Moments after meeting council members in the chambers at Dallas City Hall, Sarah Dodd walks to the balcony in her Uptown apartment. She peers at the wide expanse of Uptown’s skyline, pointing at two projects in her repertoire, built right across from her.
“This whole road is ground zero for a lot of development in Uptown,” the former reporter turned public relations and zoning strategist says — gesturing toward 23Springs, the swanky office building on the corner of Maple Avenue and Cedar Springs Road, and multifamily construction firm Crescent Real Estate.
She worked to rezone the land for the towering structures, which replaced low-rise buildings in what was once known as Cedar Maple Plaza. She talks about the project with the knowledge of someone who had a front-row seat to the ebbs and flows of change in her neighborhood, as well as City Hall.
When she smiles next, it’s pensive.
Political Points
Dodd has been deeply reflective over the past couple of months. Last month marked 25 years of navigating City Hall’s exposed concrete corridors and rooms, first as a former TV journalist who broke one of Dallas’ biggest affordable housing corruption scandals, and now as a power broker in Dallas’ changing landscape, with dreams of becoming a financial hub.
Exactly two decades ago, Dodd was the first to arrive at the scene when federal agents raided the offices of former City Council member Don Hill, who was charged with taking bribes from developers for low-income housing projects.
To this day, the scope of that investigation and the number of city officials it involved have had a lasting impact on the conversation surrounding the city’s ethics code and ongoing scrutiny of affordable housing projects. After leaving journalism in 2007, Dodd has left her fingerprints on some of the city’s biggest projects and has emerged as a well-connected insider.
She’s part of the team overseeing the Goldman Sachs campus buildout in Uptown. She represented Lyft, the rideshare company, in negotiating how it would be regulated in Dallas and Fort Worth after the Texas Legislature adopted a law that left it up to private companies to ensure background checks and safety inspections.
In the Knox-Henderson district, Dodd also worked on Weir’s Plaza, a redevelopment project that managed to preserve the older building’s facade and its beaux-arts influence. Last year, the Texas Stock Exchange announced it would temporarily live there.
This is the first interview Dodd’s accepted since the passing of her husband, David Kunkle, who himself had a mythos around him as the youngest Dallas cop to make captain and a beloved local hero who once ran for mayor. The last time she spoke to the media directly was in a 2019 interview with The Dallas Morning News columnist Robert Wilonsky and it came as an acknowledgement of Kunkle’s public career. “We both felt a responsibility to be honest about what he was going through, and also to have awareness about Lewy body dementia,” she said.
But this time, it’s just for her.
‘If you’re in the jungle, you better get a guide’
Since she began her business as a strategist at the cusp of a financial crisis in 2007, Dodd’s built a reputation for rarely losing a zoning case. In a city like Dallas, where development and new housing have the potential to rapidly alter communities and zoning cases become increasingly contentious year after year, change is often received with deep skepticism.
For Dick Friedman, once the chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission under President Bill Clinton and the mind behind the Four Seasons hotel in Boston, it was essential that he build the right team. The Four Seasons in Las Colinas, a suburban development in Irving, was not the topography he envisioned for the luxury hotel chain, and over the years, he convinced his company to shift plans in Dallas’ direction.
As things began falling into place and Turtle Creek was identified as the site for the hotel, Friedman, a relative stranger in the city, looked for a shepherd.
“If you’re going to go in the jungle, you better get a guide,” he said.
Acceptance from the community was crucial, and Dodd, he said, knew the city like the back of her hand and gave him advice about who he should or shouldn’t connect with. “We would just sit down and casually have a cup of coffee with various people, and then she would say, ‘Stay away from this person: He’s a troublemaker,’” Friedman said, before politely declining to identify who.
Bob Griffo, a resident of Oak Lawn, knows Dodd from his time serving on a community committee and has often had reservations about projects that are in or adjacent to low-rise multifamily neighborhoods and come with requests to significantly increase heights.
Sarah Dodd, a public affairs strategist and former journalist, poses for a photo at her home, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas, with her old photographs that were taken when she was working as a journalist.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
One of Dodd’s projects that drew scrutiny from the neighborhood, he said, was a proposed apartment and retail tower by Dallas-based StreetLights Residential in an empty parking lot next to Eatzi’s, a European-style market and eatery. The site was once home to Esquire Theater, and developers sought to create an art deco front as a nod to the past.
