We got an interesting e-mail from a reader today letting us know that a food cart (or more accurately, a food trailer) has come to the Near Southside.  Here’s JP’s letter about the new food cart next to Gordon Boswell Florist that’s been created by the Chef Point restaurant from Watauga:

Are you familiar with Chef Point (Watauga’s popular restaurant inside a gas station)?  In an effort to expand their business to Ft. Worth, they are experimenting with a food cart (well… “trailer” actually) in the Near Southside every Wednesday afternoon for lunch from 11:00 – 3:00.  They are occupying that parking space next to the Gordon Boswell Florist, across from Harris Hospital on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Today was their first day, and without doing much advertising, business was relatively quiet when I popped by a little before 1:00.

They offer many of the same items you can find inside their original restaurant:  burgers, sandwiches, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, pastas, salads, and soups (although neither lobster bisque nor clam chowder seemed appealing in the 100 degree + parking lot today).  They also have their delicious bread pudding for dessert.  I wish patrons would petition that they bring their vegetable quiche to the mobile restaurant.  It’s definitely one of the best meals I’ve ever had… from a gas station, no less.

I thought Chef Point’s food truck might have been in response to last month’s Food Network extravaganza where all those food carts stopped off in Ft. Worth on their race across the country (part of a new reality show).  Actually, according to their chef, this mobile restaurant project has been in the works for nearly a year.

Here’s hoping it leads to more of the same!  As you’ve mentioned on your blog several times, I think our city is ready for more mobile food vendors.  I’ve really enjoyed them in walkable cities like Portland — as well as larger sprawls like L.A.  It’d be great to see people supporting Chef Point in an effort to promote the food cart culture here in Fort Worth.

So – has anybody else out there stumbled across the Chef Point trailer while out and about in the Near Southside on Wednesdays?  We can’t help but imagine that food carts might attract more of a draw somewhere on Magnolia, where there’s at least some foot traffic from more than just one hospital, but it’s still an interesting development.

The lovely old Dunn-Haven Apartments building at Adams & Magnolia in the Near Southside is well on its way to a new life.  The building is being extensively restored and redeveloped into the headquarters of a marketing company relocating from Arlington.  The building’s getting a complete makeover, from new windows and exterior restoration work to a new interior, new elevator (being built inside the building rather than as an addition due to the difficulty of matching the unique brick color), and more.

The Dunn-Haven building is one of the older structures in the area, having been built in 1914. It shows elements of various styles, including the Prairie School. It is of a configuration not common in this area, with its three stories and full porches at each level. A similar structure can be found in the nearby Fairmount neighborhood south of Magnolia, the currently also-vacant Bomar Apartments at 1507 Alston, built in 1907.

While we’re disappointed that the Dunn-Haven building will no longer have a residential use (Magnolia desperately needs a lot more residential units than it has now to help add to street activity and multiple uses), we are pleased that it’s going to be serving a creative company instead of YAMO – Yet Another Medical Office.  It’s our understanding that the restoration is going to be extensive and first-rate, complete with new sustainable features included in the project, so it’s going to be good to see one of Magnolia’s prettiest buildings brought back to life.  Click the photos for a larger view.

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.

Progress on yet another small mixed-use infill building in the Near Southside.  The building above (which we’re calling the Chunduri Building after the doctor whose office will take the ground floor) is being built just off Jennings at Grainger & Cannon.  The building is ground-floor office space with second-floor apartments.

Click the photos to embiggen.

Cypress Equities has just told us that later this month, on Thursday the 24th, they’ll be holding a groundbreaking ceremony for Phase II of the West 7th development.  The Phase II groundbreaking will be for the southeast block, the last missing piece of the Crockett & Currie intersection.  The southeast block was once planned for a hotel, but we’ve heard that instead the block will become another mixed-use building with residential lofts over retail space.  The southeast block construction will also wrap around behind Fred’s, as can be seen in the aerial photo above.

The groundbreaking ceremony will be held from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Thursday the 24th in the Movie Tavern, upstairs and across the street from the southeast block.  This should provide a clear view over the site, and Cypress will undoubtedly be talking about the plans for the development’s second phase.

We are looking forward to seeing more buildings rising at West 7th.  The development has thus far been the most successful of all the 7th Street projects at creating a real sense of place and making walkable, livable, and enjoyable spaces, and getting the last corner of Crockett & Currie filled in will make it even better.  We hope to have some renderings and other information on Phase II shortly.

The first new public park in urban Fort Worth in many years is finished and open.  West Leuda Park, in the Leuda-May neighborhood of the Near Southside, has turned an assortment of vacant lots into an attractive and well-designed-and-programmed public space, one which should be a major benefit as that part of the Near Southside infill and redevelops with higher-density mixed-use projects.

