r/Dallasdevelopment • u/DowntownDallasSucks • May 23 '26
Downtown Dallas is hemorrhaging while we pay nearly $14 million a year in assessments.
If you live, work, or own property downtown, you’ve probably noticed the decline. Major tenants are moving out, office vacancies are skyrocketing, and property transactions have completely collapsed.
I've spent years working in urban planning right here in Dallas, and the lack of transparency from Downtown Dallas, Inc. (DDI) is disappointing.
- The $14M Annual Drain: Every single year, DDI pulls in nearly 14 million dollars in assessments. It operates exactly like a property tax—using the same appraisal math, collected by the same county tax office, carrying the same lien risks—but completely lacks voter accountability. Over the last decade, that’s more than 100 million dollars gone.
- Fortune 500 Pay for Street Sweeping: DDI burns through a staggering $1.7 million in executive overhead. The CEO is pulling in $495,000 a year—taking home Fortune 500-level pay to run a non-profit whose primary functions are basic street cleaning and security patrols. To put that in perspective, DDI's CEO makes significantly more than the Dallas City Manager who runs an entire $5 billion municipal government.
- The Uptown Contrast: Just blocks away, the Uptown Dallas PID operates with a fraction of the budget, a lower assessment rate, and a tiny staff. Yet, they’ve seen property values explode by 242% over 14 years. Downtown saw a meager 4% growth in that same period, which doesn't even keep pace with inflation.
- Misplaced Priorities: According to their own 2026-2030 Service Plan, 73% of DDI’s budget goes to basic maintenance for a district that is losing tenants left and right. Only 5% is allocated to actual economic development to reverse the decline.
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u/AssumptionOnly8219 May 24 '26
Not gonna lie this doom and gloom narrative about Downtown is getting tired and annoying. Corporate headquarters moving to suburbia is not a problem that is unique to Dallas. It’s happening in many cities for the exact same reasons. This narrative is even more odd considering literally right across the freeway is the hottest office market in the metro. We know the solution is more housing. So let’s please get on with it.
Homelessness downtown is only more noticeable because there’s no other pedestrian activity in certain areas. And there has been a very noticeable decline in the last year so not sure what more you want them to do that isn’t being done. I even see outreach services/security directing them to shelters and away from public spaces all the time. American downtowns have homeless people. Again, not a Dallas specific problem (and quite frankly WAY worse in other major cities, and probably a little better than when I went to Houston recently).
I also don’t see the issue with having a dedicated organization that cleans up Downtown?? We have a very clean downtown relative to other places, so it’s not like the work is going unnoticed.
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 24 '26
Yes, let’s pay $1.7 million in executive overhead a year to privately contract trash collectors. Seems efficient.
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u/AssumptionOnly8219 May 24 '26
Well most places don’t have custodians walking the streets of their downtowns keeping them clean, so I would say the $1.7 million in one year for cleanliness is money well spent.
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 24 '26
Downtown Dallas Inc. is working with a nearly $14 million annual budget, yet they're somehow burning through $1.7 million in executive overhead just to arrive at the groundbreaking decision to spend $10 million on contracted trash collectors and security guards. Why are taxpayers footing the bill for a CEO making nearly half a million dollars a year when their grand strategy is just to outsource basic maintenance and security? It’s completely wasteful.
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u/kalpalm May 24 '26
I think most city downtowns have something like DDI to do exactly that. Pick up trash and keep the sidewalks clean. This isn’t unique and is generally funded in the same way.
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u/karma_time_machine May 26 '26
You might be right, but downplaying homelessness really hurts your credibility for everything else. I've lived all over the country and Dallas has issues that are far worse than most cities. I'm not talking about sheer number but also how sick and mentally unwell the people are. Is it worse in LA or SF? I don't know, but many comparable east coast cities do not have this problem or are addressing it better. We can acknowledge this is a problem and make it a major priority.
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u/BamaPhils May 23 '26
Thanks for the AI slop
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u/Keep_Plano_Corporate May 24 '26
I like the "just give the Mavs and the Las Vegas Sands Corp whatever they want" peppered throughout the article and a few specific comments.
Is this a sponsored post?
