During its Jan. 23 meeting, the Regional Transportation Council approved spending $1 million — to be issued in $250,000 increments — for a potential legal fight over a Fort Worth to Dallas high-speed rail route.
The 45-member council, an independent policy group of the North Central Texas Council of Governments composed of elected and appointed officials, decided to allocate the funding “in preparation for potential litigation” by Dallas-based Hunt Realty Investments Inc. related to an environmental assessment for high-speed rail in the Fort Worth-Dallas area.
The funding request — the group’s first-ever preemptive legal response — was approved in a 42-3 vote at the council’s meeting in Arlington. The issue was to be considered Jan. 9 but that meeting was postponed due to inclement weather.
Voting no on the matter was Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, Arlington Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Raul Gonzalez and Parker County Judge Pat Deen.
The Council of Governments said staff members received “numerous correspondences” from attorneys representing Hunt Realty and other Hunt-related entities concerned about a proposed high-speed rail route from Fort Worth and Arlington through downtown Dallas that includes the 20-acre Reunion property owned by Hunt. The company, which plans to invest $5 billion into development on land surrounding the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Reunion Tower, said the rail project would substantially affect those plans.
Hunt Realty Investments Inc. and other Hunt-related entities sent at least 16 separate items to the Council of Governments since Oct. 9, asserting various legal and factual claims regarding the environmental assessment as well as a 1975 master agreement between Hunt entities and the city of Dallas. About 2,500 pages of council documents were provided in response to the informal request.
In an Oct. 21 letter to the Council of Governments general counsel, attorney Eric Gambrell of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP said the current route alignment — known as Alignment B — “would undeniably threaten, irreparably harm and severely damage the Reunion development as well as the potential for new economic activity adjacent to Dallas’ new $3 billion Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.”
The Council of Governments’ continued action on high-speed rail “is in defiance and disregard” of a June resolution Dallas City Council members approved in protest of the proposed route, Gambrell said.
Dallas Convention Center construction, which will expand the facility’s space to 2.5 million square feet, began last year with a completion date of 2029.
At the meeting, Ross said he supported the funding for potential litigation since “someone’s already starting a pissing match” but favored approving the $1 million in one lump sum rather than in increments.
Ross said Gambrell’s letters were uncomplimentary of Arlington — and his own comments as mayor on high-speed rail — but added that the Council of Governments was likely to receive more legal letters about the issue.
“We’re looking at stacks of letters with more coming,” Ross said. “We owe the community to do our due diligence.”
The initial letter from Gambrell led to a flurry of correspondence between Gambrell and two council legal staffers.
In a Nov. 4 response to Gambrell, Council of Governments legal counsel Ken Kirkpatrick said the attorney’s letter “complains of purported contradictory statements” by council staff.
“Unfortunately, it misses the proper context of the evolving conversation about the potential high speed rail alignments over the past several months culminating in a path forward at the August (2024) RTC meeting,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “I encourage you to watch the June, July and August RTC meetings. If so, you will note that Motion to Approve the above two-pronged RTC direction to staff in Austin was made by a Dallas City councilmember, with the comment of leaving both options (West and East of the Hyatt) open until the economic impact study was complete for the City of Dallas to ‘weigh in on.’ Other City of Dallas council members indicated Dallas was ‘tapping the brakes’ until Dallas reconsiders its position.”
Kirkpatrick also said the Hunt lawyers’ supposition that the proposed alignment could “never be approved” was incorrect since it interferes with the rights of the city of Dallas and Hunt.
Kirkpatrick also responded on Dec. 31 that based on the council’s conversations with Amtrak and Texas Central about the Houston to Dallas route, there are no intentions to change dimensions of Dallas’ high-speed rail station.
Kirkpatrick said the Council of Governments looked for ways to avoid, minimize and mitigate any potential environmental and social impacts of the 2B alignment, as well as ways to enhance social and economic opportunities near the proposed alignment.
Those enhancements would include “direct pedestrian access between the proposed high speed rail station, the new Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Union Station, the Hyatt Regency and the proposed Reunion development through climate-controlled passageways.”
Gambrell has also questioned whether transportation director Michael Morris exceeded this authority granted to the Council of Governments under Texas Local Government Code. Kirkpatrick responded that state provision in the law “has no bearing on NCTCOG and the Regional Transportation Council’s federal responsibilities” as a Metropolitan Planning Organization.
Kirkpatrick said the proposed alignments remain “open until Dallas considers the economic impact study.”
In June 2024, the Dallas council unanimously opposed a downtown Dallas route so the city could conduct a long-range economic impact study to determine the effects of the rail project in the Central Business District. In their resolution, council members said, “the City Council does not support construction of any above ground passenger rail lines through downtown and adjacent areas aside from streetcar projects.”
The revised alignment for the rail project, developed after the resolution passed, is still being finalized but would generally take trains west of Interstate 35 East and run mostly parallel with South Riverfront Boulevard and extend over several businesses with an elevated track in that area.
The proposed route from Fort Worth and Arlington crosses Interstate 30 from the north and avoids the convention center before heading south to the high-speed rail station at The Cedars neighborhood south of the Dallas Central Business District.
The Fort Worth to Dallas route that could carry up to 30,000 daily passengers is currently more than four years into a lengthy engineering and environmental review process related to the National Environmental Policy Act. The regional agency is working with the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and other state and federal agencies on the proposal. The review process could be complete by March 2025 but the Council of Governments has been granted some flexibility for those requirements, officials have said.
The funding request calls for local funds to be used in $250,000 increments on a quarterly basis for additional legal support to assist in responding to the legal matters and other preparatory work. Executive staff will begin a search for a firm to handle the legal correspondence.
Morris said he would limit his comments to avoid triggering more legal letters, but added “we need to take this item and move it to other lawyers” so Council of Governments legal staff can instead handle vital transportation projects across North Texas.
Eric E. Garcia is a senior business reporter at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at eric.garcia@fortworthreport.org.
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This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
