A new practice facility for the Dallas Wings was supposed to be a symbol of the city’s commitment to women’s professional basketball. Instead, it’s becoming something else entirely — a cautionary tale about cost overruns, missed deadlines, and municipal accountability.
The project, located in West Oak Cliff, is now a full year behind schedule and has ballooned $27 million over its original budget, according to new figures surfaced during Dallas City Council discussions. What began as a $54 million investment has swelled to more than $81 million — and construction hasn’t even broken ground yet. The Wings, who had been hoping to leave Arlington’s College Park Center behind, will now be staying there through at least the 2026 WNBA season, with the practice facility not expected to be completed until 2027 at the earliest.
A Project Slipping Through the Cracks
How bad is it? Bad enough that Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn didn’t mince words when addressing the situation publicly. “It looks terrible for us, it’s causing problems for the team,” she said. “And really, it’s just another notch in the belt of another failed real estate project that we have not delivered on time or on budget.” That’s not the kind of quote a city wants attached to a flagship sports development initiative.
The city is already paying the price — literally. Dallas is on the hook for $653,000 in delay fees, a figure that has quietly accumulated as the project stalled. Now, council members are weighing a significant shift in how the facility gets finished: transferring control to the Wings themselves, allowing the team to fund and oversee the remaining construction. It’s an unusual arrangement, and it signals just how tangled the situation has become.
Promises Made, Promises Missed
Still, it’s worth remembering how confident city leadership once sounded. Not long ago, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert stood before stakeholders and made a direct pledge. “I want to say as we go into the next phase, we want you to hold us accountable,” she stated. “And my commitment is that we will deliver this practice facility for you by the spring of 2026.” That deadline has now passed in spirit, if not yet on the calendar — and the credibility gap is widening.
The Wings’ situation is also complicated by the broader context of Dallas’s downtown development ambitions. The practice facility is entangled with ongoing convention center redevelopment drama, meaning the delays aren’t happening in a vacuum. They’re part of a larger pattern of infrastructure promises that the city has struggled to fulfill. For a franchise trying to build momentum — on and off the court — that’s a frustrating backdrop.
What’s at Stake for the Wings
The Wings aren’t just waiting on a building. They’re waiting on the infrastructure that signals a city’s genuine investment in its WNBA franchise — training space, facilities, proximity to the downtown arena that was supposed to anchor a new era for the team. Every month of delay is another month the organization operates at a competitive disadvantage, and another month that Dallas’s rhetoric about supporting women’s sports rings a little hollow.
That’s the catch. The city wants credit for backing the Wings. But backing a team means more than a ribbon-cutting announcement — it means delivering the building, on time, within budget, and without making a council member describe the whole endeavor as “another failed real estate project” on the record.
Whether handing the reins to the Wings themselves will finally get the facility built — or simply transfer the headache — remains to be seen. Either way, Dallas is running out of runway to get this right.
