1600 Pacific Building (David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)
This all started years ago with a terrible plan to redevelop the old 1600 Pacific Building, better known as the LTV Tower, on Elm Street downtown.
The two developers who pitched the plan City Hall, Curtis Lockey and Craig MacKenzie, simply did not have a workable deal. If the city had signed on, it would have spelled boondoggle and mess for this part of the city.
Thankfully, the city didn’t sign on to the deal. The 1600 Pacific partnership went into bankruptcy, and the saga began.
Lockey and MacKenzie have complained for years that the city’s decision to turn down their deal amounted to an effort to keep low-income residents out of downtown.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development took a look and came up with a laundry list of purported violations.
Worse, the feds looked ready to force City Hall to pay out millions to the partnership behind 1600 Pacific LP.
Anyone who had reviewed this deal at any level should have been astounded. The redevelopment plan wasn’t only unworkable (units as small as 325 square feet) Lockey and MacKenzie didn’t have much skin in the game – at least not compared to what they wanted the city to put up.
Late yesterday, HUD relented. The city will pay nothing to anyone. HUD acknowledged some of its findings were incorrect. The city gets a mild slap on the wrist and promises to update HUD on its fair housing work.
For all of the hair-pulling this thing created, it amounted to almost nothing.
Having watched people like John Greenan, Jack Matthews, the Hamiltons and others work hard to bring quality fair-housing downtown, I was hardly surprised. Downtown will eventually be a place with sky-high rents that price many of us out (already is in some ways). But the city and good developers have taken steps already to ensure there are affordable homes there. Lockey and MacKenzie’s deal was not a step in the right direction. It’s good to see HUD say that’s so.