star-telegram.com: O.K. Carter

O.K. Carter's last column: After 36 years, Arlington different yet still the same

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:21 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Having signed on as a journalist covering Arlington on Jan. 20, 1972, it is now -- several thousand columns and editorials later -- time to move on.

Retirement kicks in tomorrow, though I prefer to think of it as a transitional lifestyle in which there's more free time for other activities. But with less income to pay for them.

Everybody either quits, dies at his desk or is corporately downsized eventually, so a journalistic career spanning 36 years (and three months, five days, but who's counting?) is hardly a unique event.

The oddity comes about because, back in 1972, my beat was Arlington, and darned if it isn't the same today. There's probably a message about career mobility or lack thereof in there somewhere, but it's a little late to fret now. Besides, I loved the whole experience.

OK, maybe not all of it, but mostly. When one throws bricks, metaphorically speaking, for a living, quite a few come whizzing back. This occasionally leaves bruises. Or a blood trail. But it's only fair.

Arlington and I went through middle age and grew older together, a topic worthy of one final discussion under this byline.

In 1972, Arlington had just passed the 100,000 population mark, but the mid-city didn't have the political muscle of the larger cities it was sandwiched between. That position fed certain eccentricities.

For instance, as a rookie reporter I asked then-City Editor Gene Randall how I might catch a bus to work.

"I'm pretty sure Arlington is the largest city in the country without a mass transit system," said Randall.

He was correct then and 36 years later he's still right, though the distinction has been upgraded a trifle. Arlington is the only city among the nation's 100 most populous that still does not have transit. Here's a prediction: The next election on the topic will pass, though it'll be grudgingly so.

But back to that mid-city business. Because its location was exactly midway between Fort Worth and Dallas -- 16 miles to either downtown -- Arlington really became the poster city for the move-to-suburbia movement. Indeed, through all of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, its population exploded faster than either Dallas' or Fort Worth's. It was, in fact, the fastest-growing city in the nation.

Visually this phenomenon was striking. It was easy to see a few hundred homes with identical roof colors here, another few hundred of another color just next door. The older neighborhoods -- maybe 2 or 3 years old -- would have trees 10 feet tall, the next youngest would have 5-foot trees, the next merely sprigs.

What used to be cotton fields became sprawling rooftops, Bermuda lawns and pecan trees -- and strip centers. The whole place pollinated. It made developers wealthy and kept real-estate agents flush, but would never make the pages of Architectural Digest. In particular, many apartment complexes seemed designed to last 20 years, but unfortunately they're still around.

Although Interstate 30 certainly provided its boost, it was really Interstate 20 that became the cash river, albeit with unintended consequences. Though population in Arlington exploded -- it's now closing on 375,000 -- retail grew faster. New stores and malls cannibalized the old.

Most of us didn't realize that the mid-1980s would be the zenith of the boom days.

Yes, Arlington continued to grow, but at a less-feverish pace as the city began to build out its 100 square miles. Other cities developed competitive retail and housing. Many wealthier residents fled to newer enclaves. Arlington's older, smaller housing didn't have great property tax potential and a sort of lingering post-Reagan aversion to taxes kept the council from making the kind of investment in streets, parks and cultural amenities that would have been paid back by higher property values and more upscale commercial development. The city's economic profile slid. Its demographics became far more diverse.

The good news for Arlington is that the comeback is under way. The city has three colleges, a national brand as a tourism center and a highly fortuitous infusion of millions of dollars in natural gas money. It's also still right in the middle of the Metroplex, which will be highly attractive as commuting costs make location more important.

The challenges are great but manageable. I'll be watching to see how it comes out, though after Friday it'll be in a considerably different role.

It's all too easy to create a future lined with tollbooths

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:53 CDT

By O.K. Carter

Although stories about toll roads seem to pop up every week now, a lot of Texans just don't seem to get the drift of what's happening.

