Archive for the 'Neighborhoods' Category

Demolition of Brace Building, 8th Avenue & Magnolia

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on December 1, 2008
in Magnolia Village, Near Southside, Urban Commercial and Vintage Buildings & Preservation
. 7 Comments

The historic building at 8th Avenue and Magnolia, known as the Brace Building, is scheduled to come down to make way for a single-story Comerica bank building. The Brace Building’s impending demise is an unfortunate example of what I believe is needless demolition.

I’ve heard before that the Brace Building is not savable, but then, the same thing was said about the east downtown Knights of Pythias Hall. It is my belief that the building is in fact not too far gone to save - rather, its new owners do not want to make the effort.

It has been brought to my attention from sources close to the situation that a meeting was set up around a month ago between Historic Fort Worth, Fort Worth South, Inc., the City of Fort Worth Planning Department, a local developer with experience in historic building rehabs, and the vice president of real estate for Comerica Bank. The groups made various points to Comerica, such as:

- Magnolia Avenue has a long history of public/private investment.
- Magnolia Avenue is becoming an artistic, offbeat, “indie spirit” destination and that the street’s historic buildings are a key part of that sort of redevelopment.
- Magnolia Avenue has a perfect example of a bank that made a historic building work well for its needs - Fort Worth National in the historic Modern Drug Village mixed-use structure at Hemphill & Magnolia.
- The largest Local Historic District and National Register Historic District in the entire city, the Fairmount Southside Historic District, is adjacent to the site, and the residents and businesspeople of Fairmount, who are potential Comerica customers, expect strong historic preservation efforts.

A couple of weeks after the meeting, Comerica declared that their “numbers did not work” with the historic structure and that it would be demolished. The new Comerica building will be a single story building with no possibility of mixed-use either now or in the future, and that single story design also reduces the building’s urban space definition. And of course, it will erase a historic structure’s influence on a significant corner (the only historic structure at the 8th Avenue & Magnolia intersection).

Because the Brace Building carries no historic designations of any kind, there is no recourse at this point beyond contacting Comerica and urging them to reconsider (Comerica’s Central time zone phone number is 1-800-925-2160, and they have a web contact form here).

Without a stronger preservation effort, unfortunate losses to urban Fort Worth’s historic fabric will continue as central city neighborhoods redevelop.

Oleander Walk Mixed-Use Construction Begins

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 27, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design, Magnolia Village, Urban Commercial and Urban Residential
. 0 Comments

Okay, one post during the holiday. :)

I’ve seen that the new mixed-use development on Oleander Walk, a combination office/loft development by Fairmount bungalow builder Joe Frank, has now commenced at the northwest corner of Oleander and Henderson:

I’ll try and update the post with the rendering of the project later on. This will be the first mixed-use project on Oleander; previous developments, such as the Texana Townhomes, have been residential only.

Updated West 7th Tenant Diagram + Request For Contact

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 25, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design, Cultural District, Urban Commercial, Urban Residential and Urban Retail
. 18 Comments

Above, you’ll find a fresh tenant diagram for the West 7th development by Cypress Equities. This diagram gives us our first real “mapped out” look at where the announced West 7th retail tenants will be located.

Thus far, most of the retail activity seems concentrated around Crockett Street, the interior street which will be fronted by the development’s movie theater, hotel, and mixed-use apartment buildings plus a yet-to-be-built office building near University. The movie theater is Movie Tavern, of course. Occupying the building with Movie Tavern will be LA Fitness. On the 7th Street portion of that block, Lucky Strike Lanes (the bowling alley) will get a large 7th Street frontage, with Yofé (a yogurt cafe) snagging the 7th/Currie area.

In the central block along 7th is what looks like “DCM,” though I can’t find any further information about this tenant. EDIT: “DCM” is the logo for “Dallas City Market,” the prepared foods market which will be opening a Fort Worth location in West 7th as “Fort Worth City Market.” So, that’s “Fort Worth City Market” taking a space along 7th in the central block parking structure’s ground floor. In the Crockett frontages of the central block, you’ll find Tillman’s Roadhouse, Paciugo, Patrizio, Fireside Pies, and Brüt.