Created by Fort Worth South, Inc., West Leuda Park occupies most of the block bounded by Leuda, May, Cannon, and St. Louis, plus a third of the neighboring block bounded by May, Cannon, and Jennings.  Its location puts it right across the street from, among other things, the restored Leuda-May Apartments and the Hattie May Inn.  It’s just a block away from the Rahr Brewery, and just one-to-three blocks from a number of new mixed-use infill developments, as well as businesses like Cut Salon and Freda’s (the establishment formerly known as Gallery Art Cafe).  It’s also just a couple of blocks from the former Motheral Printing site, the home of a major planned mixed-use development in South Main Village.

The park features an open lawn across from the Leuda-May Apartments.  This transitions into a playground area for kids, which then leads into a sizable covered pavilion with picnic tables.  Bike racks are located in this part of the park.  Turning the corner, the park transitions again into a series of open greens bounded by paths, street trees, and street lights, with a series of benches and picnic tables along the way toward Jennings.

We took some photos of the finished park recently, including some panoramas.  Click the photos for a larger view.

Fort Worth is a bit behind the times on the urban agriculture movement, but the city is starting to embrace it at last.  Above is the first official city-approved community garden in the city of Fort Worth – the Fairmount Community Garden, located at 5th & Maddox across from Fairmount Park in the Fairmount neighborhood in the Near Southside.

Built on what were once vacant lots repossessed by the city, the Fairmount Community Garden was put together by a group of neighborhood residents wishing to promote local food sources in Fort Worth.  With sponsorship by a multitude of local organizations and companies, and help from Fort Worth South, Inc. and District 9 City Council representative Joel Burns, Fairmount has finally opened its long-awaited community garden.

The Fairmount Community Garden is comprised of 76 plots, each 8′ x 4′, leasable by residents for $35 per year.  When last we chatted with garden organizer Susan Harper, all 76 lots were apparently spoken for, and a waiting list for openings is in place.  The organic garden is already producing food.

Signs that urban agriculture and local food are gaining ground in urban Fort Worth can be found elsewhere now, as the group The New Public Market is putting together a proposal to lease and renovate the gorgeous old Public Market Building on Henderson into a new public market featuring local and Texas food providers.  While putting together their plans for the Public Market Building, The New Public Market is having Market Days – and the next one is tomorrow (Saturday, June 5th).

Market Days are held at Into the Garden on Camp Bowie.  From 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM, The New Public Market and other providers will set up shop and offer up the following goods:

1. New Public Market ~ market goods
-A. local wholesale produce
-B. Cece’s Citchen ~ artisan baked biscotti and other gourmet goods
-C. Mickey’s Mustard ~ totally unique banana pepper mustard
-D. New Canaan Farms ~ Jams, jellies, condiments, sauces and salsas
-E. Ranch Oak Farm ~ smoked turkey breast, smoked ham, cured pork tenderloin, smoked chicken and smoked beef tenderloin
-F. El Rancho Grande Restaurante’ ~ pecan pralines, corn chips
and tortillas
-G. Crazy Water and Dublin Dr. Pepper
-H. Texas Basket Company ~ shopping supplies
-I. Cut flowers
-J. John Lucicdo’s homestyle pastas
2. Texas Olive Ranch ~ pure Texas olive oils, balsamic vinegars
3. Texas Honeybee Guild ~ black prairie honey, creamed honey, honeyed pecans, pollen and other bee products
4. Cold Springs Farm ~ fresh produce from Weatherford
5. Hot Tamalez ~ crowd pleasing tamales and salsa
6. Project 44 ~ Cherith Farms products and Urban Gardens
7. Aduro Bean & Leaf ~ locally roasted free trade coffees
8. Manchacek Bakery ~ kolaches and other Czech baked goods
9. Genesis Beef ~ order grass fed beef for home delivery and grilled hamburgers

We hope that a lot of Fort Worthology readers will support the New Public Market and their efforts by attending Market Day whenever it occurs.  Getting the Public Market Building back into work as a food market would be a great benefit, especially for Downtown and the Near Southside, and driving this sort of thing forward would help support more local food markets in areas like the Near Southside and Cultural District.

In addition, efforts to create more community gardens in our redeveloping urban neighborhoods like the one in Fairmount will help create a stronger local food movement in this city, especially when joined with gardens replacing lawns in our urban bungalow neighborhoods and the creation of rooftop gardens, windowboxes, and other local food sources for multi-family & mixed-use buildings.

Here are a couple of other photos of the Fairmount Community Garden:

This two-story mixed-use infill project just off the new West Leuda Park in the Near Southside has made a lot of progress since the last time we looked at it – it’s now got facade materials going up, a mixture of brick and stucco.

