{"id":219333,"date":"2025-09-11T22:59:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/219333\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T22:59:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:59:23","slug":"dallas-officials-say-ousted-fair-park-operator-falsely-said-event-contracts-were-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/219333\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas officials say ousted Fair Park operator falsely said event contracts were over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas officials say Oak View Group, the company tasked with running Fair Park\u2019s day-to-day operations, is falsely telling event organizers their agreements with the city are ending as the parks department takes over the site\u2019s management<\/a>. <\/p>\n

John Jenkins, the city\u2019s park department director, said the former subcontractor falsely told clients who had booked venues in Fair Park that the city would not be carrying the contracts forward and risked adversely impacting the park, in a memo obtained by The Dallas Morning News.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease know that late yesterday afternoon OVG360 notified event clients that their agreements will be terminated effective September 16th,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis action without any notice to us and false information from OVG360 seems intended to harm the city and potentially jeopardize our clients, customers, and citizens,\u201d the memo further said. <\/p>\n

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The city decided to end its contract with Fair Park First,<\/a> the park\u2019s nonprofit manager and OVG, which was subcontracting with the nonprofit earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit and the venue management company, which also handles operations at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, were put under a microscope after it was revealed that $5.7 million of restricted donor funds were spent on park operations<\/a>. OVG did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, several vendors are yet to receive payments for their services. Under these circumstances, Dallas officials decided to end the contracts with Fair Park First and Oak View Group and had cobbled together a transition team to take over the maintenance and operations of the 277-acre park. <\/p>\n

But very little was known about how the transition was panning out until now. The News has requested comment from OVG, which did not immediately respond. <\/p>\n

A notice to an events organizer signed by Brad Murphy, an OVG executive, telling the client that the contract between Oak View Group and the city would terminate, ending the event\u2019s license to operate unless the city approves the continuation of the agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of today\u2019s date, the City has not advised OVG360 that it is electing to have your contract assumed by the City,\u201d the document says.<\/p>\n

Jenkins wrote that Oak View Group\u2019s assertion \u201ccouldn\u2019t be further from the truth,\u201d adding that the city has been requesting event agreements and contracts from the company since June 26, to no response.<\/p>\n

Documents appear to show the city and Oak View Group cannot agree on when contracts terminate, with the city saying its contract ends Sept. 16 and Oak View Group seeing the date as Sept. 25, when it decided to terminate its contract with Fair Park First. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been going around them for the past two months to get anything done,\u201d Jenkins told The News, adding that he was deploying security measures to ensure OVG officials left the premises by Sept. 16. \u201cI just can\u2019t trust what they\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said park officials were going to do everything to protect the city\u2019s asset.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many clients were impacted, but Jenkins said there were several the park department was reaching out to. Documents the city requested from Fair Park First included all active contracts involving the nonprofit, management company or the park itself, records show. The list included events, tenants, vendors, service providers, sponsorships and construction contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are endeavoring to immediately contact all the impacted event organizers to reassure them that we very much want to host their events and will do everything possible to ensure success for their event,\u201d Jenkins said, noting that he would be alerting news media and using social media to set the record straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas officials say Oak View Group, the company tasked with running Fair Park\u2019s day-to-day operations, is falsely telling…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":219334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,8629,80,14053,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-219333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-local-politics","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-south-dallas","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115188148858892552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}