What we do with our time at Central Dallas CDC

The Narrow House

The house is 9’6” wide and 42’ long. It’s in the news because it’s for sale again. In the past both the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and the anthropologist Margaret Mead have lived there.

I find it interesting because the dimensions of each of the floors are almost identical to our small units at CityWalk—9.5’ x 42’. The only difference is that the asking price for this house is $2.7 million or $900,000 for each space equal to the space we’re renting at CityWalk beginning at $348 per month.

Of course, we’re including furniture and utilities as well.

Sweating the Details

Right now all our work at CityWalk is in the details, and you need to know that we sweat every single one of them. I would like to write more about what’s going on as we push on to completion, but it isn’t easy to do. I don’t know how to make the minutiae of the construction process interesting. One day we go to look at the sample concrete finish in one of our apartments. The next day we examine the waterproofing around the edges of the roof. This stuff is all extremely important if want the building to be a quality place to live. But it would take a better writer than I to make it interesting.

The access panel to the outside air ducts in each apartment has been redesigned no less than six times. Each time a prototype is built and the architects, project managers and construction superintendents—and me–carefully examine it. The panel has to allow sufficient air through to the system; the panel has to allow convenient access for repairs; we don’t want tenants to be able to access it; and it has to look good. The issue is important.

But if I recorded the entire debate here, with pictures of each variation and descriptions of the interminable debate as to the defects and strengths of each particular panel, then the few readers that I have would run screaming from their computers.

Fortunately, or not, there is someone whose job it is to record each small piece of progress on the project. His name is Chris Rehkemper and his job is to inspect the building monthly so that he can assure the bank that all the work we say has been done has actually been done before the bank pays our construction draws. Here are some pictures from his report for the last month. They show the attention to detail that is necessary in a project like CityWalk:

Picture 1

The roof assembly under struction.

Picture 2

The construction fence around the east parking lot.

Picture 3

Drilling and placing of concrete piers at the new entrance.

Picture 4
Galvanized frames in place for the screens between the condo roof decks.

Picture 5
Fire Sprinkler lines in the ground floor retail space.

Picture 6
Electric meter boxes have been installed.

Picture 7
Lighting fixtures in the third floor tenant space.

This is only a sample of Mr. Rehkemper’s pictures from one month’s report and, of course, he can’t record everything.

Every detail needs to be sweated, and as we race on towards completion, we’re sweating harder than ever.

Would you choose Jack’s Life or Teddy’s?

Yesterday, the last of the three Kennedy brothers died. It seems to me generations since his brothers were assassinated. Everyone of my generation remembers the Kennedy’s as our royalty. Brilliant, handsome Jack, who was a war hero, our youngest President, and then cut down senselessly here in Dallas in his prime.

He was a movie star. He was unblemished, a child of the American generation when we had never lost a war and stood a colossus in the world—when we were young.

To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields were glory does not stay

And early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose. . . .

Ted Kennedy lived a very different life. He lived through the tragedy of the assassination of both his older brothers, inherited their mantle and then soiled it with the scandal of Chappaquiddick. He knew sadness and defeat and lived long after the glory of youth had past.

Living long—he served 42 years in the Senate—he outlived scandal and sorrow to become The Lion of the Senate, an unparalleled legislator responsible for much of the progressive legislation of the past forty years.

Ted Kennedy will never match the glorious memory of his older brother, but his real accomplishments may have been greater—Headstart, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Family Leave and 2500 other pieces of legislation bear his name.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears,

I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Even on his deathbed Ted Kennedy was thinking of the causes he had fought for his entire life. One of his last acts was to ask the Massachusetts legislature to change the law so that the governor could appoint a temporary replacement for him. He did not want his death to prevent the passage of healthcare reform.

Would you rather live Jack’s life or Teddy’s? Would you rather be a shooting star burned up by your own brilliance or a candle flickering on long into the night until exhausted, the light finally goes out?

$9,000

Here’s what you might be able to get for $9,000, if you shop smart:

That’s not a very generous list—it’s easy to spend more than $3,000 on one chair and you can spend more than $300 eating out. There’s no automobile. I tried to work one in but by the time you pay for insurance, gas and worry about repairs I don’t think it’s practical.

I think you could live a decent life with only these worldly goods, and I know many people that would be happy just to have this much. Your choice of what to buy might be different than mine, but you should know that $9,000 is a significant number.

If all the wealth of the world were divided evenly between every man, woman and child, then we would all have exactly $9,000 in goods and money.

So, if like me, you have more, then you should realize that others have less.

Thinking Like a Mayor

Perhaps I’ve learned to think like a mayor. This morning I opened up the Dallas Morning News and saw that Mayor Tom Leppert had announced a new proposal to improve the way Dallas handles requests for zoning changes—the issue at the heart of the problems I wrote about in my blog yesterday.

Is $50,000 the Price to Approve Affordable Housing?

According to a recent blog (http://texashousers.net/2009/07/29/50000-was-the-price-for-community-support-for-affordable-housing-in-dallas/) $55,000 is the price to get an affordable housing project approved in Dallas. Last weekend, I read an article in the Dallas Morning News that put the cost at $50,000. The numbers are close enough so that I’m just going to round them off at $50,000 for today and make my math easy.