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, simplified things a bit last week during a luncheon speech to the Arlington Chamber of Commerce.

If the trend toward toll-road proliferation continues unabated, Carona visualizes a not-too-distant future in which a typical commuter might average $10 a day in tolls. And with very few alternative routes to escape them.

"We're not talking about the kind of tolls that go away when a road is paid off, either," he said. "They're toll roads forever."

Though Carona, chairman of the Senate transportation committee, knows that a modest boost in gasoline taxes will never be popular, he calculates that in the end it would be much cheaper than irreversible toll-road mania.

But never mind that. Most of the more than 80 major road projects in the works in Texas, he said, are being contemplated as toll-road projects. Fourteen are in this region alone.

The problem is that Texas is a big, fast-growing state with far more transportation needs than money to fund them, although there are provisos to this general statement. It would help, for instance, if lawmakers didn't siphon off gasoline tax money for other purposes. Too, the Texas Department of Transportation has the authority to borrow a lot more money for road projects but has chosen not to. The governor also seems bent on installing a more intensive user-pay, user-benefit system.

The theory is that the people who benefit from a service should pay for it.

Think of it like a public golf course greens fee, only it's for using a highway. You don't use it, you don't pay for it. Sounds fair, right? The minimum-wage guy who needs to get to work might have a different view.

There's another benefit to a toll road as well, which is that with a source of funding assured, it can be built with reasonable dispatch.

Once upon a time, the stretch of Interstate 30 between Fort Worth and Dallas was built as a toll road - dubbed the DFW Turnpike - though the concept then was somewhat different from what's occurring in Texas now.

For one thing, voters approved that turnpike project, albeit with a proviso: When the road was paid for it would become free.

Does anyone out there recollect voting for any toll roads in the last few decades? No? That's because there was no such vote.

New toll roads remain toll roads. Forever.

And finally, a funny thing happened on the road to toll-road mania. The Transportation Department decided that granting contracts for such projects should have a value, which meant that the agency should be paid upfront for the right to build them.

That's why privatization of toll roads has become popular. Not only do the roads get built in a hurry, the state can collect hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to purchase-rights fees.

That money can then be invested in other road projects. Or whatever.

I know. You don't remember voting for that either.

Consider Texas 161, a soon-to-be-built toll road in Grand Prairie that parallels Texas 360 and which will take a lot of pressure off 360. The Transportation Department initially wanted a private builder because it felt it could reap a windfall of more than $1 billion for the rights. In the end, the nonprofit North Texas Tollway Authority was awarded the project, but it will still pay the state $458 million.

True, the money will be used for other North Texas road projects, but this stretches the user-benefit fee idea considerably. By the time the authority pays interest charges over decades, it will mean that close to $1 billion more will have to be paid in tolls on a 10-mile stretch of road.

To boost downtown Arlington, move school administration there

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:30 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Since the last brilliant idea I pitched to an Arlington mayor was greeted with something approaching disdain, it's probably not practical to suggest another one. But every couple of decades why not give an old concept another shot?

The last brilliant idea? It was a suggestion that Tarrant County College's Arlington campus be built on the east side of downtown, sandwiching downtown nicely between it and UT-Arlington. It seemed logical to assume that having 13,000 or so additional college students plus faculty and staff in the area every day would go a long way toward central city rejuvenation -- maybe encourage the presence of restaurants, high-density apartments and other amenities.

Having a lot of traffic performs economic development miracles.

"There's already stuff there," the then-mayor said in a chilly reaction to my B.I. (that's "brilliant," not some other less-kind word).

"I know," I said. "But mostly it's crap. That's why they call it redevelopment."

Really now. So long as we could have saved Shipley Do-Nuts and the J. Gilligan's watering hole, what would we have missed?

Instead, the TCC campus ended up on what used to be a southeast Arlington cotton field. It's now the fastest-growing campus in the system. It's a great campus, too, but it would have been superfabulous and just as prosperous downtown.

