Fort Worth’s Cultural District and 7th Street Corridor are changing rapidly now as work rolls forward on the Museum Place and West 7th projects. The cranes are up at Museum Place for the office/residential/retail building between Baily and 7th at the big intersection:
While the Museum Place live/work/retail building further down 7th is already topping out.
Meanwhile, the West 7th project next door continues to demolish block after block after block of existing structures, clearing the way for their big mixed-use development.
The Museum Place cranes can be seen in the background, looking over the West 7th demolitions (the old Taylor’s Rentals building in the center will be torn down soon).
Across 7th, another building is demolished for yet another part of the West 7th project.
In addition, survey crews have been seen at So7, indicating that work on the Shops & Lofts of So7 will be underway soon.
Finally, work has commenced on the Montgomery Plaza condos in the old Montgomery Ward building. It’s starting to become apparent how radically different 7th and the Cultural District are going to be in a very short while.
We mentioned during the podcast that another District 9 candidate forum would be held this Thursday, and now I’ve got the information on it, in a letter sent out by the Fairmount neighborhood association:
Our city councilwoman, Wendy Davis, is stepping down after several years of service to Fairmount and the south side. Six candidates are vying for your vote in the upcoming November 6 election. Who among the six political hopefuls will speak for you, and will be the most suitable to cover the issues that are relevant to Fairmount?
Your chance to decide when the candidates speak to you in the joint neighborhood forum to be held on Thursday, Oct. 18th at 7 p.m. at the Travis Ave. Baptist Church community center on Berry at Hemphill.
Mary Dulle; mkdulle@msn.com is gathering questions to send but you need to be quick, questions need to be submitted by the end of tomorrow, Tues 16th Oct. Note: Please send your questions directly to Mary’s email, not by response to this email as I cannot guarantee that I will forward them to Mary in time for consideration.
The candidates will each make a 2-minute presentation, then the moderator will ask questions of the candidates (selected from the questions submitted in advance). Questions will then be taken from the floor.
Another recent Holga pic - Pioneer Tower at the Will Rogers Memorial Center. Click the image for a bigger view:
Fort Worth, it’s time to do a little thinking.
I am speaking of the issues of the Southwest Parkway, the proposed streetcar light rail system, and the planned Southwest-to-Northeast rail line. Now, if you’ve read Fort Worthology for any length of time, you probably already know that I come down on the side of rail, but I’d like to make a few comparisons between these two groups of projects that might explain why.
- Southwest Parkway - Requires huge land acquisitions, demolition of private buildings, massive construction and lengthy neighborhood disruptions.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Requires no notable land acquisitions, no demolition of private buildings, little (Southwest-to-Northeast) to very moderate (streetcar light rail) construction, and very moderate (streetcar light rail) to no (Southwest-to-Northeast) neighborhood disruption.
- Southwest Parkway - Encourages increased amounts of car traffic, leading to more pollution, air quality problems, and air quality-related health problems.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Streetcars run virtually pollution-free through neighborhoods, and Southwest-to-Northeast’s diesel-electric engines produce low, very localized emissions far below that of a major new highway.
- Southwest Parkway - By creating the brief illusion of easier driving (more on that in a bit), the Southwest Parkway will dump more cars onto already clogged southwest Fort Worth surface streets.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - By allowing more people to move about the city without their cars, rail will help lighten traffic loads.
- Southwest Parkway - By creating the brief illusion of easier driving (more on that in a bit), the Southwest Parkway will encourage car-based suburban sprawl, a great deal of which already afflicts southwest Fort Worth. This sprawl development will force all trips to be car trips, increasing pollution and adding even more traffic to already clogged streets.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Encourages denser, walkable, mixed-use smart development, facilitating mobility without being tied to the car - cutting pollution, giving people the ability to get more daily exercise, and lightening traffic loads.
- Southwest Parkway - Due to the well-known condition known as “induced traffic,” the Southwest Parkway is doomed to be clogged. At first, it may make driving easier, which will lead more people to drive. As word gets out about the new easy drive, more people choose to drive it as well. On and on it will go. It won’t be long before so many people choose to drive, since it’s “easier,” that the new road becomes clogged with traffic (and in turn further clogs surrounding surface streets). Then, the drumbeat begins for more new roads or widening existing roads. If either of those two things are done, the cycle of induced traffic repeats itself.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Does not suffer from “induced traffic.” As ridership increases, more (and/or more frequent) trains can be added to keep up with demand, without forcing widening of the line. This also means fewer cars being driven through these areas, reducing congestion on surface streets.
