Confessions of Dallas High Rise Living: Is Dallas No. 1 With The Deaf and Blind?
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(Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in a hopefully regular series from Jon Anderson, in which he dishes on the inner-workings of life in the sky. Anderson’s take on Dallas high rise living is both entertaining and educational. You can read his first installment here.)
By Jon Anderson
Special Contributor
Driving up and down our High and increasingly Toll “ways” one can’t help but be proud of the number of housing units built for deaf and blind people. This has picked up considerably since the recession and something we can be proud of.
Or course I’m kidding about the deaf and blind, but how else can you explain the huge numbers of apartment blocks and condominiums lining our dirty and unendingly noisy six-lane thoroughfares? Otherwise, I’d be forced to think developers actually believe people with functioning ears and eyes would not only want to live facing a high-speed motorway but use a balcony overlooking it all.
Here’s just a sample…
A quick trip down Central Expressway
Easy Highway Access (Just a leap from your bedroom window).
Honey, did you really need to be in West Village THAT badly?
It’s not just rentals, condo owners can partake.
Pass the wine. WHAT??? PASS THE WINE!!! OHHHH!
A flick over Woodall Rodgers Shows We Love Our Deaf Millionaires Too!
A saunter up the Stemmons and the Tollway…
The pool deck on this baby faces the highway!
It’s SOOOOO chic to live in the Design District.
Oak Lawn’s Newest Tollway-huggers
Balconies for Juliet to Holler “ROMEO, ROMEO!!!!”
Capturing Tollway views in both directions.
I know Dallas hasn’t used up its interior (and quiet) lots when so many of them were cleared leading up to the recession. And it’s not like these new buildings are cheap housing — I’ve not even shown the Stemmons-adjacent Victory Park buildings. Residents are paying a pretty penny for awful views, windows incapable of offering fresh air without the constant thrum of traffic and balconies whose only use is for banished smokers.
Can’t we do better?
These REIT induced architectural disasters are pre-planned ghettos.
Can you imagine what these will be like in 20-25 years ?
Hopefully scrapped or imploded
And who designs these butt-ugly buildings? There have to be apartment/condo architects in Dallas who have taste….where are they?
1. With luck they’ll gather them all up and bury them inside the Trinity River tollway project, another future demolition site.
2, I suspect these buildings are not designed locally. My bet is that national companies reuse plans a number of times making whatever tweaks are needed for a specific lot. On a trip to Austin, I swear I saw even say spendy Museum Tower’s twin.
It’s just as bad in the suburbs!!! A fugly metro-blight.
We CAN do better. Email or call me!
Don’t forget The Shelton just off the tollway in Preston Center, basically. I sold Palomar (pictured) and it is interesting to note that to the people who live there, the hum of the freeway essentially becomes “white noise”… Mid-rises are noisier than high rises, because they’re normally wood construction. So yeah, I could never live in a wood constructed building off of the freeway, but a high rise is always solid concrete and steel, so not nearly as bad. I think people are willing to trade the noise for the convenience of easy access.
When we lived in what was then a million dollar house on Park Lane, we were one block from the tollway and heard the traffic noise all the time. I call it the urban waterfall!
FYI, the last picture is of the Shelton from the tollway. While I agree that high-rise construction makes noise less of a problem indoors (assuming multi-pane windows), neither minimize the noise when windows are open or the patio is in use. Personally, as an inveterate window-opener, it’s something I’d never get used to.