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I’m hearing that crews have installed a logo for the Cassidy, the long-rumored 22-story condo tower planned for the southeast corner of the intersection of 3rd & Throckmorton downtown. Could we be at long last nearing the start of the project?
Not much is known about the Cassidy, except that it’s a Bass family project, will be (at last word) 22 stories tall, and is likely to be designed by David M. Schwarz. If I hear more, I’ll let everybody know.
There has been some confusion out there about the Omni Hotel’s recent topping out ceremony at 447 feet. The height of the building had been widely reported at 547 feet - this had always been my understanding. So what happened to the other 100 feet?
Omni didn’t actually drop 100 feet. The building was built exactly as it had always been planned from what I have been told. The extra 100 feet was a misinterpretation - as has been explained to me by some architect friends of mine, architects often set the elevation of a building’s first floor to 100 feet, so that they can easily measure above ground and below ground floors without having negative numbers duplicating positive numbers and causing confusion. The 547 foot number that was reported was apparently going off this 100 foot ground floor elevation, not the actual height of the building.
I’m a bit surprised that Omni never made that clear in any of their press relations. Still, 447 ain’t half bad (of course, I’ve never been one who’s particularly cared about making the skyline taller).
The Star-Telegram is reporting that the Fort Worth Club has bought the properties they had for sale (several parking lots and the Star-Telegram Classifieds Building shown above), and the organization plans to use them all for parking:
FORT WORTH — The Fort Worth Club is under contract to buy the Star-Telegram’s four-story annex building, an adjacent parking lot, and two other nearby parking lots.
“We’re buying it for parking,” said Walter Littlejohn, general manager of the Fort Worth Club.
The deal is scheduled to close by the end of September, after the Fort Worth Club completes a due-diligence review of the property, said Chet Wakefield, the newspaper’s senior vice president of operations.
Littlejohn said officials have not yet decided whether to tear down the building, which opened in 1960 for the Tarrant Savings Association. The newspaper has owned it since 1978.
Allow me to speak up once again in support of not demolishing the S-T Classifieds Building. It is a wonderful and neglected example of late ’50s/early ’60s International Style/Jet-Age Googie architecture and is virtually the only example of that style in downtown Fort Worth. Demolishing it would be an outright tragedy. The style isn’t very often thought of as being “historic,” and thus finds little supporters. Well, here I am, for one.
What’s particularly irritating is that the article specifically mentions that the lot doesn’t have enough space for all the parking they need, which brings these thoughts to mind:
1) Don’t you guys have a parking garage in your ’70s tower?
2) Wouldn’t it make more sense, then, to build a parking garage on the lot to get enough spaces rather than wiping out a notable building and blighting downtown with even more surface parking when that wouldn’t even give you enough spaces?
Downtown Fort Worth doesn’t need one iota of more surface parking. We’ve got too much as it is. If you’re really in that much of a parking crunch, why not spend the coin to build a small garage and solve the problem longer term?
Sigh. Even as the surrounding neighborhoods densify, downtown regresses (first the Landmark Tower block, now this).
The Carnegie, the new Sundance Square office building designed by David M. Schwarz, is nearing completion and tenant announcements are starting to be made. The Fort Worth Business Press reports that Comerica will join EOG Resources as a tenant:
As construction wraps up at The Carnegie building in downtown Fort Worth, Dallas-based Comerica Bank has confirmed it will be the building’s second tenant-of-record.
Comerica has plans to open a full-service banking center on the ground floor.
“Tarrant County is important to Comerica,” said Wayne Mielke, Comerica’s vice president of corporate communications.
According to a request to the Downtown Design Review Board, the bank also plans to place an automatic-teller machine on the first floor, with blue awnings at the storefront bearing the company’s logo.
The bank joins Houston-based EOG Resources Inc., an independent oil and natural gas exploration and development company. EOG originally had signed a lease at The Carnegie for 105,000 square feet of office space but since has raised its commitment to 196,000 square feet.
EOG begins moving in early next month, with other tenants waiting until the building’s official opening in December. According to the Business Press, only 60,000 square feet of the building’s 300,000 square feet remains unleased. Three 18,000 square feet upper floors are available, and 8,000 square feet of space in the building’s ground-floor retail space is available to join Comerica’s bank.
Grabbed these three photos of TCC from the street. The fourth came from Fort Worth Forum member monee9696 from the Paddock Viaduct.
Thoughts:
1. Yes, this is how they planned it to turn out.
2. The pit is getting glass. I find it odd that the pit gets glass while the streetscape has to make do, thus far, with blank concrete slabs. Not good from an urban design perspective.
3. The only way this might be redeemed is if the rest of the ground floor apart from what’s already slabs is finished with glass. It would still be less than ideal for the Belknap frontage to be slabs, but glass on the rest would at least make the building more friendly to the street. With the upper floors being mostly slabs, it’ll never be exactly attractive, but if there’s at least some transparence and permeability on the ground floor, it won’t be so smothering of the streetscape.
Listen - above all else, this isn’t about style. This is about urban design and honoring the streetscape and public realm. Building a building whose street interaction is nothing but concrete slabs is just bad from this perspective. Within the framework of good urban design, there’s a nearly infinite array of stylistic variation available to work in. Nowhere did I ever say everything should look the same. I appreciate good modernism that’s subdued and of good urbanity. In fact, I plan to do a post next week about modernism I do like, so y’all will realize I’m not a zealot. I just want it to have good urbanism, especially in a setting like downtown. Everybody please realize I’m not trying to dictate style into a handful of genres.
