City must work to make road pay
Consultants say most plans for Trinity Tollway won’t help economy
The Dallas Morning News
May 26, 2002
Author: Victoria Loe Hicks


The proposed Trinity toll road is not likely to spur significant economic development in downtown, Oak Cliff or most areas up- or downstream, according to a study commissioned by the Dallas City Council.

The city's planned lake can unleash a development surge - with or without the road - the study suggests. But even that potential is likely to go begging unless the city is willing to use methods, such as assembling parcels of land for developers, that it traditionally has shunned.

The analysis, headed by urban planners at the firm HNTB, is intended in part to help the council choose one of five possible tollway alignments - six, if one includes the so-called "no-build" option.

The alignment is among a host of issues council members will discuss Wednesday in a special, all-day session devoted to the Trinity River Corridor Project.

Urban planner Mark Bowers, who heads the HNTB team, said its members talked to a number of Dallas developers before projecting the type, location and quantity of building likely to occur in response to the park alone and in combination with each of the five alignments.

"The park is where the maximum benefit comes," he said.

The highway packs the potential to transform just one area: along Irving Boulevard, between Inwood Road and Mockingbird Lane.

The consultants are still working to attach dollar figures to their projections, Mr. Bowers said. Once that is done, the council will be able to compare each alignment's benefits with its costs, which range from an estimated $620 million to $1.2 billion.

The proposed highway is intended as a "reliever route" for Stemmons Freeway, drawing traffic away from the aging interstate and especially from the clogged "mixmaster" where it intersects Interstate 30 downtown.

Without the new road, as well as modifications to the canyon and mixmaster, the congestion that afflicts the interchange will creep outward by 2025 to encompass much of the city's freeway network, according to transportation experts.

Three of the proposed tollway alignments run along Trinity levees; the other two follow the route of Industrial Boulevard. Many people object to putting a highway beside the river, but the land along the levees is essentially free, making those routes less costly.

Park a stronger lure

Some advocates of the new highway have touted economic development as a side benefit. However, the tale told by HNTB's maps - with different types of projected development shown in different colors - is that the park is a stronger lure than the road, and that other, more direct catalysts to development may be more powerful than either.

Under any scenario, the poor, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods of Rochester Park, Cadillac Heights and Joppa can expect no noticeable economic boost, the study suggests.

"The tollway has no economic implications" in those neighborhoods, said HNTB analyst Rick Leisner.

Conversely, there is likely to be one major economic winner, regardless of which alignment the council chooses. It is the aging warehouse district where the new highway would intersect Stemmons and State Highway 183.

Without the tollway, that area would see little or no development, the study predicts. With the tollway, it would be a good candidate to sprout sleek, suburban-style "office campuses."

"There is more development activity on the radar screen there to begin with," said architect Larry Good, who is overseeing the urban design aspects of HNTB's study. "If you offer new access and decrease congestion, things really start to sing."

Developer Harlan Crow, whose family's multitude of ventures includes investments in the Trinity corridor valued at nearly $400 million, said the true measure of the road's economic utility is not how many new offices or condos it will spawn but its ability to ease travel throughout the region.

"As the leader of a company that builds high-rises all over the world, a new roadway wouldn't make me rush down there and figure out where to build a high-rise," Mr. Crow said.

Nevertheless, he said, the road's economic implications are "huge" because the Stemmons/I-30 nexus is "a huge bottleneck."

Others, however, fear that the highway will become a huge impediment to people who want to enjoy the river and its environs.

"A big concrete slash inside the river bottom doesn't sound too attractive," said Mayor Laura Miller, an Oak Cliff resident who is adamant that the road should be built entirely on the downtown side, rather than split, with some lanes running down the Oak Cliff side.

That viewpoint has gradually gained adherents in Oak Cliff; last year it was endorsed by the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce. If the council adopts it, it will represent an about-face from 1997, when a previous council chose the split alignment as its preference.

Some of the city's economic powerhouses - including the one Ms. Miller described as "the 900-pound gorilla" in the tollway debate, Ray Hunt's Woodbine Development Corp.- still hew to the split alternative.

"Innately, it just seems logical to me," said Woodbine's president and chief executive officer, John Scovell. "Access drives value."

Access, however, means different things to different people. It can mean having a major road close by, to carry you to and from other parts of the city - Mr. Scovell's definition. Or it can mean not having a road in the way if you want to get to the river.

"It's more than a psychological barrier," said Seattle-based transportation analyst William Engler, who served on an Urban Land Institute panel that studied the river plan last year. "It's a real barrier. It drastically changes the way pedestrians and bicyclists will get to the recreational features."

River access limited

But others who have worked for years on the river project say that even with no road along the levees, there are only a handful of spots where residents, hotel guests, shoppers or diners might comfortably reach the river on foot.

"There are not many opportunities for that type of up-to-the-water's-edge development," said County Judge Lee Jackson. "If there were, we would be designing something different as a community."

Sometimes, the debate seems endless. But an even lengthier discussion is likely to ensue over the consultants' suggestion to create a municipal development authority, HNTB analysts and city staff members said.

In some parts of the country, municipal development authorities use public money to assemble small parcels of land into larger tracts suitable for large-scale development. Such authorities also may bring to bear powers such as eminent domain.

Asked whether Dallas - with its dedication to the free market - might consider such a tack, Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan said: "To talk about? Yes."