Souvenir footballs, awards and framed photographs were piled high at Dallas City Hall, where longtime southern Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins held up an election certificate.
“I’ve got eight of those,” he said with excitement, during an interview with The Dallas Morning News before leaving office.
For southern Dallas, Atkins’ departure from District 8, along with the exit of Carolyn King Arnold, who represented south Oak Cliff’s District 4, marks a major change in leadership for the area below Interstate 30. Both reached their term limits. Atkins held his seat for 16 of the past 18 years. Arnold oversaw her district for nearly a decade.
Council members Lorie Blair and Maxie Johnson succeeded Atkins and Arnold, respectively.
Arnold and Atkins’ names have become synonymous with large swaths of southern Dallas. Atkins led a coalition of 14 distinct personalities, including himself, as mayor pro tem, a role that made him the acting mayor in the top elected official’s absence. He led the economic development committee and chaired the committee tasked with hiring the permanent city manager as well as the group tasked with developing a plan to fund the police and fire pension system.
Arnold, on the other hand, was widely seen as a council member who elevated the voices of her community amid pressures of growth and development. She often sided with a coalition of council members who have demanded the city tailor massive undertakings such as parking reform and a new land-use guide for a city that’s predominantly car-centric and matches the needs of current residents and the quality of the existing infrastructure.
Throughout their tenure, both Atkins and Arnold pointed to the places where they find joy and hope — in the commerce at a beloved local retail center, rolling hills, lush parks and historic districts — while grappling with decades of underinvestment and neglect that have set their districts on the back foot.
Interstate 30 has divided Dallas when it comes to health, education and income, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Southern Dallas has long been characterized by a longstanding desire for economic growth, infrastructure and development that benefits its residents.
Some residents face limited access to quality grocery stores and health care.
Whether it’s Shingle Mountain — the more than 700,000 tons of roofing debris in a southern Dallas neighborhood — or the contamination in Cadillac Heights by nearby smelters, both districts have environmental challenges. As they leave office, Arnold and Atkins touted their success and reflected on where they’d like to see progress, remarking on the challenges of using their place in local government to forge change.
South Oak Cliff sees development, history
Arnold stood before a pristine neighborhood marker at the corner of North Denley Drive and Hutchins Avenue.
“Look at how beautiful that is,” she said, turning to take in the Dallas skyline. She was at The Bottom District, near the Trinity River levees and Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, where she once taught high school.
It’s just one area where Arnold said revitalization plans, years in the making, are finally being realized. The stop in the historically Black neighborhood was the beginning of a tour she gave The News reporters. Arnold frequently travels the district, admiring sprawling green spaces and stopping by Wingfield’s, a neighborhood haunt for the best burgers, she said.
Arnold visited stretches of South Beckley Avenue, envisioning how neighbors and business owners could benefit from a nearby development she once fought: Halperin Park. Arnold said she fought it because she wanted to advocate for residents who didn’t have the time to understand decisions.
“I had to listen to the community and tell their position, because they feared gentrification,” Arnold said.
Arnold is known to have resisted projects she is not certain about. Pressures of gentrification can reduce affordability in an area vulnerable to it, especially considering the city and state’s history of neglect in southern Dallas.
When I-35E was built, it cut through neighborhoods. The deck park, under construction atop the interstate, is seen as a bridge for neighborhoods in Oak Cliff, with its impact likely felt in the Tenth Street Historic District, one of the only remaining intact freedmen’s towns in the nation.
Here, narrow roads and concrete stairs lead to empty lots and boarded-up houses. The area retains remnants of a policy that allowed the city to demolish homes in Landmark Districts smaller than 3,000 square feet, affecting houses in the area.
At the Oak Cliff Cemetery, a historic site, Arnold marveled at the tombstones and the history held for countless families of formerly enslaved residents. In the halls of Big T Plaza, a retail center, she stopped by various storefronts, including Glorious Gherkins, known for their famed pickles, the former council member said with pride.
The plaza has experienced bouts of violence. The owner and the city have taken security measures, including placing high-tech cameras in the parking lot, she said, adding emphatically that the perceptions of safety often gloss over the plaza’s importance as a longstanding economic engine.
She visited the Glendale Shopping Center, stopping to see Dr. Dralves Edwards, who runs a clinic. His work is important, she said, given the limited number of nearby hospitals and health care options in southern Dallas.