Regardless, the city seems to have gotten over its fretting about "already stuff there" for good public projects, perhaps even stretching the definition of good and public considerably. Or at least that 20-story coliseum of a football stadium taking over our skyline would seem to indicate as much.

But back to that downtown thing. Darned if opportunity doesn't knock twice from time to time.

As new Arlington schools Superintendent Hector Montenegro began making the rounds of administration offices, he noticed that he seemed to be driving endlessly.

It turns out that administration offices for the 62nd largest school district in the nation are spread over multiple locations, including 10 annexes and 15 school buildings. This is a highly inefficient state of affairs that has just sort of evolved over the years.

Montenegro says it just won't do. At a school board meeting tonight, trustees will begin kicking around the idea of centralizing everything.

So here's an idea that's on nobody's radar: Why not put that central office downtown, which after all is about as central as it gets?

Wake up City Hall. Start thinking, chamber of commerce. Consider the big picture, school trustees.

Admittedly, it is too bad that city and school district relations dropped into a muddy rut recently over the city trying to stick the district with gargantuan surface-water runoff fees, which incidentally taxpayers would have been nailed with no matter what.

But it's time to get over it. Plus, why pay for a high-dollar site someplace when downtown property is a bargain?

Put a few hundred school district employees downtown, and the incentives for other types of supportive development in the area will really take off.

And there's a natural synergy present. City Hall and the University of Texas at Arlington are already in the area. The new Tarrant County subcourthouse downtown is almost completed and will open soon.

Throw in a school district administration building along with all the other projects cooking in the downtown area, and Arlington has itself a combined governmental and cultural arts district of formidable substance.

Access? Center Street will connect with a new Interstate 30 exchange long before a new administration building could be built. Another connection with Interstate 20 could also be sped up. What's not to like?

Downtown's redevelopment is ready to take off ... really

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:39 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Having watched the struggle for downtown Arlington redevelopment wallow for more than three decades at an agonizingly terrapin pace, there's this to report: This baby seems to be taking off!

An expansive pedestrian walkway on Center Street along with the remodeling and expansion of the old Johnny High theater (now the Arlington Music Hall) and the pending construction of the Levitt Pavilion for outdoor concerts will put a whole new face on downtown. Likewise, it'll help that the University of Texas at Arlington plans to flatten four aging apartments near Center Street in search of more green space.

The music hall's revamp will essentially give Arlington something it has always needed: an intimate performance hall with a few hundred seats and terrific acoustics.

And another good thing will be the Babe's Chicken Dinner House that will be part of the music hall complex. Its presence is not a minor deal. The least popular Babe's location (there are Babe's in other cities, including Roanoke and Sanger) serves more than 350,000 meals a year. That is an enormous quantity of downtown traffic.

Keep in mind that at its zenith, downtown was designed for a near-village of maybe 5,000, not for today's 375,000.

So much of even that small downtown core has disappeared that it raises a development question: Why bother anymore?

It's a valid inquiry, albeit one that must be answered more from the heart -- and a desire for a sense of place -- than rational need. Arlington can and will prosper without a downtown identity, but it shouldn't.

Face it, a soon-to-be-spectacular strip of Interstate 30 that will reveal an awesome blitzkrieg of roller coasters, water slides, pro football and baseball stadiums, a convention center, hotels and glitzy shopping is going to be Arlington's brand, at least for the next half-century.

But that stuff is for tourists. Come one, come all. Buy season passes. Bring a debit card.

In a way, Arlington plays a bit like Las Vegas. There's much unseen behind the obvious.

Downtown, however, will be mostly for the people who live in Arlington, a funky little place that will eventually appeal to a mix of townies, college kids and a few visitors smart enough to wind their way through the city's mix of cul-de-sacs and sprawl.

It'll be a place where 150-year-old log cabins repose on one street, where there's an auditorium with country singers one night and a symphony orchestra the next, a place for outdoor concerts and City Hall business, for a bit of banking and for some Jesus talk and hymns at century-old churches on Sundays. Maybe they'll throw in a street festival.

