years) will add the park section toward Marsalis Avenue, with an additional pavilion and extra gathering space.

The project is being developed by the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation and built by the Texas Department of Transportation. Funding comes from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, as well as the private Halperin Foundation, which donated $23 million in 2024 and secured naming rights.

In January, the Dallas City Council approved spending up to $8 million to complete Phase One for spring completion.

The public-private initiative will create $1 billion in economy impact over the next five years, according to a study by UNT Dallas.

Rendering of Halperin ParkCourtesy rendering

A park with purpose
Developers say the park aims to integrate the west side of Oak Cliff, which was somewhat segregated with the construction of I-35 in Oak Cliff in the 1960s, leading to low-income communities and generational poverty.

The project started nine years ago, when the Texas Department of transportation planned a reconstruction of I-35 and began gathering neighbors’ feedback. The result was a plan to widen bicycle and pedestrian lanes in the service roads alongside the highway, and to build a deck over the highway between Ewing and Marsalis avenues, adjacent to the Dallas Zoo. (Similar Klyde Warren Park's "deck park" concept.)

While the project faced some skepticism at first, it later gained momentum as private supporters continued to join.

“Forty percent of the Dallas population lives in South Dallas, yet this segment only accounts for 15 percent of the tax base,” says April Allen, President and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, citing the opportunity to address the economic equality in the area through the development of the park and all the business it can bring.

Rendering of Halperin Park.Courtesy rendering

Neighborhood pride
For Allen, this project is personal. The Toronto-born executive first moved to Dallas 22 years ago to work at Neiman Marcus, after getting her engineering degree in Canada and her MBA at Harvard. Oak Cliff felt like the right place for her as an intown neighborhood, with a confluency of cultures, local pride and an entrepreneurial spirit, as she describes it. Her first Realtor told her Oak Cliff was “not the right place for her." Instead of choosing a different neighborhood, Allen chose a new Realtor.

She has lived on the same street in North Cliff since, now raising her two kids with her husband, an Oak Cliff native, whom she credits for her further understanding of the neighborhood, its roots and civic dynamics.

Under Allen’s leadership, Halperin Park is focused on a community-first approach that provides support to the neighbors through programs around health and wellness, after-school activities, local food trucks and markets, and educational workshops to help expand homeownership and financial acumen.

To highlight the history and culture of Oak Cliff, they will feature an annual Walk of Fame, lifting up the stories of those who contributed to Oak Cliff history, with the first one happening as part of the inauguration of the park, organizers say.

They will provide their own 24-hour security team to ensure a safe place for families and kids, with clean and well-lit crosswalks.

Given their proximity with the zoo, parking will be available on the East side of the park at the zoo site, with a walkway to the park. They are working on parking options for the West side.

“We want to create a space for community growth and more business in the area," says Allen. "We are already seeing this come to life with projects such as East Dock, and we are excited for future investment that the park will bring."

parks