Backwoods and Sovereign Bank are part of West 7th, but both are in separate buildings - Backwoods has been open for a while now, and Sovereign Bank is in the later stages of construction.

Now, a request - to the person who sent me this image: Thank you! I really appreciate it. I accidentally lost your e-mail, though, and can’t reply. I’d love to take you up on the offer you extended, so please send me another e-mail so I can get back with you. Thanks!

Museum Place Post Office Mural Going Up At Last

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 25, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design, Cultural District and Urban Retail
. 0 Comments

I don’t have a photo just yet, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes: the large mural that will adorn the south facade of the new Museum Place post office (the side facing the tornado-bent steel poles which have been reinstalled in the new plaza there) is at last being installed. When I saw it, they’d gotten the bottom row up, the part with the lettering. The mural will be of a big thunderstorm rolling across the prairie, with the words “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” below it.

Cafe Modern, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in HDR

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 24, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design and Cultural District
. 3 Comments

Cafe Modern at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. This is a three-exposure HDR image tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, taken with a Canon Digital EOS Rebel XT. I took this HDR image handheld, without a tripod. I’m not a big fan of super-processed HDR images, so I always try for a more realistic appearance - I think I’ve achieved that on this image.

Streetcar Public Meeting Report

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 21, 2008
in Cultural District, Downtown, Magnolia Village, Mercado Village/Stockyards, Near Southside, South Main Village and Transit
. 8 Comments

On the subject of the Cultural District modern streetcar public meeting, DC writes:

Anything interesting from last night?

So I thought I’d give my impressions from the two meetings I attended - the one at the Guinn School in the Near Southside, and the one at the UNT Health Science Center in the Cultural District.

Both meetings followed the same format - Andy Taft of Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. gave some opening remarks, and then Dana Burghdoff from the city’s Planning Department gave a detailed presentation on the system, followed by an open question & answer period.

Unsurprisingly, the attendees at the Near Southside meeting all seemed to be strongly supportive of the streetcar. Representatives from Fort Worth South, Inc. and district business owners and developers were on hand voicing their enthusiasm, as well as one of the Fairmount neighborhood association heads (the Fairmount NA has thus far been very supportive of the project). Also on hand were leaders from the East Rosedale neighborhoods expressing their support of the project.

A couple of notable moments: Phillip Poole, streetcar study committee member and head of TownSite Co., a local urban development company involved in many projects that have featured here on the pages of Fort Worthology (such as Museum Place, the Polytechnic Heights restorations, the Motheral Printing site, and the former Knights of Pythias Hall east of downtown) gave a passionate and frank monologue about the need for the streetcar in shaping the future growth of Fort Worth to support denser urban neighborhoods, and about Fort Worth needing to step up and realize that we’re not a small town anymore, but a big city that had better start acting like one. He called the streetcar a legacy project that will help not just current residents, but their children and grandchildren, and future residents, for decades to come.

Tom Struhs, developer of the Trinity Bluff developments in Uptown, was also on hand and said that he thought we should build the entire system (downtown/Cultural District/Near Southside/Eastside/Stockyards/etc.) all at once, really knock the thing out of the ballpark, and that it’d be a small price to pay compared to the good that would come from it (I have to say, Mr. Struhs - I like the way you think!).

