The Ridglea
Year Built: 1950
Status: In use, endangered by demolition
Location: 6025 Camp Bowie – Ridglea Urban Village
The Ridglea is one of the only remaining single-screen theaters still in use in Fort Worth for entertainment purposes. It hosts live music. Currently, the Ridglea is threatened with near-total demolition for a Bank of America drive-through bank branch. Posts on the Ridglea’s current saga: here, here, here, and here.
The Bowie
Year Built: 1940
Status: In use
Location: 3859 Camp Bowie
The Bowie is currently housing a Frost Bank branch. The building was kept mostly intact in its conversion to a bank.
The Berry
Year Built: Unknown, presumed 1920s-1930s
Status: Vacant
Location: 3021 Hemphill – Hemphill/Berry Urban Village
The Berry, at Hemphill & Berry, has been vacant for some time and looks rather run-down. The neon sign is still in place, but the marquee appears to have been lost when Hemphill was last widened.
The Grand
Year Built: Unknown, presumed 1910s-1930s
Status: Appears vacant
Location: 1100 Fabons – near Evans & Rosedale Urban Village
The Grand was most recently in use as a church. It appears to be vacant now. The sign and marquee are still intact. The last church to occupy the building added large concrete blocks to its street facade for some reason.
The New Isis
Year Built: 1935
Status: Vacant
Location: 2401 N. Main – Stockyards
The New Isis is a 1930s renovation of the Isis Theater from the 19teens. The sign and marquee are intact. Signage on the marquee has promised “The New New Isis” is “coming soon” for years, but the building doesn’t appear to be in active restoration.
The Azle
Year Built: 1941
Status: Vacant
Location: 2206 Azle
The Azle has been vacant for some time. The sign and a marquee are intact. It appears to have had its formerly colorful appearance painted white some time ago.
The Poly
Year Built: 1941?
Status: Vacant
Location: 3001 Vaughn
The Poly’s signage and marquee are partially intact. The building was a church at some point in the past after it stopped being a theater, but appears to have been vacant for some time now.
The Hollywood
Year Built: 1929-1930
Status: Building in use, theater vacant
Location: 410 W. 7th – Downtown Fort Worth
The Hollywood sits entombed in the Electric Building in Downtown Fort Worth, the last of the old 7th Street “Show Row” theaters even partially intact. The theater lobby on 7th Street is mostly intact and serves as office space. The theater itself is vacant and sealed up in the building, but the lobby areas past the main lobby and the theater from the balcony level up are all reasonably intact. The lower level of the theater was converted to parking for the Electric Building apartments. See our old walkthrough of the Hollywood’s remains.
This structure isn’t obviously identified as a theater, but it strongly resembles one (its form is very similar to the Grand a few blocks away). Not sure of this one’s name or history. The building is currently vacant.
Photo not yet available
Unknown
Year Built: Unknown
Status: In use as church
Location: Sylvania near Race – near Six Points Urban Village
This building is potentially an old single-screen theater. It resembles one in form, but we have no information about its history. It is currently a church.
These are all the remaining single-screen theaters that we’re aware of. Of them, only two are in active use as entertainment venues, and one of those is threatened with demolition. One is in use as a bank and one as a church. The rest are vacant.
Our friend Dan McGraw in the Fort Worth Weekly has written a lengthy, very well-done article about the Near Southside, focusing on people like The Carillion Group‘s Eddie Vanston. Vanston is interviewed, along with architects Robert W. Kelly, Fort Worth South‘s Paul Paine, developer/musician Tom Reynolds, and yours truly.
Some quotes from the story (which runs four pages on the Weekly’s site):
“This is the shit that you don’t get if you just rehab the building and sell it off to someone else,” Vanston said. “When I got into this business in Dallas, I would just fix things up, sell them, fix up another, then sell that.” But in Fort Worth, “I decided that I wanted to own stuff. I wanted to own unique older buildings.”
So he spends his days supervising the stripping of old wooden window frames and the buffing of hardwood floors, creating loft apartments in a 1911 warehouse with 16-foot-high ceilings and concrete walls and floors. And getting the washing machines fixed. And, in the process, helping rejuvenate a neighborhood that has been dormant for decades.
