If you happened to have found yourself driving on Routh Street lately, you may have noticed that a city block just north of Ross Avenue is, well, having some work done. Last month the One Arts Plaza project officially got under way and is the first of many that will, by 2009, radically transform the area of Downtown Dallas known as the Dallas Arts District.
The Arts District, roughly the area between Ross Avenue, Central, the Woodall Rogers Freeway and Harwood Street, can honestly say that it is the largest downtown are in the United States to be devoted to the arts. Dallas has always been able to claim this statistic through the sheer acreage that makes up the area (61 acres in all), but with the myriad of projects underway and the addition of the Nasher Sculpture Center, it is actually beginning to feel like the largest as well. Already home to such cultural institutions as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher, the Trammel Crow Collection of Asian Art, the Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts and the Meyerson Symphony Center, the Arts District will get some notable new neighbors in the next couple of years.
The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts will complete five new facilities by 2009, including the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre. These buildings will be built in the area between the Meyerson and Booker T. Washington High School, and will not only be long overdue facilities for Dallas’ performing arts but will further put Dallas on the “architectural map.”
Foster and Partners, home to Sir Norman Foster and known for such high profile projects as the Great Court of the British Museum and the new German Parliament building in Berlin, have designed the Opera House. The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), home to the dynamic Rem Koolhaas and architects of projects including the new Seattle Library and the Rotterdam Kunsthal in the Netherlands, has designed the Theatre. The addition of these two architects and their firms to the architectural landscape of Dallas will mark the fact that the city is now home to buildings by four recipients of the heralded Pritzker Prize. The award was also given to Nasher architect Renzo Piano and Meyerson architect I.M. Pei. The official groundbreaking ceremony for the $275 million project is set for Nov. 10 and will feature a yet-to-be-announced internationally renowned performing artist. Further information as well as concept drawings for both projects is available at www.dallasperformingarts.org
The second high-profile project that is already underway on Routh St. is One Arts Plaza. This $125 million, 23-story building will be primarily used as the headquarters of the Dallas-based 7-Eleven but will also include 60 “luxury” residences, 30,000 sq. feet of retail space and an entertainment plaza. As if this project was not already a big deal, keep in mind that this will be the first high-rise to be built in Dallas in 18 years and that it is only the first of four buildings that will make up the 10-acre site.
The bottom line is that all of these projects are great for Dallas and great for the Arts. They not only provide venues for art to take place, but also recognize that there is a community which overwhelmingly supports them. For more information on the Arts District visit www.artsdistrict.org.