Numerous attendees made comments about the city’s remarks about trying to find money for the system - usually along the lines of things like “we’re putting in a billion dollar toll road that’s just going to make sprawl and air pollution worse but you’re skittish about $250 million for a streetcar that’ll help our city neighborhoods strengthen and grow and accommodate growth and lessen car traffic loads and help central city air quality?” These comments warmed my heart - the Near Southsiders really get what this is all about, and it’s one reason why I always tell people that they should keep their eye on that district as time progresses and expect great things. A remark was made, speaking of the Southwest Parkway, that it’s projected to remove around 11,000 cars per day from Hulen - which sounds impressive, but is really just a drop in the bucket - and of course, the cars themselves aren’t disappearing, they’re just being shunted to another road, and still polluting. Compare that to the 50,000+ cars that pass through the 7th/University/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection a day - an area where the streetcar would serve to get some of those 50,000+ car trips eliminated completely.

The Near Southside meeting was completely supportive and a lot of great discussion about starter routes and funding came out of it.

The other meeting I attended at UNT Health Science Center was actually also pretty positive. Cultural District residents, council reps, business people, and Dan McGraw from the Fort Worth Weekly joined us, along with a contingent of Near Southside leaders who came along to continue their support. One lady, a resident of one of the Cultural District neighborhoods, said she was against the streetcar because it would ruin all the roads with construction and string lots of wires all over the place but “have no benefits at all.” Despite evidence presented of the unobtrusiveness of the wires (a single wire over each track, with poles that can easily be designed to integrate with a variety of styles) and the speed at which construction of the lines can be accomplished (two-block stretches can take just two weeks from start to finish), this lady seemed unmoved. She said that buses were all the city needed and said that the she believed the streetcar would not attract any more riders than the buses. This despite the fact that while she said those words, the chap running the projector pulled up one of the slides about ridership, in particular the one about the Tacoma Link streetcar. Tacoma Link replaced a bus that followed the exact same route. That bus got ridership of about 200,000 people a year; with the Tacoma Link streetcar now operating on the exact same route, it gets ridership of 920,000 people per year. (I thought the inclusion of Tacoma in the study was interesting, as it’s a much, much smaller city than Fort Worth yet has had great success with its streetcar project.) For my part, I stood up and explained several of the reasons why streetcars tend to attract notably higher ridership than buses and why they attract “choice riders,” and my remarks were backed up by the reps from the city.

Apart from the one negative voice, the rest of the comments were quite positive, even from CD neighborhood residents.

At both meetings, city and committee reps made sure to emphasize the purpose of the streetcar - not a long-running rapid line like DART’s light rail trains, but a neighborhood-focused circulator and “pedestrian accelerator” meant to service central city neighborhoods.

So that’s how the meetings went down. Mr. Poole tells me I missed some…interesting…discussion at the first meeting (I believe it was held at the Rose Marine Theater), when one of the attendees said what we really needed to do was crisscross the central city with elevated maglev tracks upon which rode individual one and two-person pods which could be dialed up by cell phone to go anywhere you wanted and which would travel at 250 miles per hour and also go to Dallas (and that we’d need 10 foot tall solid concrete walls around the tracks). I have to say, I’m a little sorry I missed the more flamboyantly crazy talk at that particular meeting. :) I’d have been tempted to shout that particular attendee down and say that what we really really needed was a series of “Futurama”-style transport tubes running everywhere.

Last of Three Streetcar Study Meetings Tonight

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 19, 2008
in Cultural District and Transit
. 1 Comment

The last of the three recent public meetings about the work of the streetcar study committee is tonight (November 19). If you can attend and express your support for the modern streetcar system, please do so! The meeting’s being held in Everett Hall, in the RES Building, at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at 3500 Camp Bowie in the Cultural District. The meeting starts at 6:30 PM. Be sure to come and show your support and enthusiasm for the modern streetcar system. The committee and city are especially interested in comments about starter corridors and such.

New Kimbell Expansion Unveiled - Building Will Go On West Lawn

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 18, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design and Cultural District
. 12 Comments

Renzo Piano and the Kimbell Art Museum unveiled the long-awaited expansion today. The new building will be built on the west lawn across from the Kimbell’s main entrance. It will be 90,000 square feet, with more than 1/4 of that used for exhibition space. It will also feature an underground, 125-space parking garage, a 315 seat auditorium, and a wing featuring offices, studios, and a cafe.