Of course that number is based on illegal payments, the kind that has led to the federal trial that’s going on right now, including charges against the former Mayor Pro Tem, a former member of the planning commission, a very well-known developer of affordable housing (and his wife) and a whole host of other people. I have no idea whether the charges are true or not, but what I do know is if that if you could assure approval of your project legally for just $50,000, then every developer of affordable housing in the City of Dallas would gladly make that payment..

The real costs of putting together a tax credit project—and remember, all you get is a chance, the equivalent of a lottery ticket—is well in excess of $200,000. Your chance of getting an award of tax credits is about one in three. Let’s do the math:

Current system: $200,000 x 3 tries to get approved = $600,000
Approval for $50,000 $200,000 + $50,000 = $250,000

In short, paying $50,000 to get your project approved yields an average profit of at least $350,000 per project.

The profit disappears when you figure in federal jail time, but as the current trial testimony has shown, there are also more or less legal ways to make that payment. A developer can hire one of the insiders at City Hall to lobby for him or her. A developer can just make a sizeable campaign contribution to a city council member and probably get the same result. So long as you just make the contribution and don’t demand a direct quid pro quo, then it is legal (of course that requires trusting a politician, always a risky proposition). That’s just as true for the City of Dallas, where the money is small, as it is for the state and federal governments, where the money can get pretty impressive.

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time believing Senator Max Baucus, chair of the key Senate subcommittee for health care reform, gets enormous contributions from the insurance and medical industry just because they all plan on retiring and moving to Montana. Money always influences the system, and usually not for the good.

The trial of former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill is a bad deal for the city, whether or not he’s convicted. But I can’t help feeling that if Don Hill is guilty of a crime that it may only be because he wasn’t sophisticated enough to know how to be bribed “legally”.

Council members in Dallas have, by long-existing custom, the right to decide on their own whether affordable housing projects in their district go forward or not. Any system that includes both a decision made by only one fallible (as all we are) person and a large financial incentive for wrongdoing is eventually going to produce wrongdoing. Dallas needs a new system. To begin with, I would suggest that the whole City Council should actively participate in each decision to approve or disapprove a project, not just the member in whose district the project is located.

Let’s do the math on that idea:

Current system: $200,000 x 3 tries to get approved = $600,000
Approval for $50,000 per council member $200,000 + ($50,000 * 15) = $950,000

Now honesty actually makes economic sense. It’s $350,000 cheaper just to apply and take your chances rather than to try to pay off the entire City Council.

We can hope for honesty in our public servants, but we ought not put temptation in front of them. After all, the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t say “help me resist temptation” it says “lead me not into temptation”. In other words, trust everybody but always cut the cards.

Re:Vision Dallas—Special Recognition, Dallas Eye

I’m afraid it’s a generation or two beyond what we can do now, but I would not be surprised if it represents the future of computer-controlled, flexible use buildings.

I’m not sure that it shows up in the one page board here, but in some of the other material that I’ve seen, it is clear that the “eyes” of the structure change their orientation according to the movement of the sun in order to generate the most electricity possible from the solar panels that cover the eyes.

In operation, I think it would probably look like the Dallas Winking Eye—even if the wink would be pretty slow. It’s imaginative, interesting and if the technology were just a little more advanced, then it might even work. You couldn’t ignore it.

Even in the jury room, you could see the powerful attraction this design generated. One by one, jurors would pick up this entry, look carefully at it, and then shake their head and put it back down. I think every one of them wished they could believe this design could be built, but knew it just wasn’t going to happen.

I can see the attraction as well, but to be truthful, I was relieved when the Dallas Eye was eliminated. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to build.

The Flame Skimmer: Dragonfly Number 2

Today’s blog will be almost entirely pictures. The pictures are all of a Flame Skimmer (what a wonderful name!) that flew into my yard and conveniently perched on a twig on a Cedar Elm tree where my daughter and wife took these pictures for me—my photography skills are worse than primitive.

Here’s a brief description of the Flame Skimmer from Odonata Central (http://www.odonatacentral.org/index.php/FieldGuideAction.get/id/47138), probably the premier dragonfly site on the Internet:

This conspicuous dragonfly commands the notice of even the most casual observer. Males are found searching long stretches of streams for potential mates or they are seen perched on tall vegetation near the ponds and pools used by females for egg laying. Males will warn off intruders by flying towards and then along with them in an ascending flight with only one male returning to the perch. Females lay eggs in a similar manner to Neon Skimmer, by throwing water along with the eggs towards the shore. Males will guard females from a perch for only a short time after mating in flight. Males tend to occur at areas along streams where receptive females are likely to visit, both seasonally and during the course of the day. Both of these observations indicate male mate-searching patterns in this species are sexually s elected. The small disjunct population in Houston, Harris Co., Texas, represents the easternmost record for this species, likely accidentally introduced as larvae with aquatic plants (Honig pers. comm.).

If you keep your eyes open, you probably will see this beautiful dragonfly as well, if you live anywhere in the American Southwest.

Why You Need Mass Transit!

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