It'll also be considerably more accessible when Center Street connects with I-30 -- that construction is already under way -- and down the road a bit with Interstate 20, an imminent event.

With any luck, there'll soon be boutiques, art galleries, a smattering of eclectic restaurants and -- if we can ever get the City Council to lighten up a bit -- maybe even some night life downtown.

And that blending of UT-Arlington with downtown? It's going to happen. Really, truly. The energy is becoming palpable.

Visualize a "T" with legs. The top of the T is Center Street. Its leg is old Main Street.

The "T" makes up what amounts to an Arlington cultural district. Main Street contains Theatre Arlington, the Arlington Museum of Art and the Arlington Dance Theater. The trick will be to keep all three viable until Center Street kicks in.

Indeed, it appears that Center Street could evolve into the college strip along UT-Arlington that the town has so long needed. It is a crucial element if Arlington is to attract a young, hipper, affluent and typically entrepreneurial demographic.

There will be more development downtown in 2008 than in the past two decades. That's a good thing, and it's picking up speed. Believe it.

Arts executive builds on lessons learned in Arlington

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:48 CDT

O.K. Carter

In 1972 when 20-year-old arty man-child Cliff Redd pitched the idea of a permanent theater company in Arlington, he received the establishment equivalent of a stifled yawn, interpreted thusly: Don’t bother me boy.

This is, after all, the same city a Star-Telegram reviewer once labeled a “cultural wasteland,” an unkind witticism but one that in 1972 was considerably more defensible. Arlington generally prefers that its leaders hit at least their mid-30s before suggesting that they’d like a turn at bat.

Redd wasn’t that patient. Plus he had — and still has — three qualities that give him kilowatt power in the world of arts projects. He’s enormously energized, only works on projects that speak to him and has a gift for raising money based on a simple formula that might be called Redd’s Law of Relationships: Sell a vision of a better community through arts, and your friends will ante up, as will the friends of those friends, ad infinitum.

“Somebody told me that I was trying to build a theater company in the most barren soil in Texas for the arts,” Redd recalls.

He ignored the caution.

Redd’s vision opened as Theatre Arlington in a converted church building on Division Street. It’s still going strong, these days occupying both the old Kier Lumber building and the former chamber of commerce building, both on Main Street downtown.

Redd’s tenure as executive director wasn’t without its controversies, the most notable of which was an attempt to portray Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the context of two gay men as principles. Some City Council members protested the performance, and Albee himself sent a cease-and-desist order. The play did not go on, but Theatre Arlington and Redd got their 15 minutes of national fame. Ever since, the license to perform Woolf has included a must-be-performed-as-intended proviso.

Redd, a bit older and smarter, handed over the reins of a prospering Theatre Arlington to others in 1990, first to take over as director of the Shakespeare Festival in Dallas later to become executive director of the ArtCentre of Plano, which included converting an 1800s hardware store to a performance hall.

These days he is executive director of the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, which formally opened last month. The Long Center utilizes the revamped Palmer Events Center, a round, Casa Mañana-like (but much larger) building across Town Lake from downtown. It contains a couple of theaters and will host the Austin Symphony and Ballet Austin as well as performers like Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett. Tuxes one night, jeans the next: a cultural fusion. The smaller theater provides an inexpensive venue for all kinds of performing arts groups. It’s booked two years in advance.

The Long Center vision has been 16 years in the making, but fundraising was floundering dramatically when Redd was recruited in 2004. The center now has more than 4,700 contributors, most of whom Redd knows personally. It hasn’t been easy.

“The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks Austin as 49th in giving among the 50 largest cities,” Redd says. “But I think once what we’ve done with the Long Center is taken into consideration, that ranking will change.”

Note of comparison: The budget for Theatre Arlington’s first year was $20,000. The Long Center’s budget is $12,000 — a day. There’s no public funding.

