The Leaning Tower of Dallas

We, in Dallas, obtained a new art exhibit quite by chance this week.  And like the big cities around the world, it will only be here temporarily.  So, we went to pay it our respects. 

It wasn’t exactly Banksy coming to town to spice up the side of a building, but it is loved, if only for a short time.

In the North Dallas Forty, where real estate values are measured in thousands of dollars per square foot, a demolition team is blowing up an 11-story office building that had housed Affiliated Computer Services. 

This old dated building will be replaced with The Central, a $2.5 Billion dollar mixed use complex covering 30 acres, that will include a 17 story office building, 320 unit apartment high rise, 430 unit apartment and townhome complex, a 300 room hotel with 110,000 square feet of restaurant and entertainment space, and a green space park.

Yes, Dallas dreams large!

Then, in the spirit of Chip and JoAnne, it was demo day!  The fat guy laid down on the blast plunger and puffs of smoke blew out from the corners of the edifice.

The old building swayed, sank a little, swayed some more and then started disappearing, slowly dropping into a cloud of dust and debris.

As the dust cloud spilled out and covered the neighborhood, the interior of the building, the elevator shaft, stopped sinking, rumbled for a second or two and then just leaned to the east.  It was not coming down.  It stood there, ravaged like a war-torn veteran of Syria, above the crumbled rubble, in total defiance of the demo crew.  The sparse crowd of spectators that had gathered to witness the fall cheered the immediately dubbed “Leaning Tower of Dallas” and immediately launched a Save the Tower campaign. 

Since the explosion, you can drive by the site and see scores of people in the field taking photos of the Tower.  Like the sister Tower of Pisa in Italy, some are “holding” the building up.  Some are “pushing” it over.  Some are just putting it in the background of their selfie. 

All the TV stations have reported from The Central.  Radio stations are reporting on the demo developments. 

Live Local Artist, Jerrell Sustaita, had his easel set up in the field, capturing the event in acrylic for posterity.    

In a different medium, Matt Graham, a master model builder at Lego Discovery Center captured the Tower in Lego.  Lego Dallas Tower

The calls to maintain the Tower as an icon will not materialize, the TV stations will move on to report other events in the Metroplex, the radio stations will return to weather and traffic.  Life will return to normal.

The plan is to bring in the old-fashioned wrecking ball to knock down the tower the archaic way, unceremoniously, one blow at a time.

But for a while, Dallas had on overnight Art Event and it was fun.