If you’ve been down around 9th Street in Downtown lately, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that the street has been shut down for construction.  Here’s a look at what’s going on.

9th Street itself is being reconstructed to create a more pedestrian-friendly experience walking from the Intermodal Transportation Center at 9th & Jones into the heart of Downtown.  The length of 9th from Jones to Houston will feature wider sidewalks, brick sidewalk pavers, Cedar Elm street trees, and pedestrian lighting once complete.  Above is an example section.

Where 9th runs into Houston, even more elaborate work is underway.

The long awaited remake of Hyde Park, and the reclamation of a parking lot into public space, is finally happening.  9th Street is going to be straightened out between Houston and Throckmorton into a conventional “T” intersection.  In addition, the parking lot that has blighted the other side of 9th & Throckmorton across from Hyde Park (where once the old Fort Worth Public Library once stood) is going away as well.  Several improvements come along with this:

• A – Passenger Shelters – The T will be installing new bus passenger shelters on either side of 9th to create a new transit plaza sort of setup.
• B – Intersection Improvements – 9th ends at Throckmorton in a conventional “T” intersection.
• C – Panther Fountain Plaza – The space around the Panther Fountain in Hyde Park will be radically expanded, creating a much larger public space around the iconic fountain in the shadow of the Flatiron Building.
• D – Library Plaza – What’s left of the old library lot, up until now simply a vacant blight with a parking lot, will become another new public space next to the Houston Place Lofts and the Bryce Building.

Something not called out in the above graphic is another significant public space improvement.  What is now a street in front of the Public Safety & Courts Building (the previous Fort Worth City Hall) will be removed, and converted into a plaza in front of the lovely old Moderne structure.

In all, it’s a significant upgrade of public space in Downtown Fort Worth, something that apart from sidewalks is in very short supply.  We’d hope that some thought is being given to doing something to engage and activate all the new plazas – besides the new Hyde Park, Library Plaza, and PS&C Plaza, there’s also the existing Federal Building plaza that’s a bit on the overscaled and empty side.  If the city and downtown stakeholders want to see more use of these plazas, we hope they’d consider encouraging food vendors, etc. to set up shop to make up for the lack of ground-floor retail space around them (and something a bit more interesting than just a hot dog cart).  We’d also hope that the doctor who owns the Flatiron Building would consider leasing its ground floor to a restaurant or other sort of business – with its large, operable ground-floor windows, it could make a great addition to the plazas.

The 9th Street improvements are also welcome, and makes getting to the ITC much more appealing.  The experience of walking along 9th isn’t going to be great for a while, as there’s still the hulk of the Convention Center arena and the underused and flawed General Worth Square, not to mention a swath of parking lots between the ITC and the rest of Downtown that create a lot of dead space to cover.

And this all does beg the question – when, if ever, will Throckmorton (and the other one-way streets) revert to two-way?  It’s a bit of an impediment to westward travel in the new arrangement, and two-way streets are generally better in terms of creating pleasant streets that pedestrians enjoy being on.  There are still far too many one-way speedways in Downtown Fort Worth.

On the whole, though, this looks to be a good improvement.  A parking lot is going away, there’s a lot more (and decently designed) public space coming to Downtown Fort Worth, and 9th Street itself will become a much more pleasant place to walk apart from the dead spots along its length.  We really look forward to seeing the finished product.