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Thanks-Giving Foundation was due almost $500,000 on April 1 per the agreement between the nonprofit and the city involving an underground pedestrian concourse the city demanded in the early 1970s. But in a letter City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert sent to Thanks-Giving Foundation President and CEO Kyle Ogden in November, that money\u2019s no more.<\/p>\n
Because the city can no longer afford it, Tolbert wrote. And because of the \u201clack of public benefit\u201d of the underground walkway the city once demanded. And because the council decided against including it in the most recent budget. Except it did so without public discussion: Council member Chad West, chair of the finance committee, confirmed Thursday that the council told Tolbert during executive session not to fund Thanks-Giving Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which is one heck of a way to break up with your longtime partner. In secret.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an existential crisis for us, frankly,\u201d Ogden told me Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Vestiges of a downtown deli remains in the tunnels beneath Thanks-Giving Square, which the nonprofit foundation has been leasing to the city since 1973.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
Because half of the nonprofit\u2019s annual revenue of $800,000 or so comes from the city. And that money goes toward keeping the fountains running and the park clean and the doors to the chapel open to the 300,000 visitors the foundation says it attracts annually,\u00a0many from out of state based on the copious notes tacked to the chapel\u2019s wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not ready to say that we give up if we don\u2019t get this done,\u201d said Ogden, who was caught off guard by the city\u2019s refusal to pay. \u201cI mean, I\u2019m out in the community trying to raise money to bridge this gap because we don\u2019t know how long we\u2019re going to be without revenue from the city. But it\u2019s a potentially lethal blow.\u201d<\/p>\n
This has been a long time coming\u00a0\u2014 two years, at least, when the City Council first wrestled with freezing the foundation\u2019s funding. Now it\u2019s gone altogether, out of the last budget and likely those to come based on Tolbert\u2019s November letter, obtained by The Dallas Morning News, in which she said the city could restructure the deal, terminate the 75-year lease agreement or go to court \u201cto determine the enforceability of the lease.\u201d<\/p>\n
The foundation has a proposed fix that involves taking over the rat-infested Bullington Street Subsurface Truck Terminal beneath the park, which was built by the city as part of its 1973 agreement with the foundation. At the moment, the high-rises around the square, including apartments and offices, use the underground terminal for storage, deliveries and trash and recycling collection.<\/p>\n
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According to recent reporting, the city collects less than $50,000 in revenue<\/a> from the surrounding buildings using the terminal. The foundation hopes to assume the truck terminal\u2019s operations from the city to offset some of the lost revenue.<\/p>\n In July 1971, architect Philip Johnson showed off a model of his Thanks-Giving Square, which would include the chapel in which foundation president and CEO Kyle Ogden, far left, and chairman Christopher Trowbridge ran into several architecture students Monday morning sketching, photographing and starting at the spiraling stained glass above.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we have not been able to get from the city what their revenue has been for the truck terminal,\u201d said Christopher Trowbridge, chairman of the Thanks-Giving Foundation. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen the agreements between the buildings and the city for the truck terminal.\u201d<\/p>\n With the payment date approaching, Ogden told Tolbert in a Feb. 23 email that without a path forward, he had no choice but to start reaching out to council members and other civic leaders to let them know of the foundation\u2019s pending disaster. Tolbert told him not to do that.<\/p>\n In a Feb. 26 email, Tolbert told Ogden she understood \u201cthe willingness of the Thanks-Giving Foundation Board Committee to collaborate with the City on a positive resolution.\u201d But she asked him to \u201cdelay outreach to City Council members,\u201d and said she would brief the council on March 4. Which she did, when the council discussed \u201cthe purchase, exchange, lease, or value\u201d of the truck terminal. Behind closed doors<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Five days later, Donzell Gipson\u00a0\u2014 the assistant city manager who has since retired<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 told Ogden the city \u201cdoes not intend to reopen the discussion on options for the Thanks-Giving Foundation to operate\/manage the Bullington Truck Terminal.\u201d Gipson also said the city no longer wants that access to the disused downtown tunnels, a part of the Dallas Pedestrian Network<\/a>, where Cafe Momentum and a smaller nonprofit lease office space beneath Thanks-Giving Square.<\/p>\n Far as the city\u2019s concerned, it no longer owes Thanks-Giving Square a cent and is done talking about it. That\u2019s quite the downtown development strategy they got there at 1500 Marilla.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n