However, developers wanted to build a 200-foot-tall high-rise. The prior zoning only allowed up to 120 feet and included retail. The rezoning would’ve increased the height of the building substantially, and neighbors worried the high-rise would create a “domino effect” down Lemmon Avenue with more towers looming over, eventually making their way into residential areas.
Another issue was the building had above-ground parking. “A lot of people were concerned about the sight line of the exposed parking,” Griffo said.
Dodd and her colleagues sent postcards to neighbors outlining the project specifications and hosted meetings with developers to amend plans. Griffo said Dodd’s professionalism shined in those moments because she never misled residents.
At the City Council meeting in 2020, several council members, including David Blewett, the district’s former representative, referred to the rezoning as a case that would not make all the stakeholders happy, regardless of the outcome. Dodd watched residents walk up to the podium to speak both in opposition and support of the project. Several expressed their concerns about the lack of clarity on what the final product would look like and fears of congested roads.
The city’s planners had recommended denying the project, and residents in opposition wanted the City Council to adhere to it. But the council approved rezoning after lowering the height from 200 to 170 feet.
Meteoric rise
Dodd has never had any qualms about burning the midnight oil to get to where she wanted to be.
Early in her career, Dodd made a living at IBM, the information technology company. At that point in the ‘90s, when people didn’t have the luxury of upgrading their software, computer sales made for a lucrative career.
But the television station was where everything was electric. “I just loved the energy, I loved the controlled chaos. I loved the liveliness, and I loved the idea of doing important things that mattered,” she said.
After working 60 hours a week at IBM, Dodd drove to Waco and anchored a Sunday morning show.
Dodd’s rise in the journalism world was meteoric. Soon after she began covering City Hall for CBS News, she began receiving assignments to cover the military. She covered the invasion in Kuwait and documented detentions in Guantánamo Bay twice after 9/11. In 2003, Dodd was embedded with the U.S. Army unit in Iraq, surviving mainly on Skittles and vegetable crackers.
Sarah Dodd shows a 2003 photo at her home, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas. It was taken when she was working in Iraq as a journalist.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
When Dodd returned, she went back to covering City Hall.
In 2005, Dodd said she received a call from then Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm, who asked the former reporter to head to the fifth floor. A surprised Dodd started to ask why and recalls Suhm saying, “Have I ever called you and told you to get to the fifth floor? Have I ever called you and given you a tip?”
“Nope, thank you,” Dodd replied, immediately asking her TV station to send all the cameramen they could. When contacted by The News to verify Dodd’s account, Suhm said she did not agree with the recollection and declined to comment.
Moments after Dodd got there, federal agents were seen raiding the offices of Don Hill, who was also the mayor pro tem at the time. About a dozen of Hill’s associates, including city officials, were implicated.
Dodd went on to produce a series of news reports about the FBI’s investigation into City Hall. For that, she received an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2006. “My husband used to always say, the key to my success is nobody will care more or work harder,’ ” Dodd said.
And her husband would know because City Hall is where he, the police chief at the time, first met her, inspiring a tidal wave of tabloid-style reactions that ultimately subsided once the two married.
These days, Dodd says she is in the next chapter of her life. Vetting a project thoroughly and finding common ground among neighbors before it gets in front of the City Council is a big part of Dodd’s work.
“If Sarah is bringing a project, you know that it’s one that she feels like has benefit to the city, and that she knows would pass scrutiny on the objectives of the city and what council wants to accomplish,” council member Gay Donnell Willis said.
However, when there are questions and pushback, Willis said the way differences are worked out is what she attributes her professionalism and the skill to.
Sarah Dodd talks with Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Moreno at Dallas City Hall, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Another facet of Dodd’s job is turning things around for businesses when all signs say they may be on the losing side.
Earlier this year, Dodd represented the McDonald’s restaurant on Commerce Street downtown. The applicant was vying for a 10-year renewal of a specific-use permit for the drive-through service.
But would it fit in downtown’s fabric? And would it conflict with the city’s efforts to improve pedestrian and bike access in the central business district?
“I remember thinking it was going to be an extremely tough case because the drive-through restaurant is in the middle of the most dense core of the city, and with the convention center coming and all of the proposed development around the convention center,” said council member Chad West, who was among a few council members against granting the longer specific-use permit.
Ultimately, the council approved a five-year permit, and West said he was surprised.
“She took a case that was, for all intents and purposes, full of lemons, and she turned it into lemonade and got it passed,” he said.