This is a money argument. You don't have to care about I.M. Pei, Brutalism, or historic preservation to see the problem. Dallas is considering one of the largest property decisions in its history, but it has priced only one side.
In June 2025, the city's list of what a bond program might fix at City Hall added up to $81–134 million — eight line items the slide called "illustrative only," before anyone had assessed the building's condition. By October the estimate was $152–345 million. In February 2026 a twenty-year modernization program, with financing, exceeded $1 billion. A later phased-repair estimate was $531–610 million. Each figure counts something different; the city has not compared them side by side.
It is not a repair bill. When the consultants laid the $906 million out in parts at the Finance Committee, only a third of it was repairs: the building's actual repair bill is $329.4 million. The rest is rent somewhere else while the work happens, furnishings for the result, and twenty years of interest — and a new City Hall would carry two of those three costs too. The full breakdown takes both numbers apart line by line, alongside what the same city has committed to buildings a few blocks away.
Moving out, leasing office space, demolishing the building, selling the land — none of it has ever been given a public price. The council voted $3 million to search for somewhere to go before anyone published what going would cost. That is the whole objection, in one sentence: one option priced over and over, the preferred option priced never.
Internal emails discussed touring relocation sites in ways that avoid quorum rules — no public meeting, no public record — until roughly 5,000 pages of them surfaced. A judge issued a restraining order under the Open Meetings Act to stop the scheduled votes. The $3 million site search was funded with money moved off a City Hall generator and electrical repair line.
The path now being explored carries costs for the site search, moving employees, acquiring or leasing another building, and disposing of 1500 Marilla. None has been published. Neither has the land's sale value or the building's demolition cost.
Today Dallas owns a paid-for building on sixteen acres of public land. The council cannot judge the trade until it sees the long-term cost of owning against the long-term cost of renting.
Two things, neither radical. Publish an honest price for every option before deciding — repair, relocation, demolition, sale, side by side, on the same terms. And repair the building the city already owns, starting with the $330 million the city itself says is urgent.
The council decides this in open meetings, and the public gets the microphone. The next chances to say something are here.