“That means I’ve got to raise $1.5 million to $2 million a year in addition to our rentals to break even,” Redd says with a laugh. “And somewhere along the way we want to raise another $60 million for expansion.”

Redd credits his Arlington experience with a major epiphany. He believes that communities connect with arts facilities converted from existing buildings and that they’re more economical.

“People like adaptive reuse, and so do I,” Redd says. “I hope all my North Texas friends drop by for a look-over at the Long Center the next time they’re in Austin.”

Ministry gets people onto two wheels, then on their feet

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:32 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Tillie Burgin's Bike to Work program at Mission Arlington has been enormously successful, even if it didn't have the best of beginnings.

It was April 1987, 21 years ago, that Burgin -- creator of faith-based Mission Arlington and Mission Metroplex -- came up with an idea to help people without automobiles to get around: If they're healthy enough for a little exercise, give them a bicycle.

But back in 1987 the idea was new, so Burgin was excited when the first bicycle was donated to the program. The bike was loaded in her tiny Datsun pickup and brought back to the Mission Arlington offices at 210 W. South St.

"I told the people in the office about it, but when we went out to unload it from the pickup we discovered that it had already been stolen," Burgin said with a laugh. "Evidently somebody really needed it."

In 1987, Mission Arlington was an all-volunteer organization.

"Arlington didn't have mass transportation -- still doesn't -- and Mission Arlington didn't have buses yet, but we were thinking that at the least we could provide bicycles to people who needed a way to get around town," Burgin said. "The bicycle idea turned out to be a sort of jump-start to Mission Arlington's identification in the area."

The idea is simple. People donate their adult-size bicycles, in assorted states of repair or maybe disrepair, to Mission Arlington. Volunteers refurbish the bicycles.

"Sometimes we make bikes from parts of bikes," Burgin said. "But when they leave here they're in good condition with brakes that work and tires that will hold up."

Most recipients -- typically indigents or residents who can't afford a car -- also get a chain and lock.

It's not a perfect system. Some of the bikes inexplicably disappear. Some are stolen or swapped. Some end up in pawnshops, though Mission Arlington long ago started marking the bicycles to make recovery easier.

Mostly, though, the bicycles serve their purpose.

"We hope the bikes -- and prayer -- will help them get to jobs and that they'll eventually be able to afford a car and that they'll get on with their lives," Burgin said. "This happens a lot."

Some of the bikes are returned for another go-around. A pickup driver -- he says his name is Mike -- pulls into the Mission Arlington lot and unloads a newly painted burgundy bicycle that he received from Mission Arlington four months ago.

"My stupid character flaws and some bad luck got the best of me," Mike said. "I think maybe the two things go together."

Mike said he ended up broke, jobless and car-less "before I smartened up."

He shares an apartment near Pecan Street but landed a job in a garage off West Pioneer Boulevard.

"It took me an hour and 15 minutes to walk it, but with a Tillie bike it took 30 minutes, then 25 when I got in better shape," he said. "I won't miss biking to work, but it was a heck of a lot better than walking.

"I used the bike to get to work, buy groceries, go to church, everything. Now I'm bringing the bike back for somebody else to use."

Versions of Mike's story are told frequently. On average, Mission Arlington now distributes at least one adult bicycle a day, mostly to men. They can be ancient Columbias with balloon tires or multi-speed Japanese street bikes.

How many bikes over the years? Burgin has long since quit counting but estimates the number at between 6,000 and 7,000 adult bicycles. And that doesn't count 2,000 refurbished smaller bicycles distributed to needy kids by Mission Arlington every Christmas. Mission Arlington's bike shop stays busy.

Ideas to pay for commuter rail get ever more creative

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:40 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Sending up a trial balloon just to see who shows up to shoot it down is an old hat trick in politics, but every now and then a new twist is added.