The new building is apartments over ground-floor medical office.

One of the few gaps in the restaurant selection of the Near Southside’s Magnolia Avenue looks to be getting filled:  pictured above is the future home of “Temaki Sushi,” going in to the building above, located in the same block (between 7th & Hurley) as King Tut, Hoagie’s Sandwiches, Darrell Whitsel Florist, and other local establishments.

Beyond the banner (promising an opening “in the fall”), there’s not too much info out there just yet about Temaki.  Presumably, it will offer the expected assortment of both fish & vegetarian sushi in various forms, but we’ll be curious to see the full menu.

In the shadow of the Tarrant County Courthouse, another building is rising at the site of the beleaguered Tarrant County College downtown campus, now rechristened something like “Trinity River East Campus” to differentiate the Bing Thom structures from the former Radio Shack campus now occupied by TCC and dubbed the “Trinity River Campus.”  This new, small structure springs from the sunken plaza running under Belknap connecting to the two bluff-side buildings.

We’d write up some more words on how this design is cold, sterile, inhumane, and anti-urban, but we’ve all done that dance before.

Meanwhile, speaking of the two bluff-side buildings, crews are now knocking holes in the blank downtown-facing walls in what looks like the beginning of window installation, what we figure is some valiant but eventually ineffective attempt to make the buildings less dehumanizing and to create some small sense of street interaction.  Given some of the discussion of making the TCC buildings “better” by adding more windows, louvers, vines, and trees to the development, a classic quote from Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind:

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

If you, the readers, will allow a bit of editorializing…

We would have hoped that the Downtown Design Review Board (DDRB) and other downtown stakeholders would have thrown up some serious objections to this design – everything from the blank walls to the sunken plaza to the utter lack of street interaction and more is diametrically opposed to what the DDRB is supposed to be encouraging in downtown Fort Worth: human-scaled, human-oriented urban design. It seems like the TCC campus would not have been allowed in its present form under an effective design standard.

Of course, given that other anti-urban developments such as the Radio Shack campus, the Pier One/Chesapeake Energy tower, and others get built downtown with no apparent problem (not a judgement of their architectural style – a judgement of the way they interact with the public realm, or rather don’t – Radio Shack and Pier One both have very poor urban design and little-to-no interaction with the public realm), we wonder sometimes if the DDRB and other people of power in downtown aren’t falling into the “any development is good development” trap. It happens across the Metroplex, in both Dallas and Fort Worth (our friends at Walkable D/FW have written about this attitude and how it has allowed some really unfortunate development in Uptown Dallas and elsewhere), and it can allow some really unhealthy stuff to get built and praised as “progress.”

Imagine for a moment if TCC had used its considerable assemblage of downtown blocks to build a more traditional (in form, not necessarily in style) urban campus comprised of sane buildings on standard city blocks, embracing and enhancing the walkable form of downtown Fort Worth instead of creating a blank-walled sunken repellant to walkability. Whatever style of building – modern, traditional, who cares at this point – if TCC’s campus had been built of buildings on normal blocks built right up to the sidewalk with friendly, engaging designs and, say, things like a bookstore, coffee shop, etc. on ground level on the sidewalk, we’d not only have a much more livable, walkable campus, but we’d wager it would have been done by now and for considerably less money (don’t forget that these structures are costing somewhere north of $1,200 per square foot, hugely more expensive than commercial construction in downtown).  Instead, we’ve got a development that will have a deadening effect on the street and walkability and which will (if the old renderings are still somewhat accurate) be surrounded by several blocks of surface parking lots (which aren’t going to be doing anything to help tie the Trinity Bluff developments into downtown proper).

Again, let us stress that this isn’t about style.  We still love new traditional architecture, but we’ve also seen plenty of modern design that is warm and welcoming (there’s just not much of it around the Metroplex).  TCC could have built a campus of traditional urban form with nearly any sort of architectural style and have it turn out more livable and engaging than this debacle, so before you assume we’re just wanting to take a piss over modern design and run home to David Schwarz, hear these words:  this is about urbanism, not architectural style.

One would hope that DDRB and other downtown stakeholders would learn to be more selective in what they approve for construction.  There was a lot of merit to bringing Tarrant County College to downtown Fort Worth, to add a student body to a walkable, livable area that is well-connected to transit and easily bikeable – this, however, wasn’t the way to do it.  As for us, we regret ever voicing support for this thing.  We were wrong then as we look with hindsight, and if we’d seen detailed renderings that accurately showed how the end product would turn out instead of vague models that promised some sort of earthy, warm, Frank Lloyd Wright-style development, we might never have said anything positive in the first place.  Fool us once, starchitects…