The district has seen some of the lowest life expectancies in Dallas County and high rates of chronic disease.
There were plenty of moments when Arnold pointed to areas she worked to turn around with policy or wished she had seen to completion. One was Roland G. Parrish Park, a 25-acre greenspace in Cadillac Heights, where ground was broken in June after several delays.
Arnold’s career as a councilwoman began in 2015. She lost to former council member Dwaine Carraway in 2017 and regained her seat in 2018 in a special election after her predecessor pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, admitting to accepting bribes.
Earlier this year, Arnold was ruled ineligible for the 2025 election after voters opted for a charter amendment that changed the rules around term limits in the city. Under the old rules, she would’ve been eligible for one more two-year term. Arnold has said she didn’t believe the new rules should be enforced retroactively. But a state appeals court judge ruled against her, saying Arnold waited too long to challenge the city’s ruling that she was ineligible.
Atkins looks back on nearly two decades
While clearing his office of photographs, memorabilia and awards, Atkins rummaged through the stacks and unveiled a picture. “Do you know who this is?” he asked.
It was Magic Johnson, the famed Los Angeles Lakers basketball player. Atkins picked up another. “Who is this person?” he asked, holding a picture of himself with former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Atkins recalled his first run for office, when he entered a runoff in 2007 against Judge Charles Rose. It was filled with split endorsements in a district that encompasses the areas of Red Bird, Highland Hills and Kleberg-Riley.
“We fought like cats and dogs,” he said. When Atkins defeated Rose, Rose stuck his claim to Highland Hills. But over time, Atkins said, they became great friends.
Now, at the end of Atkins’ 16-year tenure, a park is named after the judge, who died in 2019. The 40-acre greenspace was born from a long-vacant parcel of land and features trails, playgrounds and other amenities. At the park’s opening ceremony, Atkins said it felt like a full-circle moment.
For Atkins, the past two decades were about finding ways to streamline and drive economic development within the city. He started as a businessman, not a politician.
It was a lawsuit he had with the city, as master leaseholder at Dallas Executive Airport, not far from the RedBird mall, that propelled him to public office. Atkins eventually won the suit.
With encouragement from others, he loaned himself over $100,000 and ran for office. When he reached his term limit in 2015, the community brought him back two years later.
“I ran again, like a fool!” he said, exuding the confidence of a man who is used to coming out on top.
In the recent election, Atkins endorsed his former city plan commissioner, Lorie Blair, over his former opponent, Erik Wilson. In the end, Blair won in a runoff, Atkins said with a Cheshire-cat grin.
Atkins’ tenure has not been without controversy. In 2015, toward the end of his first round at City Hall, Atkins was found guilty of misdemeanor assault by a municipal court for physically shaking a 911 call-taker after she refused to let him in City Hall through a secured doorway.
He was also criticized for his handling of the city manager search last year, when a behind-the-scenes fight between council members over transparency and the pace of the search spilled into the public arena, prompting two conflicting meetings between two factions of the City Council.
The outgoing mayor pro tem’s tenure has been marked by successes such as The Shops at RedBird, a mixed-use redevelopment with room for retail, medical support and restaurants that opened in 2015. It would take him nearly two decades to get officials to build an exit ramp that could allow residents to access the mall and activate the space.
The widest district in the city, Atkins’ district stretched from the Red Bird area toward southeast Dallas. Atkins has faced a litany of challenges in shepherding infrastructure improvements. He was a prominent member of the task force created to develop a vision for growing the southern half of the city.
He saw the development of the Inland Port, an industrial hub that grew manufacturing and shipping because of the access for three major interstates—I-20, I-45 and I-35—and the Union Pacific rail line.
As the two longtime council members left their offices, two more joined June 16 to take the baton. Blair leads District 8, and Johnson succeeds Arnold.
Atkins had some parting words for the incoming members.
“Put all your heart into it, like it’s your last day of work,” he said. “Don’t treat this as a job. Don’t treat it as political. Just do what’s right and what’s best for the city.”
Clarification: Additional information was added to this story to clarify the reasoning behind a state appeals court decision to deny Carolyn King Arnold’s petition to get onto the May 3 election ballot.
Staff researcher Spencer Bevis contributed to this report.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.
