Culture
Downtown Dallas has undergone a series of important changes that city officials believe will drastically improve the city's core. These changes are located in four downtown areas: Victory Park, the Arts District, the Trinity River, and the Convention center corridor.
Victory Park, named one of the nation's most successful Brownfield reclamation projects, is home to the American Airlines Center, built in 2001, as well as several new high-rise hotels, residential towers and office buildings including the 33 story "W Dallas Victory Hotel and Residences" (2006), the 28 story "Cirque" residential tower (2007), the 29 story "The House" residential tower (2008), the 20 story "One Victory Park" office tower (2009), among others. Also currently under construction in Victory Park is the new "Perot Museum of Nature and Science", a $185 million dollar 14 story ultra-modern addition to Downtown Dallas scheduled to open in late 2012.
The Arts District, Dallas, Texas, already one of the world's largest, is in the final stages of a massive ten year construction project that will result in a new 2,300 seat opera house, a series of theatres, residential space, retail, parks, and a gleaming 42 story residential tower known as Museum Tower which is scheduled to open in 2012.
Of all the changes in downtown Dallas, the Trinity River corridor is undergoing the most dramatic. Currently the river runs in an artificially straight line a large distance from any part of downtown; however, Dallas is currently in the process of returning the river to its natural course, creating two large lakes to border the downtown area, and has commissioned two large cable stayed bridges to be built across the river and new lakes. Dubbed the Trinity River Project by local officials, plans are also in place for improved levies to protect downtown from possible flooding.
Separated from Victory Park and the Arts District by the Downtown Central Business District, the Convention Center corridor is the site of a new convention center hotel. Currently, Dallas stands as one of a few major American cities without a hotel accompanying its convention center. The currently under construction $500 million dollar 23 story hotel is the Omni Dallas Hotel, which is scheduled to open earlier than planned in November 2011. Dallas hopes these changes will bring more permanent residents into the downtown area; as of the 2010 Census the downtown population has grown to 6,074 from the 1,000 citizens who lived in downtown at the end of 20th century.
Read more about this topic: Downtown Dallas
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The higher, the more exalted the society, the greater is its culture and refinement, and the less does gossip prevail. People in such circles find too much of interest in the world of art and literature and science to discuss, without gloating over the shortcomings of their neighbors.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)