This Dallas Morning News article is about the proposal that Dallas officials have made to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to bring a new Dallas Cowboys stadium to Fair Park, which is the location of the Cotton Bowl, the stadium that the Cowboys’ left 33 years ago when they moved to Texas Stadium in Irving. Dallas officials are pitching the proposal after rejecting the Cowboys’ overture to redevelop an industrial area near downtown. Fair Park, which is already developed, would require less public investment and benefit from having the Cowboys’ stadium replace the outdated Cotton Bowl.
Within the past five years, Houston has lapped Dallas in terms of sports facilities and related infrastructure. During that time, Houston has built two retractable domed stadiums–Minute Maid Park and Reliant Stadium–and the new Toyota Center basketball arena. In addition, Minute Maid Park and Toyota Center are adjacent to Houston’s downtown Convention Center and related hotel complex, and Reliant Stadium is in Reliant Park, which includes the Reliant Center convention facility and the Astrodome. Each of these facilities played a major role in Houston’s successful hosting of Super Bowl XXXVIII, and the NFL’s recent announcement that it intends to return the Super Bowl to Houston toward the end of this decade. Those developments have been a tremendous boon for Houston’s ability to attract large conventions, which had been lagging for many years. If Dallas builds a new football stadium for the Cowboys, then it would become one of the increasingly few cities that has adequate facilities and infrastructure to accomodate major conventions and events such as the Super Bowl.