View the letter to Mayor Johnson and the Dallas City Council, March 3, 2026
Invest in Dallas City Hall as a Vibrant Civic Center
Dear Mayor Johnson and Members of the Dallas City Council:
On behalf of AIA Dallas, representing over 2,500 local architects and design professionals, we urge you to invest in Dallas City Hall and its plaza as a renewed civic center, rather than move toward abandoning the building on the basis of a single high level study.
We agree that City Hall has real repair and modernization needs. Our concern is not whether to invest, but how. The current discussion has moved quickly toward relocation and abandonment without fully testing phased renovation, cost clarity, civic impacts, or better locations for an arena. City Hall is a substantial, well built civic building that continues to support critical City functions every day.
City Hall houses essential, highly specialized services: City Council Chambers, 911 Emergency Communications, Fire Dispatch, the Emergency Operations Center, the Traffic Management Center, and numerous core departments. These are the nerve centers of City government. Assuming a five year relocation means moving thousands of staff and critical systems twice; out of City Hall and then back into either a new facility, or renovated City Hall, while trying to recreate complex spaces like 911, EOC, and TMC in leased buildings not designed for them. That approach adds cost and risk, increases disruption for residents and staff as locations and access points change, and reduces the City’s control over security and operations.
There is a better path. A carefully sequenced, phased renovation can keep City Hall open, keep core services in place, address the highest priority life safety and building performance issues first, and spread costs over time instead of committing to one very large upfront project. Dallas has already proven this model at scale: the Love Field Modernization Program rebuilt the terminal over nearly five years while the airport remained fully operational every day. If that level of work can be accomplished at an active airport, City Hall deserves a serious, side by side study of a similar step by step approach before a five year move out is treated as the only viable option.
The current report cites a total of $329.4 million in “2028 dollars” for City Hall work but does not clearly show the corresponding cost in 2026 dollars, the year of the assessment, or the escalation assumptions used to get from 2026 to 2028. The report does not distinguish how much of that total is devoted to basic repairs and life safety needs and the scope required consultants to contemplate only full system replacements and higher level modernization beyond that baseline. Within a single top-line number, very different kinds of spending are blended together: correcting existing deficiencies and code issues, replacing systems that are older but still operating, and upgrading systems to a higher standard or adding new features.
Relocation, operations, and finish out costs are then introduced in public discussion as if they are part of the same package. In reality, those costs exist under any scenario that moves people out of City Hall, even temporarily, and they are likely to rise the longer a relocation lasts.
For Council to judge whether a phased approach at City Hall is feasible, you need a clearer picture. First, City Hall work should be restated in current year dollars and separated into three categories: essential repairs and life safety items; system replacements that are truly at the end of their useful life; and discretionary upgrades and modernization. Second, relocation, operations, and finish out costs should be presented as a separate line of analysis that can be compared across any decant scenario. Today, repairs, replacements, upgrades, relocation, and escalation are mixed together, which makes the total look larger and more fixed than it may need to be and obscures the potential for a phased, in place strategy that addresses the building’s problems over time.
Dallas City Hall is more than an aging office building. It is a distinctive civic landmark, widely recognized and now under active consideration for landmark status, with a large plaza that can be improved and more actively programmed. Most importantly, it is a visible symbol that local government is accessible and present in the heart of the city. Moving core City functions into leased private space would make Dallas an outlier among major U.S. cities, where owning and occupying a central city hall remains the norm. It would reduce the City’s long term control over security, access, and essential operations, and remove a daily source of foot traffic and civic presence from downtown just as we are working to strengthen it.
Downtown Dallas has been rebuilt over decades through steady public and private investment. Weakening or abandoning the City Hall district risks undermining that progress and sending the wrong signal about the City’s confidence in its own core.
We are not opposed to a new arena in Dallas. Our concern is where it goes and whether it displaces or supports civic functions. A major arena brings intense event traffic, significant security needs, and large loading and staging requirements. It is often surrounded by parking that is unoccupied outside of peak times. Treating the City Hall site as an arena location assumes that civic and emergency operations will move off site and that the existing plaza will become a ticketed venue. That is not a more “vibrant” civic center; it is the removal of one.
There is a better option already on the table. In the paper “Re envision Rather Than Abandon the City Hall District,” ten past presidents of AIA Dallas propose keeping City Hall and its surroundings as a strengthened civic campus and, if a new arena is pursued, co locating it with a reconfigured convention center, where high intensity events already occur and where access, parking, and security can be more effectively concentrated. AIA Dallas supports this core idea. It allows Downtown Dallas to have both: a strong civic heart at City Hall and an arena that works with, rather than against, the convention and entertainment district.
The decision before you is not simply about a building. It is about where and how Dallas chooses to govern itself and what kind of downtown it wants for the next fifty years. We respectfully urge you to press pause on any move to abandon City Hall; to require clear, current year cost information and multiple options; to ask for a focused, itemized view of City Hall’s core repairs and system needs, separated from relocation and escalation costs; and to direct staff and consultants to fully study a phased, prioritized renovation scenario that keeps City Hall operating, alongside any relocation scenarios.
City Hall and its plaza should be treated as civic assets to be renewed and leveraged, not problems to be moved away from. AIA Dallas stands ready to assist the City in exploring practical, phased solutions that address real building needs while protecting public dollars and preserving Dallas’s civic identity.
Respectfully,
Michael Malone, FAIA
Board President
Zaida Basora, FAIA
Executive Director