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The nearly $3 billion reconstruction of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will take on a different footprint than previously planned and also tie in several proposed transportation initiatives including as high-speed rail.
Rosa Fleming, director of convention and event services for the city of Dallas, presented Feb. 5 a new "reorientation" of the future convention center to the Dallas Economic Development Committee in anticipation of a presentation to City Council in March, the first since last February. She said the team is about to advance from concept to design and pre-construction.
In the new site plans presented to the committee, the convention center building itself will no longer encompass lot E at the southeast corner of Memorial Drive and Hotel Street along Interstate 30. It instead would have a footprint of about 130,000 square feet on the southern half of the former Dallas Morning News property on Young Street, where a parking garage currently sits. It is unclear whether the city plans to acquire portions of that property.
The facade of the new convention center will remain the same, Fleming said, but the footprint has been modified due to requests by the Texas Department of Transportation to use a flyover bridge for Union Pacific Railroad construction and staging space for dirt and equipment for construction on Interstate 30.
"These requests came, we've talked to them, there's not an option for them not to use these spaces," Fleming said.
Lot E may still be used by the convention center project for logistics, marshaling, parking, a central plant, parking or a heliport, according to project manager Inspire Dallas LLC.
Here's the new site plan:
How it looked last February:
Fleming said new footprint is also meant to avoid conflict with the creation of a high-speed rail system near the convention center. In January, the Dallas Transportation and Infrastructure Committee discussed the potential for an elevated walkway, or "people mover," that would connect the already proposed high-speed rail station in the Cedars to the convention center and the Eddie Bernice Johnson Union Station, which is being reimagined as a multi-modal transportation hub, KERA reported.
The size of the new facility remains as presented to voters, still adding 76,000 square feet to the exhibition halls, doubling the size of the ballrooms and almost tripling meeting room space.
Utility providers have already started some work on the convention center site, Fleming said. The city plans to select a design team and start an 18-month design phase in June, and construction is expected to be complete by the end of 2028.
Inspire Dallas, an entity tied to Lewisville-based real estate development firm Matthews Southwest, was named project manager for the convention center demolition and rebuild, as well as the construction of a deck park over Interstate 30, in September.
Matthews Southwest, founded by Jack Matthews, developed the Omni Dallas Hotel next to the convention center and has been working on plans to redevelop the former Dallas Morning News headquarters on Young Street since 2021 with property owner Ray Washburne, who purchased the 8-acre site in 2019 through his entity Charter DMN Holdings LP. The newspaper moved to new offices in the Old Dallas Central Library attached to the Statler hotel on Commerce Street in 2017.
An earlier proposal for the former newspaper property before Matthews came on included a boutique hotel, apartments and a concert venue. The city did not immediately respond to questions about the use of the former DMN site.
Washburne said he has not yet been contacted by the city. He has been waiting for the city to hire an architect to finalize the design of the convention center before moving forward on his project.
“If they came to me and said that they would like to buy some piece, I'd be open to that discussion,” he said. “Whatever I do is going to be accretive to the convention center, meaning I want to do hotels and entertainment that benefit that convention center.”
Even without plans fully in place, the promise of a new convention center has already lured in event organizers, according to Craig Davis of Visit Dallas. He said 41 conventions have already signed lease agreements signed for when the facility opens in 2029 and beyond, and another 96 are waiting for more details before moving forward.
"This convention center in particular, based upon what we know, is really hitting the mark," Davis said. "So we're very, very optimistic with the ability to be able to close a lot more business."