Kevin Buchanan, a Fairmount resident and blogger on real estate development trends (forthworthology.com), sees those same trends but thinks the conflicts can be solved. “The Near Southside now has conflicting trends,” Buchanan said. “The medical community needs more office space, which drives prices up. The residents nearby want more restaurants and bars. Sometimes the needs of the residents are at odds with the medical community.”
Robert McKenzie Smith and Ken Schaumburg have done condo developments. Michael Barnard is restoring an old factory and union hall into living spaces and studios for artists. Barnard may even turn part of one building into art galleries, with space for a high-end food court or farmers’ market. Vanston is close to finishing out 15 loft apartments in the old Miller Manufacturing Building on Bryan Street.
“Magnolia is becoming a great mix of independent businesses and indie culture,” Buchanan said. “But what is crucial is to get South Main growing as a second major corridor. And what Vanston and the others are doing can make that happen.”
Paul Paine, director of Fort Worth South, also sees the development of a second corridor as crucial. He points out that the city’s plan to run a modern streetcar line down South Main Street and down Magnolia Avenue would link the two areas and promote “urban village” growth. “I think what started with the historic neighborhoods just south of us has pushed into the Magnolia area,” Paine said. “When more historic buildings get revived, I expect a lot of those vacant lots to be developed as new businesses.”
“When I started here four years ago, Magnolia was a wannabe,” Paine said. “Now we hear from people from Dallas that this is what Deep Ellum wished it could have been. We still have a lot of challenges left, but we feel we have turned the corner.”
And a great quote from Eddie about the Stockyards and the often infuriating Fort Worth tendancy for “old money” types to sit on property in redeveloping neighborhoods for years or decades at a time to “wait it out”:
He lets loose with some of his pet peeves about Fort Worth and his business. The Stockyards should be bulldozed. “This city has nothing to do with the meat-packing business any more, and everything down there is just the same old crap,” he said.
And he gets a little pissed at the old guard who are holding onto vacant lots waiting to see how everything plays out. “People always make lots of excuses,” he said, “blaming the economy and the market and everything else they can think of [for not developing their real estate]. But they have been holding on to these properties for decades. We’ve proven that this part of town is doable. So these old-money people should just do it. Or sell their property to someone who will.”
Last night at the Central Library in Downtown Fort Worth, the city showcased a draft of a radically altered and improved bicycle transportation plan called “Bike Fort Worth.” Aiming to replace the rather lacking 1999 bike route plan with a more robust and elaborate system, the city has been working for a year and a half on “Bike Fort Worth,” and the results look impressive.
With “Bike Fort Worth,” the city has laid out ambitious goals: to triple the level of bicycle transportation in the city, to reduce the number of bicycle-related accidents by 1/4, and to attain official designation as a “Bicycle Friendly Community” from the League of American Bicyclists – all by 2015.
With “Bike Fort Worth,” it is clear that the city is making a huge new commitment to the “Complete Streets” movement and that the attitude of planning and transportation at City Hall has truly radically shifted. Now, let’s dive into some of the details of “Bike Fort Worth.”
(Apologies for the weird photos – seating was limited and we were at an angle.)
Some of the challenges identified in “Bike Fort Worth” are our high-speed arterials with no bike provisions, unsafe behavior by both motorists and bicyclists, street design features that are unfriendly to bicycles, missing connections between bike facilities and neighborhoods, and a lack of convenient and safe bike parking & storage at destinations. “Bike Fort Worth” aims to address all of these issues – and let’s start by taking a look at the subject most near and dear to our hearts here at Fort Worthology: bike lanes, routes, and trails.
In the 2007 bicycle survey, the message from respondents was strong: when asked what would encourage residents to bicycle more often, 86% said “bike lanes,” 84% said “new trails,” and 68% said “signed bike routes.” “Bike Fort Worth” addresses all three forms of infrastructure.
The new bicycle transportation system aims to provide links to existing and planned bike facilities in neighboring cities, provide safe bicycle routes along major corridors, identify alternative parallel routes to major arterials too large for safe bicycle accommodation (think six-lane plus designs), fill gaps in bicycle routing and linkages, overcome barriers to bike travel between neighborhoods and destinations, and provide connections to major destinations. Links to transit centers, existing and planned rail stations, the Urban Villages, Downtown Fort Worth, schools, colleges, universities, major employers, the Trinity Trails, and parks and recreation areas are all part of “Bike Fort Worth.”
