Matt Goodman

I.M. Pei’s Dallas City Hall at risk after City Council votes to explore alternatives The Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to formally explore alternatives to the current City Hall building designed by I.M. Pei, with City Manager Kimberly...

Yesterday's City Hall vote remains weird. Why is Councilman Ridley's idea not the first thing done? "One stipulation called for city officials to focus primarily on getting an independent facility condition assessment of City Hall before considering relocation." www.dallasnews.com/news/politic...

Mayor Eric Johnson finally whipped some votes. (And Bethany's story is a must-read on how the Dallas City Council and its police department rebuffed ICE.)

The mayor of Just Asking Questions.

AND the mayor is missing from the meeting he called.

Why Starbucks is Coming to South Dallas The story of how Forest Forward came to understand the significance of inviting a national chain into its ambitious redevelopment of the Forest Theater.

Starbucks is coming to South Dallas. But the real story is why the nonprofit leading the overhaul of the Forest Theater believed the national brand to be its best neighbor. @sharongrigsby.bsky.social on a new approach for economic development in the Sunny South: labreportdallas.com/p/why-starbu...

IDK guys, I kind of feel like we're operating on someone else's timeline on this. Yes, it's true the discussion about deferred maintenance of 1500 Marilla has been going on for years, but the suddeness of the "we could just tear it down" talk seems basketball shaped.

From Councilman Chad West's email newsletter, about Dallas' efforts to keep the Mavericks and Stars in town. I thought we literally had The Sports Mayor?

A DART board member tells me Farmers Branch and Highland Park will also discuss holding withdrawal elections from the agency. Much of the broader coverage has focused on the suburbs itching to bail. Here's a profile of a group fighting to keep—and improve—DART. labreportdallas.com/p/dart-s-big...

The Free Man, Reveler’s Hall say city demanded they quit charging a cover for live music Despite being in business for years and offering live music for just as long, the owners of two businesses, one in Deep Ellum and another in Oak Cliff's Bishop Arts District, say the city recently inf...

Of all the things going on at City Hall, I'll never understand Dallas' seemingly random insistence on enforcing ticky tack rules that make it harder to run small businesses. www.dmagazine.com/micropost/th...

"The city, it should be noted, had no problem spending $140 million to restore the Cotton Bowl, a building that essentially hosts one marquee event per year."

Texas suburbs resist new state law allowing more apartments Suburban officials in the Dallas-Fort Worth region have enacted rules aimed at curtailing a sweeping new state law to allow more apartments.

And @joshuafechter.bsky.social's analysis of how the suburbs are fighting the bill is a must-read for you housing heads. www.texastribune.org/2025/09/03/t...

The New Law of Building in Texas State lawmakers passed a bill that makes it legal to build multifamily or mixed-use developments in areas zoned for commercial use. How will this change Dallas-Fort Worth?

I wrote about the bill for @labreportdallas.bsky.social
(Social accounts will come to life soon!) About how Dallas planners are embracing the new reality while suburbs seek to limit the developments. And, of course, how it quiets public opposition to multifamily. labreportdallas.com/p/senate-bil...

The bill, SB 840, has no requirements for affordability. There is also no designation for rental or ownership, which means condos and townhomes are fair game. Developers can now build housing on about 43 percent of land in Dallas that previously required a zoning change.

ForwardDallas, the city’s updated land use plan that Council approved last year, envisioned density along transit corridors. And transit corridors have a lot of commercial zoning. Here’s a heat map from our data scientists showing commercial properties near job centers.

🧵In Dallas and 18 other cities, the Texas Legislature has made it legal for developers to build multifamily or mixed-use projects on any land zoned commercial, retail, office, or warehouse without a zoning change. Like here, on Columbia Ave. in East Dallas.

Next Thursday! This is going to be a lot of fun. (also, "may" LOL)

In North Dallas, a New Future in a Shuttered School County officials are finally paying close attention to the Esperanza neighborhood in Far North Dallas, beginning with a new vision for Dobie Pre-K.

Dobie Pre-K will soon be a hub for services in Esperanza. To understand the significance of local government finally paying attention here, @kellixsmith.bsky.social spent weeks with residents to learn about resilience and community in this pocket of North Dallas. labreportdallas.com/p/esperanza-...

Do this in front of Dallas City Hall

The Controversial Art of Building More Housing A pair of public-private tools are driving the production of most new affordable housing in Dallas. So why is Dallas City Hall growing concerned?

Come for the arson, stay to better understand subsidizing affordable housing in Dallas. labreportdallas.com/p/the-contro...

The full website goes live in the fall. We’ve hired @kellixsmith.bsky.social, one of Dallas' best reporters, as a staff writer. Email newsletters go out every Wednesday. We want to help Dallas understand what’s working, what’s not, and why. Join us! (Also it’s free.) labreportdallas.com/subscribe

Why CPAL is launching a nonprofit newsroom with Sharon Grigsby & Matt Goodman The Lab Report is co-founded by longtime local journalists Sharon Grigsby and Matt Goodman. This is why the Child Poverty Action Lab is investing in a new publication.

The Lab Report is an editorially independent division of the nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab, which does critical work to help Dallas curb childhood poverty and make the region better for families. Our publisher, Alan Cohen, introduced the idea here. labreportdallas.com/p/publisher-...

If Not Jail, Then Where? The district attorney believes too many people are being taken to jail who need help more than punishment. Doing something about it is a different story.

Dallas County's jail is near capacity, so we examined a program aimed at diverting people before they're booked. Cops can take some would-be defendants to a deflection center/mental health provider instead of jail. That isn’t happening. Why is complicated. labreportdallas.com/p/dallas-cou...

The Safety Net Has Ripped The Lab Report's first story is an inside look at how nonprofit service providers in North Texas have weathered half a year of 'unprecedented' funding cuts.

One of our earliest questions: how the hell do you run a nonprofit right now? Most of the two dozen people Sharon spoke to were too spooked to go on record. (Including the country’s first school dedicated to philanthropy.) She still found hope amid chaos. labreportdallas.com/p/the-safety...

🧵 Fourish months ago, @sharongrigsby.bsky.social and I holed up in essentially a glass-doored closet and talked at each other until we could see the shape of a new publication. The Lab Report has a ways to go—website (the design rips), social accounts (yikes)—but we’re now running stories.

We are very pro things-that-are-good-for-Dallas: labreportdallas.com

We're building something new over here, and I'm so excited to have Kelli with us. If you care about compelling local journalism that isn't boring, we're launching this for Dallas later this summer. Sign up here: labreportdallas.com

Hey there,
Since the Fort Worth Star-Telegram hired me 8 months ago, I've been able to write about Palestine-Israel and its relation to the lives of everyday Americans with conviction. Freedom is a privilege I suspect most mainstream newspaper writers don't receive, and I don't take it lightly. 🧵

YouTube video by William Duarte Pimpsta - Rollin On Them Thangs (1994)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBQ0... bachman lake stand up

Feels like it should be more of a local conversation that the city of Dallas is barely growing. Fort Worth has added 84,461 people since July 2020, a 9.1 percent increase. Dallas in that same period: 22,661, or 1.7 percent. Houston grew by 1.8 percent from 23 to 24 alone. Yikes!

The City of Dallas Is Putting Parking Spots in Its Crosshairs The city requires developments provide parking spots based on ratios created in the 1960s. It has been researching what will happen if that changes. How far will Dallas go?

It's taken six years for Dallas to get changes to the parking code in front of City Council, which will happen after lunch. I promise it will not take you that long to read about how requiring so many parking spots in so many places changed how the city developed. www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/...