My thoughts:

While the exact finished appearance is said to be “still in flux,” if it comes across as something at all like the model then the building appears not to be the sort of starchitect excess I feared. It looks rather more restrained and subdued, which is exactly what a great Cultural District museum ought to be. Piano also says the building will use the same materials as the original Kimbell building - concrete, travertine, and glass.

Piano’s buildings usually feature some kind of noteworthy roof, and his Kimbell will be no exception. The new Kimbell will be carbon neutral, and the roof will house solar arrays which will generate as much power as the building uses. The roof will also feature a natural lighting system similar to that of the original Kimbell, with long east-west curved channels and glass panes allowing sunlight to enter but diffusing it to turn it into indirect lighting, much like Kahn’s still amazing baffled skylights.

The building’s going on the west lawn. This is mitigated a bit by the building’s size - it will still leave some lawn space on it’s south side. The Kimbell also revealed that the auditorium and “some of” the parking lots on the old eastern site will “eventually” be demolished and turned into a new greenspace. I’m not particularly happy about the “eventually” part and I also say why not go all the way and remove *all* of the parking lots from the eastern site to turn the entire block into a park?

The upside, from my perspective, to the building’s location is Piano’s goal of driving visitors into the original Kimbell’s real main entrance, the entrance facing the lawn. Most Kimbell visitors enter through what is little more than a back door below grade on the other side of the building, because it’s near a parking lot. It’s a subtle aspect of the suburban mindset that pervades this region still. I do support Piano’s goal of getting people to interact with the Kimbell through its real main entrance. Visitors to the new building will enter through its entrance across from the Kimbell’s real main entrance and the design reinforces Kahn’s original intent.

On the whole, I do like the new design thus far, but I’ll have to see more finished renderings before I can wholly decide. I am still not particularly fond of building on the lawn and leaving the other site’s parking lots, and I am not a fan of a degraded new green space bordered by parking lots (which is what the plans for the other site sound like). If the existing lawn is going to be so sharply reduced, the entirety of the eastern site should be scraped and converted to greenspace. On the other hand, at least the new building’s size will leave some greenspace next to it. From the rendering, I could see the remaining piece of greenspace left over on the south part of the existing lawn being a very pretty piece of greenspace in its own right.

Anyway, enough of my talk. What say you?

On Museums

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 18, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design and Cultural District
. 6 Comments

I wrote this as a comment in the post below, but what the heck - here it is as its own post, as we await the unveiling of the new Kimbell building:

“That’s certainly an interesting take. One which I cannot agree with.

The Kimbell is bar none the finest piece of architecture in the Cultural District, and one of the best in the entire city. It is without a doubt Louis Kahn’s masterpiece. I am no fan of modernist architecture, but Kahn did something few modern architects have ever been able to do - he turned concrete and travertine into something warm and friendly. The building’s cycloidal vaults perfectly echo the barns of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. And the natural lighting system is still, to this day, innovative and remarkable (it’s one of my favorite things about the building). The process of entering the museum, passing through the lawn past the calming fountains and pools across the fine gravel courtyard and into the hard surface of the entrance (the main entrance, not the back door in the parking lot that most people use) is one of my favorite Fort Worth experiences. The Kimbell is, without a doubt, one of the greatest pieces of architecture in the entire world. What’s even better is that the museum itself is fantastic, with a superb collection of art. Art which is enhanced by hanging in Kahn’s intimate and serene building.

I am a fan of all of our museums, but the Kimbell is the absolute peak in terms of architecture. Second would be Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum, which I consider to be not far behind the Kimbell at all in terms of sheer experience. Behind those two I’d put the Carter and the Cowgirl - the Carter for the subtle Jet Age sensibility of those entrance arches and the Cowgirl because it’s just lovely to look at and I’m a sucker for Art Deco, whether new or old. Time will tell how Legorreta’s new Museum of Science and History will fare - I am not especially fond of the design as seen in the renderings, but I’m waiting to at least see how it comes together during construction.