“Bike Fort Worth” identifies three categories of bike infrastructure and uses them all: on-street striped bicycle-only lanes, on-street bike routes marked with “sharrows,” and off-street trails. Related are several other pieces of bike-friendly infrastructure, including intersections with sensors properly tuned to detect bicycles, bicycle-only traffic signals where trails and on-street facilities cross, and new crossings of barriers such as the Trinity River.
“Bike Fort Worth” proposes a huge increase in the scope and quality of bike infrastructure in the city of Fort Worth. At present, there are approximately 39.6 miles of “sharrow” bike routes, 8.5 miles of striped bicycle-only lanes (including the new Magnolia Avenue “road diet”), 58.4 miles of off-street trails, and 3.9 miles of “sidepaths” (wider sidewalks in situations where bikes-on-sidewalk is appropriate). In all, there are 109.4 miles of bike infrastructure in Fort Worth.
Under “Bike Fort Worth,” our bike infrastructure would be radically increased:
Sharrow routes would jump from 39.6 miles to 224.1 miles.
Bus-only lanes in Downtown would change to bus & bike-only, for a total of 1.75 miles.
Striped bicycle-only lanes would massively increase from 8.5 miles to a truly impressive 475.9 miles.
Off-street bike trails would increase from 58.4 miles to 153.3 miles.
Sidepaths would increase from 3.9 miles to 43.1 miles.
Total on-street bicycle infrastructure would jump to 704.75 miles, and total off-street would go to 196.4 miles. Truly, this is a paradigm shift in bicycle transportation in the city of Fort Worth.
Highlights of new off-street trails include:
New Trinity Trails extensions, connections, and crossings.
A new connection between the Trinity and Sycamore trails.
Trail Drivers Park to Trinity.
New trails along the Trinity Uptown waterfront.
Above is a view showing primarily Downtown, the Cultural District, and the Near Southside. Among the highlights:
New dedicated lanes in the Near Southside – at a minimum, the plan wants all of Magnolia from 8th to South Main, all of Rosedale from 8th to South Main, all of Pennsylvania from 12th to South Main, all of Vickery from Adams into the east side of the city, Jennings from Magnolia into Downtown where it joins up with Throckmorton, South Main from Lancaster all the way south to Morningside, Summit from Rosedale to 5th Street in Downtown, 12th Avenue from Pennsylvania to Rosedale, Cooper from 12th Avenue to Summit, and College from Pennsylvania to Rosedale. These dedicated lanes would be supplemented by existing and new “sharrow” routes. We say “at a minimum” because it was made clear that this is the “Bike Fort Worth” minimum and the even greater number of striped lanes in the Near Southside design standards are still available through the Near Southside TIF and other mechanisms.
A large network of sharrow routes in Downtown, in a reversal from the previous plan’s position that Downtown was already bike friendly enough.
Re-marking the Throckmorton and Houston bus-only lanes in Downtown into bus & bike-only lanes.
Dedicated bike lanes on 3rd Street from the east side of Downtown all the way out to East 1st, continuing on to the east from there.
Dedicated bike lanes on Sylvania running long-distance from north to south.
Dedicated bike lanes on East Lancaster from Downtown to Tennessee.
A new sharrow route on Henderson from 5th to Belknap that turns into a dedicated lane from Belknap to White Settlement.
Dedicated bike infrastructure on all the new Trinity River Vision bridges at White Settlement, Henderson, and North Main.
Dedicated bike lanes on White Settlement from North Main west past Rockwood/Westview.
Dedicated bike lanes on Bailey from White Settlement to the big University/7th/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection.
Dedicated bike lanes on Carroll from West 7th to Whitmore, joining a sharrow route from Whitmore to White Settlement by way of Foch.
Dedicated bike lanes on Foch from West 7th to Crestline.
A close-up view of Downtown. One of the biggest changes and improvements in “Bike Fort Worth” is the creation of real bike connections between districts in the central city – dedicated bike lanes will carry riders between the Near Southside and Downtown on South Main, Jennings, and Summit. Dedicated bike lanes will also connect to the Cultural District – which we’ll get to in a moment.
