3rd Street Streetscape Public Meeting Report

Last night was the final public meeting for input on the proposed 3rd Street streetscape project in Downtown. The crowd gathered in the Downtown Central Library’s Chappel meeting room as representatives from Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. and HOK presented the final preferred option.

Combining elements of two earlier designs and redesigned a bit for cost savings, the new plan would completely re-work 3rd Street from Henderson on the west to the railroad tracks on the east. The street would feature wider sidewalks, narrower/fewer car lanes, redesigned parking setups, new street furniture, and an Art Deco chevron brick & concrete paving design.

In the rendering above, you can see the western end of the project, at 3rd & Henderson. The plan widens the sidewalks in this area and adds street trees and cut-outs for on-street parking. The current right-turn cut-through lane is removed and replaced with a large gateway plaza to make pedestrian access easier and safer and remove the ability for cars to make the fast, sweeping right turn onto 3rd. This would help to improve connections between the Downtown core and the residences of the Upper West Side.

The rendering above also shows some of the proposed street furniture.

Design of sidewalks and parking were based on talks with the major land-owners along the street. The rendering above shows some buildings that do not yet exist, but could – based on talks with the First United Methodist Church, the renderings showed mixed-use buildings with ground-floor retail, apparently based on the church’s master plan for their properties.

This rendering shows a perspective view of the street. The brick chevrons would be less dense at the eastern and western ends, gradually becoming more frequent towards Main until the street becomes entirely brick in the core of Sundance Square.

This rendering shows a typical west-side section, showing the chevron pattern, the wider sidewalks, the street trees, curb bulb-outs, etc.

This shows the eastern end of the project. An entry gateway is constructed at the railroad crossing near the Hillside and Depot apartments to make pedestrian connections between those residences and the core more attractive. The rendering also shows a plaza or pocket park at this gateway.

Based on discussions with Sundance Square, the renderings show likely future land uses for all the barren parking lots on the east side of that part of Downtown – Sundance Square indicated that these would likely become infill residential buildings, roughly 4-7 stories or so in height. One segment of this area was also noted as “grocery market.”

This rendering shows a section just off Main in the heart of Sundance Square. In the central core, the street changes again – becoming nearly entirely brick. In addition, the traditional curbs are removed entirely – the street and the sidewalk flow together using only very subtle curb rolls. On-street parking would be delineated with movable bollards. This would serve to indicate the dominance of pedestrian traffic in the heart of Sundance Square. The sidewalks would be larger than they are now, and with the movable bollards they could become truly huge – it’s designed so that, if a restaurant, for example, wanted outdoor dining, they could remove on-street parking and move the bollards to create giant sidewalks.

This rendering of before & after in Sundance Square illustrates the principle, with the sidewalks and street blending nearly seamlessly and spaces delineated with bollards. Even with the parking the sidewalk is wider and more attractive, with street trees and furniture. Note also that the scheme truly narrows all of the street to two lanes, removing things like turn lanes (such as this one at 3rd & Houston). This would further serve to promote pedestrian safety and calm traffic, by giving pedestrians more room and taking away the faster (but more hazardous) turn lane.

There’s still plenty of planning and funding talks to come, but the renderings of the proposed future 3rd Street are impressive. There was a lot of public input from the meeting and we are really looking forward to seeing more work on the project to come. Thanks to Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. and HOK for their work.