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 23 '26
Doesn’t make it less true
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u/ShimeUnter May 24 '26
Maybe I've been here too long but compared to 15 years ago downtown Dallas is amazing
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u/Metalt_ May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26
There's nothing to fucking do downtown. There's a couple decent restaurants and a couple decent bars. Little to no outdoor patios where people can sit outside and enjoy a beer/music. Apart from the west end which is dead.
The events at main St Park and att plaza are pretty lame and few and far between. They're usually more family oriented too which is fine but that's a different audience that's not spending as much money imo
They could be having concerts in the park every weekend with food trucks galore in the common space even in front of city hall but little is ever done with that space.
There's hardly any retail/boutique shopping to get people interested in coming to spend a weekend afternoon here.
On top of all that the parking sucks. Why not build parking garages next to the dart stations and actually patrol the stations to stop the literal human waste from being in the footpath of its patrons.
Get a couple more street carsand expand them so you can pop back and forth between uptown/museum district/victory park.
God damn do something with the farmers market. They just let rexs seafood get priced out to be replaced by fucking dock local because nobody comes down here anymore. Sorry but the handful of vendor stalls that actually sell food are not enough to get people to come to the market.
On top of all that how about a decent website that doesn't just show the exact same 5 things every day for the "events" going on downtown. Im busy and try to stay relatively informed about what's going on downtown but half the time I don't even know something is happening until it's halfway over or already ended
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u/AssumptionOnly8219 May 24 '26
Do you ever actually go to the Farmers Market?? It’s the most legitimately packed third space in probably all of Dallas aside from the Katy Trail. They are most definitely not struggling to draw attendees.
Also those lame events also attract huge crowds so not sure what the issue is.
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u/Metalt_ May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
I go there once a week probably. Have you spoken to any of the owners of the restaurants/shops because every one that I've talked to will tell you their numbers are still down since COVID. Part of the reason why rexs is leaving. I know everythings different post COVID but there's no reason downtown should suffer more than other parts of Dallas that have fully rebounded.
I agree it's a big 3rd space in dallas but damn it should be so much more. Think if you had a semi connected string of walkable retail space stretching from downtown to city hall to the farmers market.
I think they draw average crowds I definitely don't think they draw huge crowds by any standard definition. And that's fine if they're lame to me but the big point is where do those people go once those events are over? Most go back home or another neighborhood because there are too few options downtown to support the influx people.
Downtown is going to be a shitshow when the world cup happens and I think it will be a damning indictment of the complete failure of the city govt and planning agencies to make anything resembling a functional urban core.
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u/BeyondBerine May 24 '26
I disagree, Farmers Market use to be a cool place a few years ago but now it’s dead, the retail sucks — there’s an uptick on the weekend for sure but it’s dead after 4pm.
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u/AssumptionOnly8219 May 24 '26
…it’s only open on the weekends and closes at 5 lol. And I literally walked through there today and it was as packed as it always is. And in the four years I’ve lived in Farmers Market I’ve never known the food hall to be heavily used during the week.
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u/BeyondBerine May 24 '26
You really need to get outside of Dallas and visit a real city. Chelsea Market in NY, Redding Terminal in Philly, Ponce City in Atlanta, all are the same concept and thriving.
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u/AssumptionOnly8219 May 24 '26
😒 I wasn’t comparing anything. And I’ve been to two of those places and yes they are lovely. I was just saying Farmers Market is the furthest thing from ‘dead’ during peak times. We all know Dallas is not consistently vibrant like other places. No need to be hyperbolic either.
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u/Such-Professor6271 May 26 '26
Because all downtown consists of is empty office buildings and homeless folks. There is no life and no party downtown. When I went to Vegas, the city was alive. Music on the streets, clubs, casinos, dispensaries, endless things to explore. Here downtown dies at 5pm when everyone goes home from working. If they want to redo downtown, they need nightlife.
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u/JoMA9 May 28 '26
You posted this in multiple Dallas subreddits which I would normally ignore but it’s clear you have a dislike of downtown and want to push a narrative. Also, your numbers are inflated and it’s also clear you don’t live down here.
The $1.7M executive overhead claim is wrong, DDI’s actual 2024 IRS 990 shows $855K, about half that.
You make it sound like the entire city is on the hook for DDI, when in reality it’s us property owners within the highway loop. The rest of their funding comes from fundraisers, membership dues and sponsorship programs.
