Dallas has owned the former Hotel Miramar since 2020 and is finally nearing the finish line to provide permanent supportive housing for the homeless — but nobody was popping bottles at the Monday project briefing.
That’s because the site at 1950 Fort Worth Ave. has been vacant for years. The costs have risen exponentially since the original $3.5 million acquisition. There was an unforeseen $224,000 asbestos removal that nobody looked into prior to the building purchase. And while all these “challenges” are being dealt with, there are unsheltered individuals living on the streets of Dallas.
District 1 Councilman Chad West said he didn’t like the information provided during Monday’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee meeting.
“This is a project that, every time it comes up in my district, it generates an emotional response from people who are either supportive of it and frustrated that they can’t do anything to help it or people who were against it from the very beginning and are like, ‘I told you so. The city will never get this done,’” West said. “Every time there is not an update and there should be one, or there is an update, it’s like ripping open a wound.”
The city is spending about $6 million to renovate the building, using funds from a 2017 bond issue and the American Rescue Plan Act.
Challenges With The Miramar Hotel Property
Assistant Director of Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Darwin Wade reviewed the project Monday and said staff is “100 percent committed” to providing permanent supportive housing for unsheltered residents.
But on paper, the city staff’s dedication to the project doesn’t look so solid.
Dallas entered a contract with CitySquare for renovations and property management in June 2021, but CitySquare ended the partnership in late 2022 due to changes in its business scope. Asbestos remediation was completed in 2022 and the city brought in CBRE as a consulting firm to manage the solicitation process for design and redevelopment later that year.
Delays led to cost increases. The city entered an agreement with UCR Development in April of this year for design and renovations.
But the “challenges” continued, and the contract with UCR was deemed null and void because CBRE did not adhere to state procurement laws and federal regulations during contract preparation, Wade said.
Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis asked what went wrong.
“Ultimately, I want to know, how did this happen?” she said. “Where did the responsibility lie?”
Wade said at the time, the funding source was not known and CBRE had “a different take on procurement from a private-sector standpoint.”
Now back at the drawing board, CBRE has reissued a request for qualifications and will begin fee negotiations with a selected firm in the coming weeks.
“Has there been any consideration given to whether a private-sector developer could manage this whole process better than we could?” West asked.
Wade said staff has talked to potential developers but it’s up to them to bid on the project.
Next Steps For Permanent Supportive Housing
The completion deadline of September 2024 is unacceptable, council members said during Monday’s committee meeting.
District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn said the timeline is outrageous.
“Here we sit in contrast with Housing Forward talking about over 4,000 people in our city homeless and the urgency of having housing,” Mendelsohn said. “We’ve sat with a building for essentially three years and it’s vacant. And it’s not the only one.”
West said he planned to issue a memo calling for staff to revise a “complete project plan” that addresses renovation, timing, and funding for operator selection, rental subsidies, and tenant services.
“I’m really disappointed in the delays, the costs, and the lack of an operator partner,” he said. “I’m concerned that after purchasing this property three years ago there’s a lot of uncertainty that remains as to the renovation duration and the costs.”
Deputy City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said she didn’t want to dwell on the challenges “because they are what they are and we’ve learned through this process the checks and balances that we have to put in place.”
“We are presenting to you what we believe is realistic and what we believe is feasible to get the project back on track and to be able to take care of all the various deliverables that are embedded within this project,” she said. “We clearly understand your frustration. We acknowledge all the things that have gone wrong. We want to make sure that as we continue to talk about this project in a way that you clearly understand what we’re doing … We have developed a timeline and a project plan that we believe is feasible with a realistic expectation of what we can deliver by this time next year.”
