Memo from my D-Spot (blush)

A couple of notes from downtown Dallas:

The downtown Chase Bank retail branch reads Now Open this morning! This is the only retail bank branch downtown per the DMN story, with the exception of a couple of credit unions. Up through yesterday the signs were taunting me with "coming soon." Yes it is silly to get excited about a bank branch in Dallas. They are on every corner in other parts of town. But downtown is becoming more residential and needs services like this and the adjacent new (and large) CVS.

The Christmas tree went up this week in Pegasus Plaza. I guess they have to get it up before they light it, and I assume the lighting will either be over the Thanksgiving weekend or at the December 1 Neiman Marcus Adolphus Children's Parade. But it still seems too early for Christmas trees. I plan on lamenting the early signs of Christmas every year until I'm too senile to care. By that time Frosty will be marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade.

Neimans is working on their window displays for Christmas. I would try to be a man's man and pretend I don't notice these things, but they come up with some pretty creative window displays there, so I'm curious as to what they will do this year.

The downtown safety patrol has been much more visible in the past couple of months, which is great for the neighborhood. This visible police presence helps make downtown feel like a safe place to be, which is important especially for residents and new businesses. These guys and gals are much more help to the area than the officer in the patrol car who gave me a traffic ticket for walking across the street on red back in February. (Seriously, that is a way to make downtown unwelcoming to pedestrians.)

The strange "where's your D-spot" campaign is in full swing, with brightly colored polka dots adorning empty store fronts. I'm not sure if the idea is to highlight that downtown has lots of empty store fronts or to attract trendy tenants who will think that odd question is cheeky and hip. But they are noticable. I guess we should hope the D-spot question is interpreted correctly by prospective tenants. Did Austin Powers work on this ad campaign? Just curious.

That is all for now. TGIF.