For example, why not launch eight trial balloons at once? The shooters might get confused.

Such seems to be the case with efforts by the North Texas Council of Governments to find a way to fund a 260-mile regional commuter rail system that would require an estimated $468 million a year to build and operate.

During a session Monday in Arlington, planners came up with eight potential funding strategies for the system, nine if we want to count a sales tax increase that many of the state's major business interests vehemently oppose. So call it eight.

Possibilities include:

a gasoline sales tax of maybe 3 percent.

a vehicle sales tax of 1 percent.

a local-option gas tax of 10 cents a gallon.

a vehicle-miles-traveled tax of 25 cents per 100 miles, collected annually at inspection time.

a new-resident impact fee of $100.

a county property tax of 10 cents per $100 valuation.

an emissions tax of $6 to $15 depending on type of vehicle.

Staggering, isn't it? Some would require voter approval, some a legislative OK. None would come easy.

The powers that be seem to think that business interests will not be as opposed to all of the above as they are to a sales tax increase, though this logic is suspect: When $438 million a year is taken out of consumers' pockets, it isn't going to show up at store cash registers regardless of how it was subtracted.

Quick survey: Everybody out there who thinks such a passenger rail system would operate within the proposed $438 million annual budget raise your hand.

No hands? What cynics you people are. And if costs are greater than $438 million, the above fees would have to increase. That's no fun.

The positive news is that a combination of street and highway congestion, along with mercurial gasoline prices, has really made mass transportation a growth industry. According to a recent article in U.S. News & World Report, 10.3 billion trips were taken by Americans on a train or bus last year. Ridership increased 30 percent from 1995 to 2006, a trend that appears to now be accelerating.

The negative news is that it appears to be difficult to find a mass transit system that actually breaks even. On average, taxpayers end up funding $2 out of every $3 in expense -- fares pay the other dollar -- though local transit authorities don't do anywhere near that well.

Translation: The greater the ridership, the more money transit systems lose and the greater the level of public support required.

The problem gets a bit stickier for the Arlingtons, Bedfords, Azles and Mansfields of the Metroplex. They don't have buses. So even if passenger rail shows up, residents of those cities generally can't get to the station without driving, which sort of defeats the notion of mass transit? Cities like these would also still need to fund bus systems, which is not a popular concept.

Arlington must learn from its mistakes in redevelopments past

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:43 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Arlington's post-World War II development strategy was easy to understand.

It boiled down to: Out with the old, in with the new.

This was most obvious in the downtown area, much of which was flattened with abandon.

"In the urban renewal fever of the 1960s and early 1970s, we essentially lost the downtown character of the city," said Nelson Hodges, an architect and the chairman of the city-appointed Landmark Preservation Commission.

"Everybody now understands the magnitude of what we've lost, the opportunities we've lost in terms of a sense of history and place," said Hodges, who likes to contrast Arlington's style of redevelopment with what occurred in other fast-growing area cities such as Grapevine, McKinney and Lewisville.

"They preserved much of their stock of historical buildings," Hodges said. "That preservation now gives those cities a sense of uniqueness and character that isn't possible if a city is dominated by the kind of national franchise architecture that could be Anyplace, USA."

It is, of course, a few decades too late for lamentations of that sort in Arlington. But that doesn't mean that old mistakes should be repeated.

For the past four years, the commission has been looking at Arlington's architecture from 1945 to 1960.

Arlington was one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. for much of the period. More than 200 neighborhood additions were constructed as well as stores, restaurants, office and hotels -- a total of about 10,000 buildings.

"Arlington underwent a total shift in its character in just that short a time," Hodges said.

Some of that construction, particularly residential, was unique. Quite a lot of it is also of more mundane sprawl.

If this sounds like a lot of architectural review, it is. Hodges said the survey is the most extensive of its kind ever conducted in this country.

"There have been smaller cities that conducted such surveys, but never one as large as Arlington," he said.

