In the comments on yesterday’s post, Urbndwlr wrote the following:

It would be interesting to know how many residential units and how many office employees are within 1/4 mile of the Royal Blue grocery. I have heard proponents of a downtown bodega/grocery in Fort Worth say that the residential critical mass isn’t sufficient, however I’m quite certain that Austin’s downtown does not have any pockets of residential density that exceeds that of Throckmorton between 3rd and 4th in Fort Worth. (about 420 units) plus an extremely dense daytime office population within 3-4 blocks. That is exciting to read that Royal Blue is a success story so far. I would love to understand why that has worked in spite of conventional wisdom.

The Royal Blue in the 2nd Street District is in the ground floor of an AMLI development that has 220 apartments, and down the street is AMLI’s other 2nd Street development, AMLI on 2nd, with 231 units. There are two small office buildings (around 8 stories) in the district and Austin City Hall. The second Royal Blue going in at the 360 Condos tower will be on the ground floor of 430 residences. Apart from those developments, there are some other things several blocks away and some new stuff under construction that aren’t occupied yet.

Clearly, there is something about that approx. 450 residents in close proximity that enables Royal Blue to work, and as more infill is built they’ll be in even better shape. Between The Tower, Sundance West, and Sanger Lofts, there are around 430 units, and more within a pretty easy walk (and an even easier future streetcar ride), like the Kress Lofts, Houston Place Lofts, the Flatiron Building, the Electric Building, the Neil P., the Omni, etc. And of course, there are no shortage of office buildings near that residential concentration like the Chase Building and the Carnegie plus the other offices a few blocks away.

Over the holidays, Fort Worthology took a car-free, totally transit-and-walking-based vacation to our nation…err, state’s capitol, and I’m putting together some posts based on some of the transit and urbanism that we experienced. One thing that Austin’s got in spades that a lot of people around urban Fort Worth have been pining for are urban grocery stores.

Downtown Austin has, of course, a full Whole Foods, in the ground floor of the Whole Foods headquarters building. It’s an impressive store, managing to cram a very complete and full-range Whole Foods into a (mostly) urban form in a rapidly redeveloping neighborhood. I’ll show some photos of the downtown Whole Foods later, but for now I’d like to turn my attention to an even cooler local establishment: Royal Blue Grocery. Read the rest of this entry »

After a long-awaited holiday hiatus, Fort Worthology is back! To celebrate the new year, here’s a refreshed look to go with 2009.

Here’s a little Christmas gift for everybody – a new addition to the Fort Worth skyline. Trinity Terrace, the retirement condo development which has called Downtown’s Upper West Side home for many years, has already given us a new skyscraper in the last few years with the City Tower. Now, they’ve revealed the next phase of their development, which will be called River Tower. The new tower will be 20 stories in all, with a height of 238 feet. The new tower will be built on the northwest corner of the Trinity Terrace block bounded by Texas, 10th, Penn, and Fournier streets.

Here are renderings and models of the new tower. River Tower has been designed by the same firm that designed the City Tower: Ankrom Moisan, of Portland, Oregon.

Neil P. Anderson Building, Downtown Fort Worth – niceness = proposed Dallas Convention Center Hotel.

(Apologies to Dallasites, but sheesh…that’s one uninspired hotel design.)

Sundance Morning Christmas Tree s, originally uploaded by TowerGuy.

Hope everybody out there has a wonderful Christmas. Posting here will likely be pretty light for the duration of the holiday period, unless something notable occurs or I take/find a cool photo to share.

Incidentally, a shout out to Flickr user TowerGuy who snapped this photo of the Sundance Square Christmas tree.

The reach of Fort Worthology sometimes surprises even me. A reader named Alex, from Seattle, sent me this cell phone video he shot near his home in Seattle’s urban core. It shows the South Lake Union streetcar merrily rolling along in a frozen, snowy streetscape, seemingly unfazed by the weather. While it’s hard to see in the video, Alex tells me that off in the background, one of Seattle’s conventional buses can be seen sliding around on the ice and snow, failing to get anywhere.

He also writes of the performance of transit in the ice & snow:

No bus is on time. 0% on-time performance on all routes in the past hour according to Metro – except for route 98: South Lake Union Streetcar. All bus service into and out of my neighborhood is cancelled due to current conditions.

