Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center to be replaced by larger, community-focused hub: Dallas' $1 billion revamp
The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will soon be a memory, replaced by a bigger, larger convention center with more to offer to even those who aren't convention visitors.
Tuesday night, a telephone town hall will happen in Dallas for those who have questions, concerns or ideas about the soon to soon-to-be rebuilt convention center.
The City of Dallas is poised to spend $1 billion renovating, but mostly rebuilding, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. A demolition is expected to start later this summer.
Hundreds of community meetings have been held
There have been 450 community engagement meetings since this project began to take shape more than six years ago.
The architects from Populous and Perkins&Will shared their latest model of the new design with 2.5 million square feet of space on Tuesday.
As confident as they are in building something the public will want, they are taking community input via a telephone town hall on Tuesday night, so this facility is not just for convention visitors alone.
"Well, we actually want this to be more than just a convention center for everybody from the outside of Dallas, because we want to take the surrounding areas and energize it," said Tom Reisenbichler and architect with Perkins&Will. "So it becomes a really vital part of downtown Dallas as a center for Dallas, for an entertainment district and other things that can happen here."
The project will include a deck park over I-30 and retail along the street level entrance to the new facility.
"A lot of people want to see street-level activations, sometimes convention centers that can be anonymous, like today's building," said Michael Lockwood, an architect with Populous. "We want them to be embracing. We want them to be activated with cafes and restaurants and public art and opportunities for people to walk by the building."
The first part of the construction will involve demolition, which will require road closures along with noise disruption that the architects will address any public questions about.
The project is scheduled to be completed in 2029, but now is the chance to offer input into one of the biggest investments the city has ever made. The telephone town hall will be followed by an in-person town hall next Tuesday.
