Delays and spiraling costs on a plan to renovate an old North Oak Cliff hotel to provide homes for unhoused people drew the ire of council members on Monday.
The city council approved using $3.5 million in federal Covid-relief funds to buy the old Hotel Miramar in North Oak Cliff at the end of 2020. The plan was to adapt the building to offer long-term housing for up to 40 people. Since then, the project has been stymied with costly setbacks.
At a committee meeting, council members demanded explanations for delays that keep vulnerable people from receiving the housing and support they need to end their homelessness.
“I have been supportive from the very beginning. I want this to have a happy ending. I just don’t see a path forward with the way we’ve handled this project,” said Chad West, who represents the area.
Even now, West said, “significant uncertainty remains” around the cost and duration of renovations, who will manage the property once tenants move in, and how the city will fund its operations. After working to build community support and face down opposition — and even a political challenger — over the project, West said he’s disappointed, that his constituents “deserve better.”
“We clearly understand your frustration and understand what’s gone wrong,” Assistant City Manager Kimberly Tolbert told him, adding that “today, we are really focused on the opportunities we have to now move this forward.”
City council members, though, unleashed a series of sharp questions to discern what, exactly, went so wrong and how.
A series of ‘challenges’
After the city bought the building, it started a search for a private partner to convert the old hotel into apartments and manage the property. In June 2021, the city selected nonprofit CitySquare, but zoning changes held up final approvals.
Asbestos remediation added time and unexpected costs — about $224,000. The city’s original plan didn’t account for asbestos remediation in the old building, said Christine Crossley, who heads the city’s Office of Homeless Solutions. She hadn’t started working for the city when the original plan was hatched, but said that staff weren’t aware asbestos was present in the building, which was built in 1953.
“Every commercial project that I’ve done in Bishop Arts — and there’s been like seven of them — I’ve had an idea that there’s been asbestos in them because they’re old,” said council member Chad West. “We should know.”
In late 2022, CitySquare quit the partnership after an internal re-shuffling. The city hired the real estate firm CBRE to run a new procurement process to find a new firm to take over the design and renovation of the old hotel. This spring, the city’s attorneys determined that the “procurement process didn’t adhere to state and federal standards,” and it had to be voided, said Darwin Wade, the city’s assistant housing director.
“Ultimately, I want to know how did this happen, where did the responsibility lie…” said Council member Gay Donnell Willis. “When we know that, it just feels like we have some sort of damages — or the taxpayers do — on permanent supportive housing not being online, on construction costs, labor costs, et cetera, that’s been languishing.”
Wade said the failed procurement process was the result of shifting funding sources, inadequate public notice, and a failure by city staff to make sure CBRE understood the federal and state guidelines.
“As in any project of this magnitude, there will be challenges along the way,” Wade said.
Urgent need
Six months later, the city is now in final negotiations with an architecture firm to draw up designs for the renovation, and the city council will soon be asked to sign off on an “emergency procurement process” to get the construction work going.
According to city documents costs, it’ll cost another nearly $6 million to complete the Hotel Miramar renovations. The city will use 2017 bond funds earmarked for homeless housing for some of it, with the remainder coming from federal pandemic aid or potentially from Dallas County.
Crossley said the city is now targeting September 2024 for people to move into the building.
“The timeline of this is just pretty outrageous,” Council member Cara Mendelsohn said. “Here we sit…talking about over 4,000 people in our city homeless and the urgency of having housing, and we sat with a building for essentially three years vacant. And it’s not the only one.”
The city has also struggled to find a path forward after purchasing two other properties — one in Oak Cliff and another near Redbird Mall — that were intended to provide housing and services for people leaving homelessness.
“There are definitely practices that we have changed but I don’t know that they were in time to benefit this project,” Crossley said.
Another major question is who will manage the property once it’s up and running, and how the city will pay for it. Crossley said the city will begin lining up an operator soon. She pointed to a major federal grant aimed at reducing unsheltered homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties as a likely funding source.
Jesse Moreno, the chair of the housing committee, struck an optimistic note, and thanked staff for their candor about the project’s problems.
“That’s the first step in recognizing that we should be doing things differently,” Moreno said.
Got a tip? Christopher Connelly is KERA's One Crisis Away Reporter, exploring life on the financial edge. Email Christopher atcconnelly@kera.org.You can follow Christopher on Twitter @hithisischris.
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