Fort Worth Forum member monee9696 has taken more photos of the TCC buildings on the Trinity Bluff being built, and they’re putting more facade on them. Unfortunately, it appears to be getting worse as they progress. As you can see, pretty much the entire Belknap frontage is a blank concrete slab wall.
This is one of the things I loathe about contemporary architecture. This thing turns its back on the street like some horrible ’70s bunker, yet there are still those hailing it as great. It’s proof that the architecture community has learned nothing of proper urbanism when you get to its upper echelons.
Remember, this is right across the street from the Tarrant County Courthouse. This is “progress?”
(Incidentally, even more sad is the contrast between TCC’s buildings and David Schwarz’s Tarrant County Family Law Center a block away. While modernists loathe Schwarz’s work, he was able to create a monumental building that retains civic importance and power while still being a beautiful and warm addition to the streetscape, and did so without competing with the courthouse. Makes me wish that the TCC project had been a traditional urban campus designed by Schwarz or another modern-day traditionalist like Robert A. M. Stern, Andres Duany, or others - it almost certainly would have turned out better, less expensive, and more integrated into the urban fabric. And I’m willing to bet it would have actually gotten finished.)
(I also find the contrast between these monstrosities and TCU’s new Student Union one post below to be quite telling of the different mindsets of traditional and modernist architects, as well.)
I wrote this response to somebody on another site who professed to liking the TCC’s concrete slab facade I posted the photo of yesterday - and used it as a chance to ding modern-day traditional architecture (represented by the Carnegie now under construction in Sundance Square). Thought I’d share. Warning: anti-modernist screed ahead. Proceed with caution.
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Cleanliness and simplicity? I think I’d put more “coldness and sterility.” As was posted before, it looks like a close relative of an interstate retaining wall.
It’s this kind of stuff that ruins the public realm. I thought we learned our lesson from the ’70s, but apparently I was wrong. The “cutting edge” stuff still looks like inhuman bunkers.
Sorry. I’ll take the Carnegie over a million of these concrete monstrosities. The Carnegie doesn’t shut out the street with blank concrete panels - it invites people up close with detailing and friendly brick & stone and big windows to let people see in. It isn’t swathed in random strips. It’s the sort of place people will want to go. The Carnegie honors the public realm - it’s warm and inviting. The TCC facade thus far looks to be a dishonor to the public realm. This looks to be the kind of place that only architecture students will love.
(There’s nothing wrong with a “wannabe” old building. Modernists call them “pastiche” - as if that’s inherently bad - but they’re a pastiche of *good ideas.* Nobody seems to want to admit that so much of today’s “progressive” architecture is just as much a pastiche - a pastiche of *bad* ideas from the post-war scam artists of the International Style, brutalism, and others.)
The Carnegie’s no failure - the only failure here is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” nature of so-called “progressive” architecture.
Humanly detailed, friendly, approachable buildings shouldn’t be cast aside in the name of “variety.” That’s not to say that every building should be the same style - just that these buildings look thus far to have been the wrong way to go. Not only does it look to be a dishonor to the street, it looks like a dishonor to nature. This location could have given us something that harmonized with the bluff. Instead, they destroyed the bluff and plunked some concrete boxes down into it. So much potential. This could have been Fort Worth’s “Fallingwater.” In fact, it’s a shame Frank Lloyd Wright died - he could have pulled it off. This, on the other hand…
It looks as though the facade is going up on what’s left of the original TCC campus buildings, and thanks to Fort Worth Architecture Forum member monee9696 we now have a photo, taken from The Tower. I have to say that after all the TCC controversy, and after all the vague renderings, to see that the facade appears to consist mainly of jagged concrete paneling is extremely disappointing. It looks like a piece of ’70s architecture. Doubly depressing that the blank paneling is also used on the street level. Perhaps it will look better in the final product, but I’m not particularly hopeful.
And my distaste for modern architecture grows ever stronger…
Unless they’re just doing a heck of a maintenance job, it looks like the long-rumored redesign of Burnett Park downtown is underway. Crews are removing flowers and shrubs as I write this, and the fountains have all be shut off and drained. The plans for the park are several: the granite planter boxes around its perimeter will be removed, and replaced with flush ground-level planters of flowers; the sunken grass between the granite walkways will be removed, the ground raised to be flush with the walkways, and grass replanted; the fountains will be removed, filled with earth to be flush with the walkways, and replaced with grass and flowers; the old Christmas tree will be removed and replaced and the fencing around it removed; and a sculpture/kid’s play area will be created.
No renderings, alas, but the changes will hopefully help to make Burnett Park more park-like and less of a business plaza. I wish they’d go the extra step and remove the crisscrossing granite walkways entirely, but I suppose there’s costs involved they don’t want to pay. Recreating the old pond would be great as well, but ditto the costs.
(Demolishing Burnett Plaza and rebuilding the Medical Arts Building would be great, too, but alas, that’ll never happen.)
It didn’t get much press, and in fact most of the people I know didn’t even hear about it. Nevertheless, the City Council voted in late May to demolish the 7th Street bridge over the Trinity to replace it with a new bridge which will be able to accommodate the Cultural District line of the under-planning modern streetcar system.
A small step towards the streetcar, but a step nonetheless. Looking forward to seeing what they come up with for a replacement design.
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