Potential Dallas City Hall replacement options come to light as early tours raise concerns

DALLAS - The City of Dallas is exploring potential replacements for the current City Hall building after a vote last week put the future of the iconic I.M. Pei-designed building in question.

Potential City Hall replacements revealed

What we know:

Dallas Business Journal reports that the owners of Bryan Tower in downtown Dallas have submitted a bid to become the next Dallas City Hall location.

Owned by real estate firm Pacific Elm Properties, Bryan Tower sits at 2001 Bryan Street, Dallas, TX 75201. The tower sits around a mile north of where the current City Hall building is on S. Akard Street.

Pacific Elm Properties owns several other properties in downtown Dallas, including AT&T's current headquarters on Commerce Street.

Other buildings that Dallas leaders have considered include Comerica Tower at 1717 Main Street, and Founders Square at 1000 Jackson Street, both in downtown Dallas.

Early tours prompt concern

For weeks, rumors persisted that members of Dallas City Council had toured potential replacement buildings. Today, Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert confirmed that tours had been held. Tolbert stated tours were offered to members of the city's finance committee by CBRE, the firm Dallas is using to look for a possible future home.

Tolbert gave the following statement to FOX 4 about the tours:

On November 12, 2025, the Dallas City Council directed the city manager to "review office space available for lease and purchase citywide" and report back to the Finance Committee with updates. As part of that due diligence process, members of the Finance Committee were invited to meet with CBRE and visit potential sites. Finance Committee members did not meet together in a quorum, no deliberations occurred and no decisions were made by any party.

Additionally, all council members were invited to meet one-on-one with the entire review team including CBRE and AECOM. Each council member had an opportunity to ask questions about the facility condition assessment, the real estate market engagement, and all other deliverables requested by the city council in November.

City council conversations about real estate are held in closed session in order to preserve confidentiality. As a result, we do not discuss real estate matters publicly or in the news media prior to city council action to preserve the city’s interests.

However, there are concerns the tours, which came before last Wednesday's vote to explore outside options, violated the Texas Open Meetings Act, which requires government bodies to disclose meetings to the public if enough members are present.

Elected leaders can also violate the law if they hold smaller meetings to avoid a quorum.

The City of Austin defines the law like this: "A 'walking quorum' occurs when there is a series of meetings or discussions outside a posted meeting that effectively constitute a quorum, even though a quorum is not physically present at one time in one place."

What they're saying:

FOX 4's Lori Brown spoke to Dallas City Councilmember Chad West about the potential violations the tours may have caused.

"When we were offered the tours, they were implicit we were not taking the whole committee, small groups, and we should not communicate with each other outside a noticed council meeting," West told Brown. "The first question when the city manager approached me as Chair of Finance was: is this going to be a quorum issue? They were very intentional about only having 2–3 of us at a time participate."

West suggested reaching out to Tammy Palomino, the Dallas City Attorney. Palomino announced her retirement two days before last week's vote, but told Brown her retirement decision had nothing to do with concerns over the tours.

"This is a personal decision. It's taken me a long time to decide. So in my letter of retirement, I said there's never a best time," Palomino said. "Tomorrow will be something else." Palomino also told Brown the Inspector General's Office would potentially investigate alleged violations of the Open Meetings Act.

Another Dallas City Councilman, Paul Ridley, told Brown: "My concern is that the invitations were not extended to all councilmembers and were kept secret from those who were not invited. I don't know whether the tours violated open meetings."

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The backstory:

Dallas City Council members approved a measure last Wednesday to explore options for leaving Dallas City Hall while, but left the door open to staying in the iconic building.

The measure was approved by a 9-6 vote after over 14 hours of debate and public hearing. The vote came after weeks of debate over the future of the I.M. Pei-designed building, originally opened in 1978.

Dallas residents have repeatedly voiced their desire to keep the building during the public hearings.

Experts who assessed Dallas City Hall put a $906 million to $1.4 billion price tag on keeping the iconic building for another 20 years, saying the 47-year-old building’s mechanical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and electrical systems don’t meet modern standards. 

The Dallas Mavericks are also potentially interested in the current City Hall location for a new arena, although no negotiations have taken place between the city and the team.

Councilman Chad West told FOX 4's Lori Brown that if the city decides to stay or leave City Hall, the resolution includes proposals to redevelop the land around the building.

"We still should be looking at redevelopment options to tie it into the convention center later on, because otherwise it just equals ghost town, which is what we have now," West said. "And of course, if we decide to move and City Hall itself gets repurposed or demolished and something gets built there, we need to have a projected plan for what that could look like as well."