Phase one of SoSeven’s Shops & Lofts is progressing steadily. With construction having neared completion on the first two buildings, which will be office space over retail, most work is concentrated on the third and fourth buildings, which will be condos over retail. Here, the condo/retail building fronting 7th rises alongside the first office/retail building.
Looking down through the path between the two condos buildings towards the offices.
The other condo/retail building of phase one. These buildings sit over an underground parking structure.
We took a look at Museum Place yesterday, and now it’s time for the West 7th development by Cypress Equities down the street. Framing should be getting underway shortly for the apartments above the retail here in these two buildings on either side of Crockett Street. The buildings should top out at 5 stories (one story of concrete + four stories of wood framing).
On the project’s northeast block, the office building at 7th & Foch is getting some facade work done. Around it, another parking garage is rising, and the buildings that will house the fitness club, Lucky Strike Lanes, and Movie Tavern are being framed as well.
Across the street, the Sovereign Bank is making progress as well, with some facade and glass being installed.
Finally took the time away from remodeling to get some construction photos. Here’s an update on the progress at Museum Place in the Cultural District. One Museum Place, the big retail/office/condo building, is very nearly complete, as seen in the photo above. The last bits of glass and such are going up now, and there’s also now an alcohol license notice in the corner retail space for Eddie V.’s Edgewater Grill.
Across the street, the Flatiron-style retail/office building is progressing nicely as well. Almost the entire slanted south side of the building is complete, and work on that side’s ground floor is going now as well. The building’s other two sides, which looked like some sort of black paneling in earlier renderings, are actually dark brick, as seen below in the photo of the building’s north side:
As more of Museum Place moves ahead, I still think it’s my favorite of the big three 7th Street developments. There are a lot of oddly-shaped blocks here and the project is filling them in interesting ways, and thus far I like the architecture of the project better than the other two. I look forward to seeing more progress on the project - roadwork and site prep continue on the rest of the project’s blocks.
Web site: museumplace.com
Condo sales web site: museumplaceliving.com
View Larger Map
Not long after putting their nifty jet-age Classifieds Building up for sale, the Star-Telegram has done something surprising and rather disappointing: they’re putting their main office building downtown up for sale. The historic Star-Telegram Building was built in 1920 and designed by the legendary local firm Sanguinet & Staats. It was the headquarters that Amon Carter built for the paper and which has been the paper’s home ever since.
Over at sister site West and Clear, my colleague Steve-O wonders what this means for the paper (according to the S-T, they’ll keep a small downtown office for reporters and sales reps and move the rest of the staff to locations in the ‘burbs and Arlington, which is powerfully lame if I do say so myself). The S-T certainly looks to be in dire straits. Me, I’m wondering what this means for the building.
The Star-Telegram Building is not, to my knowledge, a protected historic structure. It could conceivably be demolished by the new owners. The building itself is an attractive structure marred by a series of remodelings that have seen the ground floor encased in concrete panels and the windows covered with ugly mirror tinting. It’s certainly not so far gone that it couldn’t be restored, though. Perhaps a good steward of downtown architecture like XTO Energy could purchase the building and restore it to its original Amon Carter-era glory. Or, perhaps somebody could purchase the building and convert it to residential use - the history and character of the building would make it a nifty loft apartment or condo building.
View Larger Map
The Dallas Business Journal is reporting that Cook Children’s has bought the former Carnival grocery store at 8th Avenue & Allen in the Near Southside and will be renovating it into office space.
Disappointing news from a neighborhood perspective - at the very least, I was hoping to see some sort of grocer return to the site, and ideally I was hoping to see the building demolished and replaced with a properly urban-designed building rather than the box behind a parking lot that sits there now (something to counteract the horrible suburban Schwarz-Hanson-designed medical office building that went up across the corner).
The Fort Worth Business Press reports that the West 7th development is continuing to add tenants to its roster, and that Cypress has switched from Starwood to another hotel operator. The new hotel will be announced by the end of the month.
The ground floor of the hotel building will feature retail with an elevator lobby that will take guests to the third floor of the building, where the hotel’s grand lobby will be located. Also on the ground floor will be an American grill themed restaurant that will occupy 6,000 square feet of space.
Williams said some of the planned retailers for the development include an upscale Mexican food restaurant and an Irish pub as well as a steak house and a Mediterranean café.
Got enough restaurants? How about some fargin’ retail?
That’s my biggest complaint with the 7th Street developments - about 99% of the ground-level tenants are restaurants. Would love to see some retail-type places make the move, but of course I have to remember my own advice: as long as the physical form is good, the ground-floor programming will eventually work itself out.
Fort Worthology reader Mark Rybczyk sends in this photo of the new Sovereign Bank being built on 7th Street as part of the West 7th development by Cypress Equities. The new Sovereign Bank has been designed by local firm Schwarz-Hanson (no relation to David M. Schwarz of Bass Hall/etc. fame), who also designed two other bank buildings on 7th Street: the Citizen National near Montgomery Plaza, and the Whitley Penn building at 7th & Summit.
Both of those buildings had serious urban design flaws. Their sidewalks are too small in both cases. The building near Montgomery Plaza is oriented to face its side parking lot, not the sidewalk. The building at 7th & Summit similarly faces the parking lot rather than the street, and has the other problem of being set back from the 7th & Summit intersection for more parking. Unfortunate suburban touches.
(The firm also recently did an office building on 8th Avenue near Allen that is horribly suburban, with a huge parking lot out front. It is completely inappropriate to the site, and it’s a shame it got approved before the new Near Southside zoning and design guidelines took effect.)
This building, while it looks to be nothing really remarkable, at least does appear to feature a corner entrance facing the sidewalks, rather than an entrance stuck out back. If that’s the case, it will be an improvement over previous works. If S-H intends to continue designing in urban Fort Worth, I do hope they learn more about proper urban design and improve their output from that standpoint.
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 new Legal Aid of Northwest Texas building in the Pecan Place neighborhood (essentially being called the boundary between downtown and Uptown by the marketing types) has made impressive progress. As you can see, the building is topped out and facade work is currently underway. While most of the ground floor of the building being parking isn’t ideal, the architects have done an admirable job of concealing it. With this design, it probably wouldn’t be unthinkable that the ground floor could be retrofitted with more office or retail space in the future when parking isn’t such a concern. Nothing groundbreaking, but a solid building.
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.
Recent Comments