What the city finds money for
City Hall's repair bill is discussed as if it were unthinkable. Here is what the same city has committed to buildings within a few blocks of it — and to one across town, a generation ago.
$3.5B+
Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center reconstructionThe largest public project in the city's history, on the blocks directly west of City Hall.
$96.1M
City incentives for One NewPark
A $4.1M economic development grant plus up to $92M in future tax-increment funds, approved June 2022, for Hoque Global's 38-story tower — on parking lots just south of City Hall. The city's own announcement.
$125M
Public share of the American Airlines Center
Approved by voters in 1998 and funded by hotel and car-rental taxes. The arena opened in 2001 — twenty-five years ago — and cost about $420M all-in.
And the building itself:
$330M
What is urgently broken at City HallThe city's own figure for the repairs that actually need doing. The $1.1 billion everyone quotes is the twenty-year modernize-everything version, with financing folded in.
The point is not that those other projects were wrong. It's that "we can't afford it" has never been how this city talks about buildings it wants.
1500 MARILLA