Looking further south:
A number of new sharrow routes increase connections between existing routes and new bike lanes. A new route more directly connects to Forest Park, for example – a sharrow route will run down Park Place to the trails.
New dedicated bike lanes on Forest Park and McCart from Huntington to West Devitt.
New sharrow route down Rogers, between Cantey and new dedicated bike lanes on Lovell and West Vickery.
New dedicated bike lanes on University, from Cantey heading south past Berry (not shown here but presumably to Bluebonnet Circle at least).
New sharrow route on Hartwood, Mockingbird, and Colonial.
New dedicated bike lanes on Stadium from Cantey to Berry, then dedicated lanes heading out West on Berry and Bellaire.
New dedicated bike lanes on East Allen and East Maddox from I-35 to Comer.
New dedicated bike lanes on Nashville.
Also seen here is the long-distance route of the new dedicated bike lanes on Sylvania/Riverside.
In the Cultural District, we see:
The previously mentioned dedicated bike lanes on White Settlement, Bailey, Carroll, and Foch.
New dedicated bike lanes on Lancaster from Currie to Montgomery right past the museums.
A sharrow connection on Lancaster between Currie and Foch.
Dedicated bike lanes on Montgomery from West 7th south.
New sharrow routes on Crestline, Trinity Park, Cedar Elm, West 7th west of University, Dorothy, Bailey north of White Settlement, Hillcrest, Ashland, El Campo, Byers, Owasso, and Harley west of Montgomery.
New dedicated bike lanes on Harley between Montgomery and University through the Will Rogers Memorial Center, joining the sharrow route on a brief stretch of University to Crestline.
New dedicated bike lanes on West 7th between the big University/7th/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection and Lamar in Downtown.
The dedicated bike lanes on West 7th are an especially big addition, especially with all the development activity along the street.
In addition, the plan adds extensive new signage for bike lanes, bike routes, trails, and wayfinding to destinations using the system.
“Bike Fort Worth” also looks at bicycle parking and storage. The plan calls for the adoption of mandatory bicycle parking requirements in zoning and development plans for new commercial, office, industrial, and multi-family residential development. In addition, the city will implement a “significant” bike rack installation program to radically increase the amount of public bike parking in the city. The plan calls for the placement of bike parking in convenient and logical locations by the main entrances of businesses – not stuck in the back or in the middle of nowhere. “Bike Fort Worth” will also implement preferred bike rack designs, favoring designs like the “inverted U” and “lollipop” racks and discouraging designs like the “wave” and “wheel-bender.” The plan also calls for new parking garages to provide bicycle parking space.
The plan even has strategies for replacing some on-street car parking with on-street bicycle parking, which allows the parking of a great number of bicycles in the space previously reserved for just one or two cars. A good example is shown in this Streetfilms video about bicycle parking in Portland, Oregon:
In addition, the plan calls for the construction of a Downtown Bicycle Commuter Station. An example of bicycle commuter parking can be seen in this Streetfilms video about Alewife Station in Cambridge, Massachusetts:
“Bike Fort Worth” also features extensive education, enforcement, and outreach programs:
The plan ties into the national “Safe Routes to School” initiative, encouraging more kids to walk and bike to school.
The city plans a “Share the Road” educational campaign to educate Fort Worth drivers and riders on safe, correct motorist/bicyclist interaction.
A new, better bike map will be published.
The city will participate in National Bike to Work Day and reinstitute the Clean Air Bike Rally.
The plan calls for Fort Worth to hold Sunday Parkways – weekend days when sections of road are closed to car traffic and turned over exclusively to bicycle and pedestrian usage.
The plan for Sunday Parkways is inspired by other such events in more bike-friendly cities, such as Portland, Oregon. This Streetfilms video shows some scenes from Portland’s own Sunday Parkways:
In addition, the plan calls for changes to street design standards, subdivision standards, and the development review process to ensure bicycle support is “built-in.” The city intends to fully embrace the “Complete Streets” movement and it will be policy that street planning, design, and construction will accommodate bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit users from the very beginning.
The plan also calls for the city to launch an accurate bicycling count program, and a bicycle-related crash data & reporting program.
