What should downtown Las Colinas do next? Well, it should do what Northlake can't do.

The city of Irving need to go back and incorporate parks into the urban area of Las Colinas.

The urban area of Las Colinas should now be considered a downtown area.  After all, it is now in the process of incorporating the missing ingredient of retail into the mix.  Let's consider what it does have in order to substantiate its designation as a central business district:

1) Lots of lead-in development to it.
2)  Similar to Uptown Dallas, the area has added lots of dense residential development during the last ten years.
3)  There are major corporations based in the immediate area as well as thousands of smaller corporate locations.
4)  It has added the infrastructure of a first class convention center and is about to add a convention center hotel.
5)  It has a symbiotic relationship with DFW airport similar to the relationship downtown Dallas has with Love Field.

What the urban center lacks and needs to consider doing going forward is floating some decks or actually filling in Lake Carolyn in order to add some parks.  The lake is large enough to add two of them.  I figure each can be about 200 foot square, almost the size of an acre, which would be large enough to fulfill the size of that downtown's needs.  At the same time, that size wouldn't take away the lake from still being a lake.  I figure that would be the perfect size.

The rest of the area of Lake Carolyn located north of N. O'Connor Blvd wouldn't need any parks as it stands to be the densest part of this downtown area.  The area could be bridged with a span however.

The park money to build these things is easily available.  Just don't spend any money on a study.  No experts need to apply here.  You can just look at a map and just do it.

Proposed parks in the middle of Lake Carolyn called Northpark and Southpark.

These parks, bridges, and spans should all be fenced in to keep people from falling into the water.  They should be built as inexpensive as possible.  Try to avoid making the same mistakes made by the city of Dallas.