Dallas Mulling Proposals for a Redesigned Fair Park

Robert Wilonsky provides an update on developing plans for the renovation of Fair Park in Dallas, home to the Dallas State Fair, among other events.

"It has been more than a year since we were formally introduced to Mayor Mike Rawlings’ secret-at-the-time Fair Park Task Force, and seven months since the group unveiled its proposal [pdf] and recommended, among other things, turning over Fair Park’s 277 acres to a private, nonprofit operating-marketing 'authority'….The city’s Park Board continues to discuss the task force’s recommendations."

But a new wrinkle to the planning and design effort was added recently, when a second, smaller group proposed "an even more radical redo" of the park. That plan, by Boston-based architect and urban designer Antonio Di Mambro, "essentially divvies up the park into four sections, moves the State Fair of Texas to a 93-acre section of Fair Park, proposes tearing down the Gexa Energy Pavilion and eliminating a section of the Cotton Bowl, and envisions turning the Art Deco buildings into an 'educational complex/innovation district' or mixed-use 'retail marketplace,'" according to Wilonsky.

Wilonsky provides more details of the plan and introduces some of the political support behind the concept. For instance, a "Fair Park makeover is actually a key plank in the platform of the Coalition for a New Dallas PAC, which is calling for the removal of Interstate 345 between downtown and Deep Ellum."