News
Arch Over Dallas
June 29, 2010
| Move over Renaissance Tower, there's a new skyline icon: the gleaming white 400' arch on the $117M Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, which topped off Saturday. We hear US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison brought doughnuts to the watch party. (Candy canes might have been more geometrically appropriate, but we'll forgive her.) | |
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| The final arch piece weighed 150 tons. A champagne toast, weighing 8 fluid ounces, was raised Monday on the 7th floor of 2323 Victory Ave. in the offices of Haynes & Boone. Trinity Trust Foundation prez/CEO Gail Thomas (center), with Haynes & Boone co-founder Mike Boone and partner George Bramblett Jr., calls the Trinity River Project one of the most ambitious public works efforts in the nation and says the arch provides a visible sign that Dallas is a 21st century city. | |
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| Visible from Haynes & Boone, the first of the 11-piece arch was placed on May 28. The Santiago Calatrava-designed bridge is scheduled to open in 2011. A collaborative effort by the City of Dallas, the Texas DOT, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Williams Bros., and J.D. Abrams, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge will connect Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas across the Trinity River to Woodall Rodgers in downtown. Gail tells us the bridge is part of the $2B Trinity project, one of the largest urban developments in the nation, stretching 20 miles through Dallas and encompassing 10k acres. | |
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| Margaret Hunt Hill's family was instrumental in contributing funds to the project and among those toasted at the event. Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert (here with Al Hill Jr., son of the late Margaret Hunt Hill, and Kay & Trinity Trust chairwoman Mary McDermott Cook) says it will be Dallas' signature landmark for The Trinity project. The arch is one of many “great things happening in the city,†including the Museum Tower condo groundbreaking last week. He also pointed to the $185M Museum of Science and History construction. |