“Bike Fort Worth” is in draft stage and the city is currently accepting public input on the plan. The last of the three public meetings will be tomorrow night at 6:30 PM at LMRA River Pavillion, 3400 Bryant Irvin Road. After the plan is refined based on public input, it’s off to implementation. As said before, the plan’s goal is to triple bicycle travel, reduce bicycle accidents by 1/4, and attain a “Bicycle Friendly Community” rating from the League of American Bicyclists by 2015.
It’s a radical plan for a city that’s been more slow and measured in the past, but it shows the fundamental shifts in thinking and planning that are occurring at City Hall. Fort Worth is a city that is changing its thinking, and “Bike Fort Worth” is a great example of progress towards creating a more livable, sustainable Fort Worth. We came away from the presentation very impressed indeed – a big thanks to Don Koski, the Senior Planner in Fort Worth’s Transportation and Public Works Department, for putting on the presentation last night.
Just to wrap up on some of the goings-on in central Fort Worth this weekend:
Friday, 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM – Near Southside
Arts Goggle
The biggest Arts Goggle yet, featuring 54 venues and over 120 artists. A free arts & music festival, Arts Goggle takes place all over the Near Southside – Magnolia Village, South Main Village, Park Place, Pennsylvania, Fairmount, Vickery, and more. Pedicabs and a trolley bus will allow you to enjoy the event without the need to drive. Chadra Mezza & Grill will be hosting a free wine tasting. The complete Arts Goggle program & map is available here
Live music includes:
Blue Beats – 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM – 1612 Park Place
Fort Worth National Band – 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM – TMA|CHL Architecture, 814 Pennsylvania
Ginny Mac – 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM – Robert W. Kelly Architect, 126 South Main
Usual Suspects – 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM – Gallery Art Cafe, 609 South Jennings
Darth Vato – 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM – between JJ Robb & Chat Room Pub, 1200 block of Magnolia
Fairmount Music Collective – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM – J. D. Moore Building, Oleander & Henderson
Venues include:
1208 W. Magnolia
1223 Washington
Alpha Cleanse
Arts Fifth Avenue
Callahan Engineering
Chadra Mezza & Grill
Circa
Cut
DMS Architecture
Esperanza’s
Fifth Avenue Eyewear
Finn MacCool’s
Gallery Art Cafe
Hatch Financial Services, LLC
Hattie May Inn
Herringbone Home
HHS Gallery
Jason Needham State Farm
J. Frank Thompson
J. D. Moore Building
Jennings Street Yarns
JJ Robb
J&N Automotive
Jo Dufo Gallery
Julie Lazarus
Landers Machine Shop Gallery
Letterpress Graphics
Lili’s Bistro
Linda Broiles Studio
Magnolia Avenue Salon
Old Neighborhood Grill
Oleander Place Townhomes
Panther City Bicycles
Park Place Pharmacy
Quarles Window Center
Rahr & Sons Brewery
Robert W. Kelly Architects
Sawyer Lofts
Scarborough Specialties
Schmedel Custom Furniture
Spiral Diner
Sundance Scooters
Tarrant County Aids Interfaith
Texana Townhomes
The Chat Room Pub
The Fairmount
The Neighborhood Library
The Salon Upstairs
The Wild Bunch
TMA|CHL Architecture
Tracy Autem Photography
Urban Green Build
William T. Fitzgerald
Yucatan Taco Stand
Saturday, 8:00 AM – Near Southside
Joe’s Run
The 12th annual Joe’s Run is this Saturday. The benefit run/walk starts at 8:00 AM at 929 Hemphill in the Near Southside, and benefits Samaritan House. This year, Joe’s Run has added a 10k to their existing 5k route. The 5k runs down Hemphill, Magnolia, 8th Avenue, Pennsylvania, South Main, and Terrell, while the 10k goes through Fairmount and Ryan Place along Hemphill, Page, Alston, Jefferson, Washington, Richmond, College, Jessamine, Adams, and Elizabeth, before hitting 8th Avenue to follow the 5k route.
For more information, or to register online, visit the Joe’s Run web site
Saturday – Cultural District, Stockyards/Mercado, TCU/Berry Street, Downtown, Historic Handley
FWADA Spring Gallery Night
Come take a stroll through participating galleries, museums, retail businesses, and area restaurants, and enjoy the many artists featured during this community event. For more information, visit the FWADA’s Spring Gallery Night web site.
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.
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.
Recent Comments