The commission will pitch a historical preservation plan to the City Council, probably in May. The idea is to incorporate preservation strategies into the comprehensive plan, build awareness of the city's historical heritage from an architectural perspective and update historic surveys more frequently. The survey of 1945-60, for instance, is the first review of historical structures in the city in 21 years.

Hodges wants to make this much clear: The commission is not advocating the preservation of 10,000 buildings. About 190 of the surveyed structures have what would be considered a highly unique architectural character, though there are also some quirky 1950s neighborhoods.

"We have, for example, classic California-style ranch home neighborhoods built in the midst of grand pecan orchards," Hodges said. "They really help give the city a sense of community and history."

Hodges said commission members recognize that redevelopment is crucial to Arlington. They'd just like a slightly more gentle approach than past strategies of scorch the earth and call the bulldozers.

"Part of the charge here is to blend new development with what's existing," Hodges said.

Hodges said commission members are fully aware that developments such as the Cowboys stadium and the Glorypark project will have a sweeping influence.

"It's necessary to understand that for Arlington, it is redevelop or decay, but that redevelopment can be done in such a way as to keep and maintain the community's architectural history and identity," he said.

Next set of murals needs to show Arlington's lighter side

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:36 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Eight giant cement murals being installed along Interstate 30 in Arlington -- they're 35 feet long and two stories tall -- will tell a bit of Arlington's history. But the city missed a most excellent opportunity to persuade a few million passing motorists that they should detour though Arlington and check this colorful place out.

Face it: For the most part, the murals scream the equivalent of "Exit here for Dullsville."

The artist, Matt Kaser of Coppell, no doubt produced artistic interpretations of what he was told. Those include depictions of early American Indians, Arlington as a railroad stop -- insert a could-be-anyplace-in-Texas yawn here -- followed by a depiction of the city's old downtown mineral well, plus some of the usual hoopla brand about roller coasters and baseball.

But he was stiffed on the city's more interesting historical items. Next time around, Arlington needs to find a more imaginative source to counsel its artistic interpreters.

Granted, some of the city's history, such as its 1920s location for the state convention of the Ku Klux Klan, might be better dropped off the historical radar.

But there are colorful bits of the city's history that would serve to compel even somebody blitzing down I-30 at 80 mph to take the Collins Street exit.

What would be wrong with a mural re-enacting the 1892 Christmas Eve shootout on Main Street that left Harvey Spears, "Poker" Bill Smith, J.H. Hargrove and George Hargrove all mortally wounded? And don't forget the horse killed by a stray bullet.

Gambling of both the legal and illegal sort are also a big part of Arlington's history. Benny "the Cowboy" Binion used the $2 million he earned at the Top O' Hill Terrace in Arlington to fund the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas; ergo, Arlington can lay claim to being the stepdad of Sin City.

The Top O' Hill also had a brothel, though that might be difficult to tastefully portray in a highway mural. La Grange is still famous for its long-gone Chicken Ranch, but Arlington gets no credit at all for its steamy side.

At the least, a mural depicting Texas Ranger M.T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas and his men raiding the Top O' Hill in 1947 -- smashing roulette wheels and craps tables in the process -- would be appropriate.

Likewise, who wouldn't be interested in a mural depicting the fabled Johnson Creek Monkey Massacre? How many Texas towns have monkey massacres? They're rare.

And don't forget that the city was the home of Arlington Downs, a booming pony track at which legendary humorist Will Rogers and Vice President John Nance Garner (1933-41) occasionally shared a box. A depiction of Garner and Rogers screaming at the nags for a piece of the daily double would offer redeeming social value, something along the lines of "Hey kids, don't gamble or you could end up like these two."

Arlington Downs was the filming location for To Please a Lady, the worst B movie that Clark Gable ever made, a stock car racing epic also staring Barbara Stanwyck (1950). I vote for a mural depicting the big kiss between Gable and Stanwyck during which she -- despite being a dedicated journalist -- decides Gable is not such an unscrupulous guy. Don't you just love happy endings?