The thing that ties together the “Big Three” - the Kimbell, Carter, and Modern - is that they’re each a product of modernist design, yes; but unlike nearly every other big modernist project I’ve ever come across, they are not showboating pieces of excess and ego. All three are restrained, subtle, and never forget that a great museum has to be a great *building* first and foremost - none of the nonsense you’d get from a Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Liebskind, or others, whose buildings are often barely functional as museums. The leaders of the Cultural District institutions have shown remarkable taste in selecting architects who aren’t about coming to town just to building something to stroke their egos and make the flavor-of-the-day critics (and we definitely have some of those even here in Fort Worth) fawn and throw themselves at their feet.

Piano’s previous works are hit-or-miss for me - I absolutely hate a lot of his product, but I find things I like as well, such as the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. I had hoped that Piano’s past association with Kahn would lead to him building something that would not compete with the original Kimbell or attempt to interfere with its programming, but the news about wanting to building on the lawn gives me concern. It reeks of pure starchitect ego, disrupting the lawn and attempting to one-up Kahn’s design. It is also remarkably backwards and short-sighted to destroy the greenspace to preserve a parking lot (the other site), an attitude which belongs to the Fort Worth of the latter half of the 20th Century and should have no place in the Fort Worth of the 21st.

I say build the new Kimbell building on the east site, the parking lot. Keep the beloved greenspace and building something on its own block that will stand on its own merit.

Now, about the comment that the only two museums that “strike the real flavor of the city” are the Carter and the Museum of Science and History - I’m not sure I follow. Is it a “cowboy” thing? The Carter hasn’t been about just “western art” for a while now. In fact, my favorite exhibitions at the Carter have been the ones that have been as far distant from the Remingtons as possible. The exhibit this year covering the “Fort Worth Circle,” local modern artists from the ’40s and ’50s, was outstanding and was definitely a genuine Fort Worth experience that had nothing to do with endless paintings of cowboys riding past mesas. Similarly, the exhibition of snapshot photos was just fantastic - completely unlike the Carter Museum that most people picture in their minds, and full of great work (I’d love more exhibits featuring the Carter’s photography collection). The Carter Museum is not the “Amon Carter Museum of Western Art” - it is the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Big difference. The Museum long ago expanded to encompass a wide range of American art, not just Western - and it’s a better museum as a result of that. There’s enough Cowtown in Fort Worth elsewhere.

The new museum under construction is the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. It isn’t expressly a children’s museum - while it trended that direction in recent years, it’s my understanding that the new museum will try to feature more than just kid’s stuff. It would be to the FWMSH’s benefit to steer away from being just a “children’s museum” and try to be a more balanced and serious museum of, well, science and history - particularly local history. Lately, it was always the museum I tended to skip during passages through the Cultural District - it’s a bit of a letdown, going from the Modern, Kimbell, and Carter’s collections to walking into the FWMSH and being greeted with what seemed like three dozen exhibits all named something like “KidSpace DinoDig Extreme Star Wars Robot Parade.””

New Kimbell Building To Be Revealed Tomorrow

Published
by
Kevin Buchanan
on November 17, 2008
in Architecture & Urban Design and Cultural District
. 3 Comments

The much-anticipated new Kimbell Art Museum Building will be unveiled tomorrow. The new building has been designed by Renzo Piano. Controversy erupted earlier in the year about the building, when it was revealed that Piano and the Kimbell were considering building the new building on the much-loved lawn to the west of the Kimbell’s main entrance, and not on the parking lot to the east as had been discussed previously.

Will the new building honor the Louis Kahn original? Will it be restrained and tasteful or an example of modernist starchitect excess? Will it be built on the parking lot, preserving the greenspace, or are the lawn’s days numbered? We’ll find out tomorrow. Speculate away in the comments.