Community must work together to spiff up our strip, which wasn’t even included in Dallas’ ‘Complete Streets’ program until recently
Phyllis Guest
Taking Notes
Afriend and I went to a Jan. 12 meeting at the Round-Up Saloon, hosted by Dallas City Councilwomen Angela Hunt and Pauline Medrano. The meeting was called to address the epidemic of pedestrian traffic accidents on Cedar Springs Road.
We listened to a city engineer, other city staff, a police officer and local businesspeople. The engineer showed us slides of Cedar Springs as it is and as the city proposed to change it in three stages.
If you read David Taffet’s article on Page 6 of the Jan. 27 issue of Dallas Voice, you know what’s proposed. And if you’ve been on Cedar Springs, you can’t have missed the most obvious change: yellow warning flashers, first at Knight Street, then at Reagan.
They are supposed to flash 24/7 for a month, then only when a pedestrian pushes the button to cross the street. However, when I left the Oak Lawn Library on Tuesday, Jan. 31, the flasher at Knight — just in front of the library and the corner of Ilume — was not flashing. Hmmm.
I also went to the Cedar Springs Merchant Association meeting Jan. 25. There, Paula Blackmon, chief of staff for Mayor Mike Rawlings, took questions and listened to comments during the first half of the meeting. I thought the most important point was made by Luke Crosland, ilume’s developer: The area generates $30 million a year in alcohol sales.
That’s a huge amount of revenue. With the next phase of ilume scheduled for development, and with more and more apartments replacing the area’s older homes, no doubt that revenue stream will grow.
In the second part of the meeting, CSMA Executive Director Scott Whittall spoke of the traffic study the city will conduct throughout February to help officials make more decisions about traffic problems and solutions. Whittall also announced a new campaign, online and presumably in print, to market “The Strip on Cedar Springs.” (Go to TinyUrl.com/8yb7uj8 to enter the logo design contest.)
Finally, after asking CSMA attendees to sign up for one of two committees, “traffic problems” or “taxi solutions,” Whittall announced a whole calendar of events for the remainder of 2012. All are geared to attract locals and visitors to The Strip.
Sounds good.
And if more crosswalk lights, pedestrian signs and police patrols will keep people from being run down, that certainly is good.
But changing the behavior of pedestrians and drivers is not the main problem.
The main problem is shabbiness.
Drive slowly up and down Cedar Springs as I did on Tuesday at midday.
Look at the very different storefronts, the very disparate signage.
Look at the street, cracked and torn and unevenly marked.
Look at the sidewalks, also cracked and torn. In some places, curbs are high, in other places low, in still others slanted to accommodate the disabled. Holes as big as a boot are everywhere. Round metal whatevers are inserted along portions of the sidewalk holding what look like tall twigs. Even if the twigs spring to life next month, they will still look weird.
This is a major “entertainment district” in a major American city? This is our answer to Manhattan’s Great White Way or Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade?
Our area was not even included in Dallas’ Complete Streets planning. In fact, I had never heard of “Complete Streets” until it appeared on the city’s handout of short-term, medium-term, and long-term Cedar Springs Pedestrian Safety Improvements. On the handout, as you might guess, it was No. 12, a long-term option to “Review area for Complete Street design.”
Check out www.dallascompletestreets.com. You’ll see that nine areas have already been selected for attention and investment, apparently by city staff or consultants. You’ll also see a list of workshops held this past November and December, none in our area and none advertised in the Dallas Voice.
How do we get from shabby to spiffy? We talk to the Dallas City Council, we talk to the Cedar Springs Merchant Association, we talk to the Dallas Complete Streets planners, and we talk to one another. Perhaps we organize the equivalent of the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League, which works on conserving what’s best and reworking what’s not.
Today. We can start today. Each of us can make one phone call or write one email, and make one post on Facebook or Twitter.
Phyllis Guest is a longtime activist on political and LGBT issues and is a member of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas. Send comments to editor@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 3, 2012.
Those flashing lights at Knight and down the street are VERY distracting and can cause you not to see someone. Everytime that I drive down there at night, the lights are strobing so quickly that sometimes I fear I might hit someone because the lights might cause me to have a seizure. It is an extreme safety hazard to have them flashing continually. From a half a mile away you see nothing but this yellow strobing lights, and it causes your eyes to be fascinated by the “shiny” thing and takes your mind away from watching the road, even if just temporarily. I think the continuous flashing lights is the tackiest thing about the block nowadays.
Amen Phyllis! I’ve been saying the same thing for years now. It’s actually hard to believe The Strip hasn’t improved in the 13 years I have lived here. How much of it has to do with the few that own the most in the area? Where is their commitment to not just taking in millions and millions, year after year? The property owners do very little for the common good. It’s all about how much money they can suck out of the community. Yes the city needs to do more, and so do the merchants, but it’s the property owners that could really make a difference.
What an EYE-SORE. You can tell a straight person designed this. The strip looked white trash enough now it looks like we are ready to pull in the double wides and set them up. You people that own property in this district need to have better representation. It is obvious that they did a quick job that was not thought through as to how it would affect the look of the strip. Nor do they care. Ugly Ugly Ugly. I’ve lived here since 1978 and never seen the strip even without the lights look so dis-shoveled. Maybe we should pick the whole strip up and move it to the cliff and be done with Oak Lawn. The gays seem to have worn out their welcome there. Businesses can’t make a go of it because of the City of Dallas strict restrictions on parking and the sell of liquor. It’s a no win for Oak Lawn.
The demolition of all the original structures by Caven on the south side of the street is a large part of the problem. Both sides mirrored each other before dating all the way back to the 1930’s. Places like Ciao, and Big Daddy’s gave way to large, cavernous, windowless, out of scale, cinder block structures that are uninviting and that don’t promote urbanism or walkability. Add to this the old dying Bradford Pear trees near the end of their 20 year life cycle and you have half of the original strip looking no different than a fading Circuit City out on the side of the highway.
Add to this the destruction of the old TMC around the corner for even more cavernous cinder block square footage and it’s not hard to see why the area is in decline. These small intimate bars of yesteryear didn’t need 500 people to fill them up but there are at least 3 now that do. This is an impossibility 7 nights a week and can easily be identified as unsustainable. This is what unsustainable looks like.
The gay business community is as susceptible to greed as any other and it was the push for square footage over character that has made the are suffer most of all.
It’s very sad someone bargained with our history to make a buck. It will take more than someone ripping the inside of JR’s out to rectify it. That will be just more of the same and continue the area down the same path.
The Bradford Pear trees have been gone for quite some time now I believe.
They are gone from the north side.
The Lights are horrible and give a false sense of security to the pedestrian. The LGBT community keeps electing Mrs Hunt because she is nice to the gays does not cut it. What has she brought to the area for improvement? the side walks and streets are a mess, The lighting is Horrible. People are getting Robbed, Mugged and have been Murdered – Now run over. The Bars don’t invest in a Parking Garage just bigger bars. It’s all a mess and I for one am glad I sold my place near the strip while I could. Once the Illume2 goes up it is only going to get worse. Time to start a new community in a better spot in the City – Hey Oak Cliff how about you?