Architects Go on the Offensive to Save Dallas City Hall

It should be no surprise that architects and those who appreciate architecture are at the forefront of the fight to save Dallas City Hall.

They’ve been doing what they can to make the case for keeping 1500 Marilla St., including pushing back on the narrative that the decades-old I.M. Pei is suffering from serious structural problems that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair.

A video published by Save Dallas City Hall, for instance, has Zaida Basora, executive director of AIA Dallas, and other architects countering the very large figures being thrown around by officials and local media.

“It’s not a defensible proposal to think that the city has to abandon City Hall to move into probably an equally old building downtown,” Basora said, claiming repairs could be as low as $10-30 million.

Some developers and former city officials, however, have pushed back on such assertions, claiming that the architects’ assessment is downplaying serious functionality issues with critical systems, according to The Dallas Morning News. Water infiltration and recurring plumbing issues are just two of the nagging problems City Hall’s been dealing with.

City Hall Endangered: How We Got Here

The purported price tag of restoring 1500 Marilla St. isn’t the only factor out there in the public discourse. Many believe the Dallas Mavericks are looking hard at the site for a new arena and sports-focused district, but a group of Dallas architects — all of whom were at one point or another a president of a national, state, or local AIA body — have pointed to other potential locations downtown where such a project would be feasible.

“City Hall and Plaza should remain as an iconic civic and employment anchor in the southern CBD, working in conjunction with new development,” the architects asserted.

The Dallas Architecture Forum and Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture are putting on a public event to discuss the future of 1500 Marilla St. at J. Erik Jonsson Central Library next Thursday (Jan. 22) at 6:30 p.m. Speakers will include Robert Meckfessel, FAIA of DSGN Associates; J.H. Cullum Clark of the George W. Bush Institute; and Institute for Humanities and Culture director Seemee Ali.

Nate Eudaly, executive director of the Dallas Architecture Forum, said organizers reached out to invite someone from the city to attend and provide an overview of the process being undertaken but they declined the invitation.

“It’s disturbing that there seems to be a major lack of transparency on the part of the city to discuss these things,” he said.

The Dallas Economic Development Corporation has been tasked with assessing the structural condition of City Hall. Infrastructure consulting firm AECOM is helping them out. Solicitations have also gone out to commercial property owners downtown for occupancy proposals. Findings will be presented to the Finance Committee in February. 

Eudaly said that the city’s reputation would suffer if it decided to relocate its operations, possibly across different sites.

“It destroys the whole concept of having a city center, a place where the civic government is housed, where people know they can come to gather for meetings, for protests, for celebrations,” he said.

Like others who would like to see City Hall remain at 1500 Marilla St., Eudaly said everything seems rushed, undermining the credibility of officials who maintain the city is doing its due diligence.

“The building is not in danger of falling down. It has some water leaks. It needs some HVAC updates. But it’s not a structurally impaired building … it can be renovated and restored,” he said, noting that the city owns 1500 Marilla St. free and clear. “That’s another important factor that hopefully [the city’s] analysis will at least address in some objective fashion. Those facts need to be analyzed objectively and comprehensively.”

UPDATE: This article was updated at 2:42 p.m. on January 16, 2026, to correct the speakers list for the Dallas Architecture Forum event.