Dallas journalists fear we’re overpaying for dangerous parking garage

- Construction begins on an apartment building atop this monstrosity

- Parking garage landlord tells Dallas News Guild that garage, which hasn’t seen a final inspection by the city, won’t be finished for two years

- Our workers have huge safety concerns

- Company refuses to help workers pay for parking even though we haven’t used the garage on a regular basis for two years

Here now is the unbelievable story of what DallasNews Corp. managers call the Harwood/Jackson parking garage across the street from our newsroom. Newsroom staffers who park there nicknamed it the “World’s Worst Parking Garage.”

We, the members of the Dallas News Guild, worry that the garage is dangerous and poorly constructed. We worry about our safety and that of the many others who park in this public underground lot.

A Dallas News Guild investigation has found that for years DallasNews Corp. employees have parked in this structure, yet the garage has not undergone a final inspection by the city.

The city of Dallas has yet to approve a permanent certificate of occupancy or conduct a fire safety check, according to officials in the city’s building inspection department.

Shockingly, our landlord in our Commerce Street building has started construction on an apartment building built atop the World’s Worst Parking Garage. [Watch this video of some of our safety concerns:]

Dallas Morning News real estate editor Steve Brown reported that the building will be seven stories tall. Developer Mehrdad Moayedi told us it will be a 10-story building. The garage has six underground levels.

The proposed building is shown in this drawing at right.

This is the ground floor, and it’s supposed to hold up a multi-story building?

DallasNews Corp. President and Chief Financial Officer Katy Murray has said she, too, is aware of safety concerns. She declined to comment for this report.

Moayedi, chief executive of Centurion American Development Group, told Dallas News Guild in two interviews that his garage cannot be completed until the apartment building atop the garage is finished.

He estimated that it will take another 18-24 months to construct the apartment building with 246 luxury rental units.

“The parking garage is not finished,” Moayedi said. “It can’t be finished until the building is built.”

Huge safety concerns

The World’s Worst Parking Garage has earned its nickname.

As one Dallas Morning News staffer told us, “The parking garage is deterring me from going back to the office more than COVID.”

How so? Let us count the ways:

1) Head-on collision. Due to spectacularly poor design, the down ramp to the first underground level narrows into a single lane precisely when the view of oncoming traffic is obstructed. We know of one DallasNews employee who drove into a head-on collision.

In the photo above, the middle car is parked, further blocking the ramp, already narrowed by the protruding sidewalk.

Moayedi told us the reason for the sidewalk protrusion causing two lanes to meld into one at the top of the entry ramp is because electrical equipment is buried underneath. We see it as a major design flaw.

2) Attack/assault. In 2019, a young woman who worked a second job at the Statler hotel (whose employees and guests use the lot, too) nearly died when she was attacked in the garage by a drunken man who smashed her head with a fire extinguisher leaving her unconscious and bleeding on the concrete floor. He stole her car. Hotel employees found the man crashed into a barrier. They held him until police arrived. He pleaded guilty to carjacking with an assault and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. The woman survived. Safety patrols of the garage were beefed up after the incident, but the garage feels anything but safe.

Asked about safety and security, Moayedi told us, “I don’t know what to do about it. Dallas police monitor it. We monitor. Especially during the day it’s pretty safe. But late at night, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning, there’s always bad elements running around downtown. Unfortunately, we’re trying to do the best we can, but that’s all we can do.”

3) Tripping and falling. Walkways contain a plethora of hazards, including gaping holes, uneven surfaces and bolts sticking out of the sidewalk.

Moayedi said, “I’ll research those and get back to you, buddy.”

The entryway to the garage is a hazard.

Bolts stick out of the meager sidewalk by the front entrance.

The fix. Put a wooden box over it and paint it orange.

Missing call button on the garage elevator. Photo taken June 6, 2022.

4) Catastrophic failures? Without a final inspection by the city, how are we to know that the structure can support a multi-story building? Workers have already repaired cracks in the concrete structure. Water gushes into the garage forming puddles on the concrete flooring.

Moayedi  said the garage can support a building on top. “You know that the city makes us go through structural engineers and go through the whole exercise that it is.”

What about the water gushing from the garage ceiling, even when it’s not raining?

Moayedi explained, “Those are plumbing lines for the apartments, and they should be plugged up shortly to keep that from happening. But unfortunately, they are open on top. But we can put a cap on it. We need to figure out what to do about that.”

Won’t the rebar inside the concrete supports be weakened by years of gushing water?

Moayedi said, “That ain’t gonna happen, but we’ll look at it.”

[Watch this video of one of the many water pipe releases:]

Parking increase

Under the terms of DallasNews Corp.’s contract with Moayedi’s company, parking costs went up.

We stopped using the dangerous underground garage two years ago when the pandemic closed our offices. 

In November, however, we received a memo from HR stating: “The company has been subsidizing the increase in the monthly parking fee and will continue to do this through December 2021.”

This has become a matter of confusion because during contract negotiations, we were informed for the first time that the company had not subsidized our parking fees.

In any case, this year, our parking fee increased from $40 to almost $87 a month.

Even though the newsroom was closed, the parking fees were deducted from our paychecks. [Note, though, that because no staffer is forced to use the garage, paycheck withdrawals are optional. However, most staffers use it.]

Our company expects to have more than $50 million in cash and no debt when the sale of the old Young Street building is completed.

Couldn’t the company use some of those proceeds to help us pay for parking?

Dallas News Guild believes that our company can afford to contribute to our parking – and even restore to each employee the amount of lost parking fees. That approximately $450 we’ve paid year-to-date would surely help us. The Guild believes it should not cost employees to go to work.

Broken exit sign on the ground floor.

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The Dallas Morning News is part of the oldest continuously operated business in Texas and the state’s leading newspaper. Proudly, we are the first major newspaper newsroom in the state to unionize in the modern era.

The Dallas News Guild covers the DMN and Al Dia, which includes more than 130 journalists across all departments of the newsroom, including reporters, columnists, data journalists, copy editors, librarians, web producers, audio producers, page designers, photographers and videographers. Eligible newsroom workers voted in October 2021 by a margin of over 75% to form a union.

Keep up with our bargaining efforts on Instagram and Twitter — @DallasNewsGuild — and at the NEWS tab at DallasNewsGuild.org.

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