With comments shut down on FrontBurner, I’ll have a daily open thread here for comments on the day’s FB postings.
Let’s see if this works.
RIP Dallas Member Offers Some Answers
April 21, 2009 6 Comments
A member of RIP Dallas I’ve been emailing sends me his responses to some of my questions. I’ll let him have the floor, but I’m withholding his name as a professional courtesy.
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1) Who is providing financial backing for the Young Professionals and RIP Dallas? How does that break down, and what are the organizations’ budgets, expenditures, etc.?
Nobody is providing financial backing for this group. We are not professional campaigners, this is a random collection of people who care and strongly believe in a no vote. There is really not a budget in place to my knowledge.
2) Who are the governing members and officers of YP and RIPD?
There are about 52 people at this point who have decided to help get the word out. When someone has a good idea, they run with it. For many of the people involved, their jobs would be on the line if they came out in front. For those who can speak, they will, but for others they stand with the group…no individuals.
3) Who designed the website?
The website was designed by a friend of a friend from the aforementioned group of 52 and not a web design company. They did it for free as practice and for fun.
4) Who covered the cost of the event last week?
The finance report has to be filed pretty soon and the group is hopeful that a few from the group will chip in to have the lunch paid for by then so that Eddie Deen’s does not have to carry the full boat.
5) What is Woodbine and Trammell Crow Co’s involvement?
Absolutely nothing. Our friend from TCR has stepped away from this because he could lose his job if he gets quoted again. As for Woodbine, the Company has no involvement except for one of their employees being a member of the 52.
6) What PR company designed this campaign?
PR? You have to remember this is not a campaign in the same rights as Enough is Enough or Vote No…this is a group of young professionals that are passionate about the vote no and trying to spread the word in a different fashion. This is attractive to young people because the message, although a gimmick and just a method to get attention (which has really worked), is about young people concerned with the future of the City. The first day of the website, there were over 1000 unique visitors and everyday since the site has averaged around 850 visits.
7) Why are RIP Dallas signs being placed in vacant lots, for sale homes, and other sites in violation of city code?
Well I have to say that this is a “rookie” mistake for the most part. For most, this is the first time anyone from the main group of 52 and the 600 other people joining us to have been involved in anything political other than presidential elections. One of the exciting things about this, in my opinion, is that finally a younger demographic has finally taken interest in something for the City.
Who’s Behind RIP Dallas, Part One
April 21, 2009 21 Comments
RIP Dallas has already become a punchline in Dallas, but what’s amazing is the group claims to have no association with Mayor Leppert or the official Vote No! organization. No, it’s just a bunch of hip 20somethings who have the best interest of Dallas at heart.
But here’s a rundown a few of the people behind it:
- Dupree Scovell, the apparent ringleader, is the scion of John Scovell — President of the Dallas Citizens Council and head of Woodbine Development, which has been trying for years to get the People’s Hotel built. According to a regular and reliable reader and source, the elder Scovell is owner of the Hyatt Regency, has a residual interest in the land under Reunion Arena, and a leasehold interest in Union Station– all of which are located next to the area of the proposed convention center hotel. Woodbine is owned by Ray Hunt. (Old is the new young?)
- Ben Browder is a real estate lawyer at Hunton & Williams.
- Brentt Shropshire, secretary of RIP Dallas, is with Oris Capital Group, and he is currently a member of Mayor Leppert’s Southern Sector Dallas Task Force. That’s his address and phone number on the forms below.
Jump at the bottom for RIP Dallas’ filings with the City Secretary.
Coming Soon: Part Two — Who Else Is Involved In This Cluster?
Questions posed to a prominent member of RIP Dallas as yet unanswered by the source:
1) Who is providing financial backing for the Young Professionals and RIP Dallas? How does that break down, and what are the organizations’ budgets, expenditures, etc.?
2) Who are the governing members and officers of YP and RIPD?
3) Who designed the website?
4) Who covered the cost of the event last week?
5) What is Woodbine and Trammell Crow Co’s involvement?
6) What PR company designed this campaign?
7) Why are RIP Dallas signs being placed in vacant lots, for sale homes, and other sites in violation of city code?
Not that I don’t have some of the answers already; I’d just like to get it up front.
EDIT: It’s T. Dupree Scovell if commenter Chris, who uses phrases like “Mr. Angry Pants,” is right.
Tuesday Roundup: It’s All About Me
April 21, 2009 2 Comments
Shocker: A revised feasibility study for the People’s Hotel won’t be completed before the May 9 referendum. Coupled with the city’s lawsuit against the Texas AG to keep records from the public’s prying eyes, who isn’t wondering what else the comisars aren’t telling us? Shades of the Trinity referendum.
BONUS: Check Wednesday’s Dallas Morning News for my column on the People’s Hotel.
Want a solid — if biased — look at the Richardson City Council races? Peruse Ed Cognoski, a guy who also just loves taking delightfully cranky potshots at yours truly whenever he gets a chance.
Crime is, in fact, down in Dallas. Let’s celebrate with a Detroit-style riot.
It will be a crying shame if they can’t find a home for the Jetson’s style Siegel’s sign that’s coming down. End of an era and all that.
Not a single one-armed bandit or armed robbery quip. I’m deeply disappointed, Fox Four. No Fugitive joke? Nothing? Bah.