Finally, what series of murals depicting Arlington would be complete without some scene from the defunct Seven Seas sea life park?

The mural would immortalize Pancho the sea elephant, preferably as he was surrounded by a dozen penguins on skates. How many towns have skating penguins?

Pancho also gained a measure of fame in the 1970s as the only sea elephant ever to come in second in a Texas mayoral election. His five write-in votes put him just behind legendary (and unopposed) Mayor Tom Vandergriff, the tally roughly being 5,500 to 5. If memory serves, Vandergriff said something like, "I don't know what I've done that five people wouldn't vote for me."

Clearly there's lot of inspiring stuff for mural art. Arlington just needs to lighten up a little.

Arlington Democrats suddenly show up on Main Street

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:04 CDT

By O.K. CARTER

Democrats have a message for Arlington.

We're back. With muscle.

Whether that message is accurate -- or maybe just premature -- remains to be seen. But as the old saying goes, whatever goes around eventually comes around. That includes the political flavor of the moment.

At least for the voters in Arlington who bother to show up at the polls, the preferred political flavor of conservative Republicanism has enjoyed a very long moment, almost three decades beginning with Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980.

The first sign that this trend may be reversing in Arlington and Mansfield was last year's upset victory by former Councilwoman Paula Pierson, running as a Democrat, over the GOP's highly regarded Toby Goodman for state representative in District 93.

District 93 includes an obviously blue-collar section of east Arlington, but also a posh piece of north Arlington along with an almost equally affluent slice of Mansfield. That's two of three neighborhoods that traditionally would have gone Republican, but didn't.

Democrats' visibility is also increasing locally. Greater Arlington-Mansfield Democratic Women, for instance, will host a reception for local Democratic candidates at Theatre Arlington this Thursday at 6 p.m., preceding what is expected to be a sold-out performance of Studs Terkel's Working. The event is notable because it is the most visible proof of a resurgent local Democratic Party in the city in more than two decades.

"Democratic volunteer organizations have been active in Arlington, but just not very visible until recently," says Nancy Swartz, women's group president. "But that's changing. Besides us, there's also the Arlington-dominated Metroplex Democrats and the Arlington Area Democratic Alliance."

(Note: The city also has three Republican clubs, including one of the most active and heavily attended clubs and political action committees in the state, the Arlington Republican Club. Its next meeting is Thursday at 7 p.m. at Cacharel Restaurant.)

Swartz, however, is optimistic that the winds of political fortune in Arlington -- and all of Tarrant County -- are blowing the Democrats' way.

"Back in 2000, we had about 27,000 vote in the Democratic primary," she says. "In 2004, it was about 31,000. This year, it was 200,000."

Some history: As Americans continued to move to the suburbs in the 1960s and '70s, a Republican agenda of low taxes, traditional social values and a strong national defense began to resonate strongly, particularly in the Southern states that were once a Democratic bastion. And yes, there were other issues, some racial.

Though many would argue that Texas Republican John Tower's election to the U.S. Senate in 1961 marked the beginning of the shift, it was Reagan in 1980 who brought about the landslide.

What happened in Arlington was typical of many prosperous Southern suburbs. Everybody from constable and justice of the peace through state legislators and members of Congress proclaimed themselves Republicans. And it stayed that way locally until Pearson's upset win last year -- perhaps a smaller Tower-like hint of events to come.

It doesn't hurt, Swartz concedes, that the demographics of many older suburbs like Arlington are changing, becoming more racially diverse, more blue-collar and less vested in establishment candidates.

"The demographics are certainly part of it, but I think that the Tarrant Democratic primary also indicates both a tremendous frustration with the last seven years and the fact that we have two remarkable presidential candidates," Swartz says.

We'll know more about Arlington's political attitudes in November. This was a city, after all, where former President Clinton finished third, not easy to do in a two-party country.