The Mavericks want to stay in Downtown Dallas, but should City Hall be sacrificed?

The season from hell is over. I could not be more relieved, as watching my favourite team organically tank their way to oblivion was getting more and more frustrating with every game.Amid the blissful end of the season and the chaos of the Cooper Flagg-Kon Kneuppel Rookie of the Year debate, you might be forgiven for missing the news that the Mavericks are expected to submit a proposal for a new 50-acre entertainment district in Downtown Dallas.While the new arena and the possibilities that it represents sound encouraging for a franchise looking to reset its future direction and reestablish some credibility with its divided fanbase, considering the events of the past two seasons, I thought I’d take a moment to write about something that this project would impact – Dallas City Hall.Based on the information shared in the article, The Mavericks and CEO Rick Welts intend to submit this proposal in response to an “Open Call for Concepts” that the City of Dallas launched earlier in the month – an initiative open to residents, architects, planners, developers and community groups to weigh in on whether the current City Hall should be repaired or the entire site and it’s context needs to be rethought entirely.This follows the current efforts of the Dallas City Council to determine the future of City Hall as a matter of its repair & renovation, and the inherent costs therein brought up the feasibility of continuing to use the iconic 1978 building. Earlier in November, the City Council voted to explore relocating and selling the building, and the findings from those explorations were supposed to have been reviewed by the Council in February.Issues such as the complexity of modernising the building’s AC system and leaky plumbing & flooding issues, as well as its ADA non-compliance, have been cited as some of the reasons why repairs are estimated to balloon up to $600 million over the next decade, although some reports estimate a much lower figure of $350 million.Mayor Erik Johnson weighed in on the subject in November, telling CBS News, “I know we have issues because I work in the building every day with City Hall,” and “The building has some serious issues, and if those numbers are correct, that’s something we really have to think about.”Naturally, some efforts have been organised to oppose the sale and demolition of City Hall. A movement called Save Dallas City Hall was launched with a petition that has 7,065 signatures to date. The website for the movement lays out the entire timeline for the City Council’s efforts to explore the retention and repair of the City Hall building, and the reading of that timeline lays things bare.  Based on those timelines, Mayor Johnson’s words ring out as a complete joke, with a tale of expanded cost projections ranging from a maximum of $121 million in June 2025 to $1.4 billion in February 2026, multiple closed-door meetings, and an opaque and rushed process to maximise the site and building for pure economic gain.Conservation group Docomomo US has issued a statement in which they raised concerns about the process, stating, “Why is the process moving so fast and where is the public involvement in this process?”Just a few weeks ago, Mavericks CEO Rick Welts mentioned the City had approached the Mavericks over a year ago about the availability of the City Hall site for the team’s new arena and entertainment district. He also reaffirmed the franchise’s commitment to remain in Dallas and said, “We love the idea of the downtown site” during a panel at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s 72nd annual meeting, where he also spoke glowingly about City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and laid out the vision for what the new arena is going to be.The Mavericks’ interest in this area is fairly straightforward. The City Hall site allows the Mavericks to stay in the downtown area, close enough to its current home at the American Airlines Center, and City Hall’s proximity to the Convention Center gives it easy access to a DART station which would theoretically make travel to the proposed arena district much easier.The entire saga, though, reads as an embarrassing tale of corruption and greed, and the Mavericks’ involvement in this is just another misstep in a series of missteps since Mark Cuban’s sale of the team to the Adelson-Dumont family.Full disclosure – I am not from Dallas, nor have I been a resident of the Metroplex at any point in my life. Being from Bangalore, India, I do not have an emotional connection to the city beyond my love for the Mavericks and my family who live there, as well as the MMB team, whom I’ve come to consider a good group of friends. As an Architect & Designer, my admiration is for the various Architectural landmarks that dot the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which I was fortunate enough to experience during my visit to Dallas in November 2024.Dallas City Hall is a project worthy of preservation. Its brutalist expression, with the raw, exposed concrete and sharp geometric