Mayor Tom Leppert said this week that he is working with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to bring the College Football Hall of Fame to downtown Dallas.
The partnership comes as a surprise because Arlington - the site of the Cowboys' new stadium - also would love to be home to the attraction currently located in South Bend, Ind. Arlington city leaders said they were unaware that Jones was working with Dallas instead of exploring the possibility of putting the Hall of Fame in the new stadium.
"All I can tell you is we are working closely with Jerry Jones, who is on the board of the Hall of Fame. Roger [Staubach], myself and Jerry are working hard on getting it to downtown Dallas,"
Leppert said.
Leppert announced in April that Dallas was seeking to bring the Hall of Fame to a site directly across the street from the planned convention center hotel at Akard and Young streets.
Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said Thursday this is the first he's heard about Jones and Dallas officials teaming up on that effort. He said there had been talks previously about trying to move the Hall of Fame inside the Cowboys' new $1.15 billion stadium.
"I thought at one time that we had a really good chance,"
Cluck said.
Recently, he said he's become less confident about Arlington's chances and he's "OK"
with Jones' decision to back Dallas. Cluck said he was told that there might not be enough room in the stadium to accommodate a new Hall of Fame.
Cowboys spokesman Brett Daniels said Thursday the Cowboys have been re-evaluating the approach to the Hall of Fame for the past few weeks. He said the team is now fully behind Leppert's effort.
"The structural needs of the College Football Hall of Fame didn't match up with the space available in the stadium,"
Daniels said.
In the spring, a Hall of Fame executive said he was flattered by the overtures from Dallas and Arlington, but the attraction had no plans to relocate.
Steve Hatchell, president of the Irving-based National Football Foundation, which oversees the Hall of Fame, did not return phone calls seeking comment this week.
Daniels said Cowboys officials met a few weeks ago at their Valley Ranch offices with representatives from the Hall of Fame. He declined to say who was at the meeting.
He said the Hall of Fame officials talked about their plans for the facility but wouldn't elaborate.
The Dallas effort has lined up politicians, civic leaders and athletes to press for the relocation of the Hall of Fame. The announcement in April of that high-powered committee drew charges that Leppert was engaging in a political ploy to push the controversial hotel forward, and that Dallas had little chance of getting the hall.
But Leppert said efforts to persuade Hall of Fame officials to bring it here are in full swing. He said Jones is interested in a plan that would have the hall include "programmatic"
links with the Cowboys and the new stadium.
The committee has offered to raise money to pay for the move and construction of a new facility to enhance tourism downtown.
Cluck said financing is what could keep Arlington out of the bidding. He said that all the discussions with Hall of Fame officials involved moving the facility to Cowboys Stadium.
"If we could have found the space, I think we would be pressing really hard to bring them to the stadium,"
Cluck said. "But they just needed too much space."
The city also could try to persuade the museum to move to a site near the stadium, but Cluck said that probably would not be affordable.
The new Cowboys Stadium was the centerpiece of Arlington's effort to boost its standing as a tourist destination. A year ago, officials with the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame announced they were moving their facility to Arlington.
The Cowboys also plan to create their own team Hall of Fame at the stadium, but that's not expected to happen until next year. The stadium already draws visitors who want to look at the massive structure.
Arlington council member Robert Rivera said that Arlington might still be interested if Dallas' effort failed and the price was right.
That is, after all, how Arlington officials were able to bring the Cowboys to Arlington.
