Some really big changes are coming to the freeways on the southern and eastern ring of Downtown Dallas.
So, transportation planners are looking now at connections in those directions with links to Dallas Fair Park through the Deep Ellum and South Dallas neighborhoods in between.
This presentation with many options will be shown at the South Dallas Cultural Center, 3400 South Fitzhugh Avenue at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 30.
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Regional Transportation Director Michael Morris with the North Central Texas Council of Governments said he has been thinking about Fair Park links for decades and now is the time to make it happen.
“We have a very extensive presentation to the public tonight on lots of different, thoroughfare street, transit, goods movement, bike-ped connections, Fair Park through Deep Ellum to Downtown. It’s really exciting,” Morris said.
Work underway now on Martin Luther King Boulevard is a sample of what may be much more common in the years ahead.
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MLK is being reconstructed adjacent to the removal of the old S.M. Wright Highway 175 Freeway. That highway divided residential streets and replaced homes when it was first built.
At MLK and the old highway, a foundation called Forest Forward is working to restore and reopen the Forest Theater.
New surface streets will also be constructed adjacent to the new downtown freeways.
“As we redo freeways, we are really looking at how do we reconnect neighborhoods that were separated when the freeways were built back in the 50s and 60s,” Dallas City Council Transportation Committee Chairman Omar Narvaez said.
Plans call for the entire I-30 Canyon to be expanded and rebuilt with a deck park crossing over it near a new Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
The I-345 elevated freeway that separates downtown for Deep Ellum will be depressed below grade level with new cross streets above.
The new discussion on Tuesday is about extending the transportation links all the way to and around Fair Park.
“Our hope is to create a public sector investment in ground transportation that results in increased public and private sector investment in that part of the community,” Morris said.
Business people in those neighborhoods welcome the investment to improve quality of life.
Southside Steaks and Cakes on Al Lipscomb Way is a very popular spot but the streets around it are not so great.
"You’ve got to find a lot of back ways because you just don’t have a lot of easy access to the businesses that are here in South Dallas and Fair Park," restaurant owner Nicole Sternes said.
She said the transportation improvements planners have in mind could be exactly what the area needs to improve property values and bring more business but neighbors should have a say in what is done.
"It would raise property taxes and just a better way for even the locals to just get around," Sternes said.
The planners asked for comment at the Tuesday night meeting and online.
