We’ve been beating around the Arts District for some time now, but here is a new take on the district from the Chicago Tribune’s Blair Kamin. This is wonderful summation of the situation:

Is it a good idea to organize arts buildings in such a clear and concentrated fashion? Or does the more mixed-up Chicago way make better sense? I ask because, despite its impressive architectural firepower, the Dallas Arts District can be an exceedingly dull place. There are no bookstores, few restaurants outside those in the museums and not a lot of street life, at least when there are no performances going on. Even some of the architects who’ve designed buildings here privately refer to the district as an architectural petting zoo — long on imported brand-name bling and short on homegrown-urban vitality.

Now, before you start getting defensive, Kamin does tag an “asterisk” onto his criticism, noting, to use Veletta Lill’s words, that the Arts District is 30 years into a 50 year project. The Woodall Rodgers Park may help. Give it time.

But here’s the part of the piece that really irks me:

Perhaps this was a deceptive picture. On Sundays, families often stroll from the nearby Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a High Victorian Gothic edifice, to the district’s parklike open spaces, Maria Munoz-Blanco, Dallas’ director of cultural affairs, told me. On weekends and evenings, she said, the district is a pretty busy place.

This comment is either delusional or a downright lie. If Munoz-Blanco says families stroll over to the park on Sundays, then she probably means two or three families – and of those two or three families, my family just happens to be one of them. Each Sunday, when we walk from the Cathedral to the car parked at the hour spots in front of Booker T. at around 10:30-11 a.m. – during the height of Cathedral traffic — make no mistake, Sammons Park is E.M.P.T.Y. Empty as in maybe once a month maybe one other family besides my own is there walking from their car to the Cathedral.

Where there is life in the Arts District on Sunday is on the Cathedral Plaza or around the street vendors that line up next to the Cathedral. Huh, life flocks to food not architecture. And I don’t know what Munoz-Blanco means by “busy,” but I think our city would be better served by a cultural affairs office that tried to address glaring public spaces issues rather than pretending they don’t exist.  

Photo via wikcommons.