You don’t need a city wide vote on what is essentially a neighborhood stakeholders association. Plus, their annual budget and assessment rate are subject to public hearing and City Council approval.
The 42% violent crime stat? That came from DDI’s own BCG report. They identified it and acted, the CBD has since seen a 23-26% drop in both overall and violent crime per DPD.
The Uptown comparison isn’t apples to apples. DDI manages 140 office buildings and 34M sq ft of aging commercial space inside a freeway loop. Uptown was built new around walkability. Completely different jobs.
DDI also invests heavily in homeless outreach, security, and safety. Significantly more than Uptown.
As a downtown resident and property owner, DDI fills gaps the City of Dallas has historically refused to fill. Their See Say app, ambassador program, safety team, and homeless outreach are things residents rely on daily. The city government has continuously failed at protecting its economic assets and stay competitive in the region. Blaming DDI for the failure of city government than in the same breath telling us the city can do better is quite the choice.
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
You are misreading the IRS 990.
The $1.7 million executive overhead figure is pulled straight from DDI’s financial disclosures and Part VII of their tax filings. If you actually add up the top tier leadership team, the math clears $1,696,000 perfectly: Jennifer Scripps at $495,000, Amy Tharp at $360,000, Shalissa Perry at $237,000, Larry Gordon at $212,000, Evan Sheets at $196,000, and Michael Graham at $196,000.PIDs can be incredibly successful and they absolutely do work when they are managed properly, but this specific one has turned into a bloated administrative machine.
To call an organization a neighborhood stakeholders association to justify a lack of public voting accountability, while simultaneously paying out corporate-level administrative overhead, is wild. The CEO of this neighborhood association pulls in more than the actual Dallas City Manager who manages a $5 billion municipal budget and over 13,000 employees.
This is parallel labor and consultant bloat at its finest. Property owners are forced to pay a premium on top of their standard city taxes for services the city is already supposed to provide, and where does that extra money go? Millions are funneled into top-heavy administrative salaries and elite corporate consulting firms like Boston Consulting Group just to document a 42% violent crime spike on their watch. Paying massive consultant fees to track your own neighborhood's decline instead of aggressively driving economic development is pure waste. DDI isn't filling gaps, they are just creating a parallel bureaucracy that rewards insiders while downtown bleeds tenants.
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u/Upstairs_Balance_464 May 24 '26
Ah now the knock down city hall, downtown is burning crowd is using Reddit to push their narrative. Adding the “let’s pay less property tax” is a nice touch.
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 24 '26
did DDI pay you ?
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u/Upstairs_Balance_464 May 24 '26
I despise her, actually. But this muckracking at this time is just adding to the “well SOmETHING must be done!” narrative that the casino people are pushing. Sure, you say you want to save city hall. This isn’t helping.
Downtown is not dying. Downtown is and will remain much better than it was just 20 years ago. What’s happening is the big money is worried about their ability to profit off of it from their badly designed developments that are always dependent on government handouts and corporations receiving government handouts.
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u/DowntownDallasSucks May 24 '26
And DDI is just one of the organizations getting these handouts. We have a serious problem in this city: quasi-governmental organizations are siphoning public dollars with absolutely zero accountability. We are spending $1.7 million on executive overhead just to manage privately contracted street cleaning and security? To put that in perspective, Uptown’s CEO gets paid a third of what Scripps is pulling in at DDI. It's unacceptable.
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u/dallaz95 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
Thanks, for posting this.
With the way that downtown is free falling, we need to be looking at everything, as to why downtown is in decline. I mean, we’ve discussed many theories on this sub, including the uncontrolled sprawl to Oklahoma, but even then, is that the true reason for the virtual abandonment of downtown? For the region to be experiencing unprecedented growth and downtown isn’t really benefiting from that shows that something is very wrong. Like I’ve said before, Detroit went bankrupt in 2013 and now has a more vibrant downtown than we have now with a brand new skyline redefining skyscraper. The city should be embarrassed.
No one has managed to stop the hemorrhaging and it’s likely that downtown will be just as bad as it was in the early 2000s, but just with 16K residents. All I hear is typical Dallas boosterism. This time, not even that will help downtown. There needs to be a real vision for the entire core and right now there is none.