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No, you’re not seeing things – this is not a “best of” Fort Worthology, cobbled together to fill your Internet browsing time between your Twittering and searching for videos of kittens on Youtube – we’re back! Fort Worthology just spent a week in Portland, OR, and we’ll be writing a bit about what we saw later on. But first…

…Sandra Baker in the S-T reports that the nearly-unthinkable has finally happened: the Bass family has purchased the long-wanted, long-unavailable sliver of parking lot just north of the Flying Saucer in Downtown. This is big news, because it means the highly anticipated Sundance Square plaza can finally, finally move forward.

As part of its master plan, Sundance Square set aside the land straddling Main Street to the east and west between Third and Fourth streets for a central plaza.

Design work for the plaza was never completed because the family didn’t own all the land.

“Serious” planning talks are about to begin, Campbell said, stressing that there is no timetable for completion.

Now, we shouldn’t be looking for dirt to be turning right away – in the near-term, the Basses will clean up the lot and bring it in-line with the appearance of their other parking lots. But clearly, the gears are in motion at long last to take out the parking lots blighting the heart of Downtown Fort Worth and replace them with a real, attractive public space – a public space that Downtown has needed for a long time, and which it has always lacked.

Or, as TownSite Co.’s Phillip Poole put it:

“The downtown area has always needed a formal plaza for gatherings,” Poole said. “We’ve always used the streetscapes and sidewalks. It would be the heart we haven’t had. We’ve really missed that for a long time.”

One of the things we checked out in Portland was Pioneer Courthouse Square, considered one of the best public spaces in the entire United States. The vitality and life it brought to Downtown Portland, and its function as the city’s “living room,” was apparent. Reclaiming this land in the center of Sundance Square for public space will do wonders for Downtown’s sense of place.