Three Strikes Against the People’s Hotel aka a “Monday”
April 20, 2009 Leave a Comment
1) Sam Merten delivers a Kirk-style flying leg kick with this revelation: City-Commissioned Study Says Dallas Convention Center Will Make More Money Without Headquarters Hotel
That is, the People’s Hotel is a net drain.
2) Pretty sure the $2.6 billion mentioned in the DMN’s editorial is the total impact of tourism in the Dallas area, not the potential impact new conventions if the People’s Hotel gets built. That figure pops up from time to time, but as even Mayor Leppert noted in his op-ed in the DBJ,
With a $2.6 billion annual economic impact, tourism is a big part of Dallas’ economic vitality.
3) Call from high on for Mayor Leppert to denounce the astroturf faux hipsters behind RIP Dallas, which has become a bit of a laughingstock in less than five days.
Monday Roundup: We Have Three B.O.B.s and No Insectorsaurus. WTF McDonalds?
April 20, 2009 Leave a Comment
Dave Levinthal breaks down everything you wanted to know about the People’s Hotel here. Such as, the People’s Hotel will cost taxpayers directly because to break even, the hotel would need to hve 68 percent occupancy (in a market where it’s at 55 percent) while charging almost double the going market rate. This is what happens when you let government try to compete in the free market. Oh, and the claim that a whole lot of organizations have committed to have their conventions in Dallas if we build glorious state hotel? Phillip Jones, CEO of the Convention & Visitors Bureau, can’t name a single one. Levinthal’s report is even-handed and objective, and in being so is a devastating case against the hotel.
The Innocence Project of Texas, which is fighting to overturn wrongful convictions, is facing shut down because of the Madoff fraud. Make a donation here. (via Grits for Breakfast.)
One thing this story forgot on looking at what’s wrong with all the post-Columbine anxiety: the police uber-emphasis on “officer safety” that has created the brilliant tactic of sealing off campuses and locking the shooters up with the victims. Meanwhile police hide behind barricades outside and wait for tanks. We’ve seen this cowardly practice at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and other places, and it’s time for it to go.
RIP Dallas: “Watch Our Civic Disobedience”
April 18, 2009 3 Comments
Here’s a little insight how phony baloney the pro-People’s Hotel RIP Dallas group is. Right on the front page of their circa 2002 style web site we have this:
Watch our civic disobedience in action. At City Hall … and in public spots all over Dallas.
Civic disobedience? Really?
RIP Dallas is aligned with the Mayor Tom Leppert, 12 of 14 city council members, the Dallas Citizens Council, John Wiley Price’s southern sector mafia, and most of the other pro-corporate welfare organizations in Dallas that give lip service to the free market and nothing more. Who exactly are they disobeying?
This is about as alternative as a meeting of the Plano Rotary Club.
Let’s treat this as a teaching moment, my grasshoppers.
1) You can’t buy credibility
2) You can’t pay an invoice for grassroots or hip
3) Government project ≠ free market
Friday Roundup: Does That Come With Soup?
April 17, 2009 Leave a Comment
Bethany Anderson, without taking a side, points out the folly of the crutch the pro-People’s Hotel people are using by focusing on and demonizing Harlan Crow and where he lives, as if he shouldn’t have a say in a city where he does tens of millions of dollars of business every year (quarter?).
So are we now going to travel down this slippery slope where we tell businesses the only time we really want to hear from them is when they write that check to pay taxes?
New wave of house cleaning down at DPD headquarters.
If your name really is Perry Mason, they ought to just give you a law license when you turn 18.
The next 10 Matthew McConaughey movies.
Phony Baloney and the People’s Hotel: RIP Dallas
April 16, 2009 13 Comments
The pro-People’s Hotel folks have put up a web site, by the looks of it designed by Carol Reed’s people and registered using a proxy so as to hide their identities.
Snap Judgment: It’s a lot like when Pat Boone dressed up in leather to cover AC/DC songs — a weak attempt to look hip and fresh, and not at all an undertaking by the Dallas Citizens Council or anything
Despite copy that says “Watch our civic disobedience in action. At City Hall … and in public spots all over Dallas,” there’s a video of a performance art, flash mob type deal in NYC’s Grand Central Station. Not sure what that’s got to do with anything. But it’s edgy! I suppose. Or what passes for it.
But if this rather transparent ploy is what the People’s Hotel backers are doing to convince people they have grassroots support, it’s a FAIL.
Gonna start digging to see if this is as error-ridden as the press release the pro-Hoteliers put out last fall that quoted just ordinary folks on the street like you and me — if ordinary folks like you and me are people paid by Mayor Leppert to run his own web site.
UPDATE: Getting word now the “500″ young professionals event south of downtown was a bit of a sham. A lot of people weren’t told it was a one-sided deal, and many counted are not pro-Hotel, just present. This thing gets fishier by the minute, and it’s barely six hours old.
Calling Jim Schutze: Follow Up?
April 16, 2009 Leave a Comment
I posted about a question you (assuming it wasn’t someone hijacking your screen name, if it was let’s clarify that, too) posed in a comment on Unfair Park.
Here’s the question posted:
Mike Davis might be able to answer this: will the Vote Yes people be required to pay the same amount of money that the Vote No’ers had to pay the preachers in order to speak at their churches?
Can you follow up on this, assuming it was you and it’s not something you’re going to unveil later in the print product?