In fact, he points out that over 120 bus routes were shut down due to inclement weather, but the South Lake Union Streetcar is not only up and running, but maintaining at least some level of on-time performance.

While Fort Worth’s winter weather doesn’t often reach the level of Seattle’s, we absolutely do have our problems with ice storms during the cold months around these parts. It’s reassuring to know that the modern streetcar is as versatile and capable in foul weather conditions as this.

It’s been a little while since we checked in on the progress of the Omni Hotel & Condos, and the new city parking garage next door, in Downtown. Since our last visit, the Omni has really been moving quickly towards completion. As seen above, about the only thing left on the condo tower portion of the building (on the exterior, at least) is the completion of balconies.

The Omni Hotel signage is now going up as well. I’ve also heard from a few sources that the building may have a more elaborate night lighting scheme than originally intended – perhaps even including the backlighting of the building’s glass crown, similar to the Pier 1/Chesapeake Energy building.

Next door, the new city parking garage has made rapid progress as well. You can see the brick and stone portions of the facade are very complete, and work is beginning to turn to the glass corners and the heavily ornamented parts of the Houston and Throckmorton facades.

On the Houston facade, the framing in the center is where the tall black columns, inspired by the Public Safety & Courts/former City Hall building, will be installed.

The Art Deco-inspired Throckmorton facade is making good progress as well. This side will be finished out with giant multicolored glass fins projecting out from the facade.

Also on the Throckmorton side, one of the colored glass corners is being installed as well.

If you’re thinking the Houston and Throckmorton facades of the parking garage look like they have storefronts, that’s because they do – both side will feature ground-floor retail. Vehicular entrances and exits will be on the side streets.

The Omni Hotel itself is supposed to open by the end of the year, and the condos in January, based on the last timeline I was told. They’re definitely putting in the work to get the building finished out. It’s made a dramatic impact on the Fort Worth skyline and even though I’m more of a traditional architecture sort, I have to say I really like the way the Omni has turned out.

Here’s a late news alert: Channel 8 will be running a story about the pending demolition of the Brace Building at 8th Avenue & Magnolia tonight on the 10:00 news, and they’re interviewing yours truly as part of the story. Tune in tonight!

EDIT: I’m guessing the story got bumped from tonight’s linup. Hopefully, it’ll run soon.

More details are coming out about the ongoing makeover that Fort Worth South, Inc. is giving to Magnolia Avenue in the Near Southside. Earlier this year, the organization kicked off the start of a refresh for the district’s signature street, beginning with the repair of rotted benches and replacement of dead trees. The project is set to continue with the repair of sidewalks and possible trash can replacements and will be crowned by the re-striping of Magnolia into a “Complete Streets” configuration this spring, featuring a reduction in car travel lanes from four to two, the addition of a dedicated center turn lane, and the addition of dedicated bicycle-only lanes.

Now, there’s news of another addition to Magnolia in the works. Shown in the photo above is a tree in front of Fort Worth South’s headquarters on Mistletoe Boulevard near Baylor All-Saints. The tree is a prototype of a new lighting scheme that Fort Worth South is planning for Magnolia. The plan would see all the trees on Magnolia from 8th Avenue to Hemphill covered with these nets of lights and lit each night – on the order of around 138 trees in all.

The prototype’s lit trunk would not be used on Magnolia – just the branches would feature lights – but the example above does show the density of lights. The new tree lighting is only similar to the long-running tree lights in Sundance Square in appearance; the planned Magnolia lights are cutting-edge LED systems, said to use 1/3 the power of normal Christmas-type lights and last 6-8 years.

Fort Worth South is working on the details of the system, and there’s hope that the new tree lights will be in place by the next Arts Goggle in March if all goes well. It would certainly be an impressive addition to the Magnolia streetscape, and would likely draw more activity to Magnolia’s businesses…making whatever cost it would take to run the system’s efficient LED lights seem minimal compared to the increased revenue for local businesses (and the additional taxes that would be generated from said activity). Personally, I think it’s a win for all parties involved, and would help to encourage more pedestrian activity along the street – particularly in conjunction with the re-striped Magnolia’s expected slower traffic speeds.

More new about the lighting of Magnolia’s trees to come, I’m sure.