- Southwest Parkway - Serves mainly southwest Fort Worth to downtown.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Serves (on Southwest-to-Northeast) southwest Fort Worth, downtown, northeast Fort Worth, D/FW Airport, Grapevine; serves (streetcar light rail) the near west side and Cultural District, Fort Worth South, TCU, Berry Street, the hospitals, downtown, Uptown, the Mercado Village, the Stockyards, the Six Points Village, east Rosedale, Texas Wesleyan, and areas surrounding those areas.
Now, you might be asking why I’m stacking the deck, comparing two rail systems to the one Southwest Parkway. Unfair, you say? Well, chew on this:
- Southwest Parkway - Current price estimate is $970 million.
- Streetcar light rail and Southwest-to-Northeast rail - Streetcar estimates are $150-$225 million, Southwest-to-Northeast estimate is $390 million.
I’m comparing two rail systems to the Southwest Parkway to show that we can have *both* rail systems for $540 to $615 million. For $355 to $430 million LESS than ONE disruptive tollroad, we can have two transit options that would tie together (and with the TRE) to create a fully-integrated transit system that would serve far, far more people and areas of the city than this one tollroad. A transit system that would promote sustainable smart growth, reduce automotive dependency, reduce air pollution, and be an enhancement to and focal point of neighborhoods rather than a disruption and divider.
$970 million for a tollroad. $540-$615 million for both proposed/planned rail transit systems.
Just something to think about, Fort Worth.
Another photo from my recently-developed roll of Holga photos - this time, a view from the center passageway at Montgomery Plaza.
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Now online - the 12th installment of Fort Worth’s finest podcast. Starring Steve-o of The Caravan of Dreams, Pete of Cowtown Chronicles, Bernie Scheffler, District 9 City Council candidate and owner of Panther City Bicycles, Pete G. of 1/3 Stop Vignette, and yours truly.
This week: Steve-o and Bernie talk about the recent voter forum held by the League of Women Voters, and Bernie talks about this Thursday’s forum being put on by the neighborhood associations of District 9. I go off on a little rant about light rail, and slam the (stupid, useless, wasteful) Southwest Parkway. We welcome a new voice, Pete Geniella, ace photographer of 1/3 Stop Vignette. We talk about the Lone Star International Film Festival, coming to downtown in November. (Bernie really wants Rod Roddy to come host, even though he’s dead.) Finally, a little teaser of some news coming next week - we’re working on something very interesting.
Head on over to Cowtown Chronicles to download the podcast, or subscribe via iTunes. iTunes subscribers - the episode is ready for download. Open iTunes and get it!
Another shot from my just-developed roll of photos from my Holga - this time, it’s the So7 Townhomes off 7th just outside downtown. Click the image for a bigger view:
The Dallas Business Journal is reporting that the Commerce Building (or what history buffs prefer to call the Fair Building) and the Oil & Gas Building on 7th have been sold to a private New York-based investing firm, RYLB FW Properties. The firm is said to be planning a “major renovation.”
Details were not given, but it will be interesting to see what “major renovation” actually means. My guess is that it’s just a gutting and redoing of the interior, but it’d be great if they’d also go ahead and remove that awful shared base that was stuck on the buildings by a previous remodeling and restore both building’s original bases. I doubt they’re going to do that, but wouldn’t it be nice?
I’ve just gotten back a roll of photos taken with my Holga camera, and I’d like to share some of them with you. The Holga takes very odd, somewhat surreal-feeling photos, and they can turn out quite cool. Here’s a pic of Panther City Bicycles on Magnolia - click for a bigger view:
Downtown’s new Omni Hotel continues to rise from its four-story excavation alongside the Convention Center. Here are a few night photos of the progress that’s being made. This view shows that the sixth floor of the condo tower portion of the building is being worked on.
On the Convention Center side, crews have been busy installing a series of steel beams. These beams are for the hotel’s ballroom, which, with its large open span, can be handled better by steel rather than concrete.
Here’s a close-up of the ballroom area:
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