Not a whole lot of information out there about these just yet, but there’s a sign up now:  6th & O looks to be a new modern townhome development on 6th Avenue in the Near Southside.  The elevation drawing shows four buildings, and the site looks to stretch from the southwest corner of 6th & Oleander (presumably, the ’60s/’70s-era medical box on the site will be demolished) along Magnolia to the south towards Nonna Tata.

We’re waiting to hear back from some of the developers involved in this project for more details.  The design of the project looks to be by the Near Southside’s own prolific small infill building designers, TMA Architects.

Here’s a closer look at half the elevation drawing:

A quick update on another small mixed-use building going up in the Near Southside.  This is the Bajaj Building, on Lipscomb just north of Rosedale.  It’s lofts upstairs and medical offices downstairs.

The building’s facade has been going up for a while now.  New is the popped-out corner window treatment there on the right.  The building was designed by the Near Southside’s own TMA Architects, who have done many of these single-lot mixed-use buildings.

Color us not suprised:

The Dallas developer that owns City Place — the high-profile redevelopment of the Tandy Center twin towers in downtown Fort Worth — has put the property on the block.

A year ago, PNL Cos. put the vacant, 19-story One City Place tower at Third and Taylor streets up for sale. PNL’s original plan was to make that tower a condo building when the anchor tenant, RadioShack, moved out several years ago.

But now, Jones Lang LaSalle, the real estate broker representing PNL, said it might be easier to sell the 1.2 million-square-foot project in its entirety, not in pieces. The time to sell is right, the broker said, because credit is loosening in commercial markets and real estate investment funds are ready to start spending again.

We’ve been thinking for a while that the City Place project had stalled, given how each plan from PNL became progressively less and less impressive as time went on.  Most recently, they had abandoned the plan to demolish part of the old Tandy Center mall and re-open 2nd Street through the project – which was one going to be one of the more positive aspects of the plan, as the huge Tandy Center superblock seriously breaks up pedestrian patterns and getting 2nd back would have helped tremendously to re-open that part of Downtown and make it more walkable and connected.  (The image above is from the initial, much more impressive redevelopment plan, with 2nd re-opened and a better mix of uses.)  Will be interesting to see how quickly the property sells and what its eventual new owners plan to do with it – here’s hoping that the re-opening of 2nd Street and the outward-facing street level retail (not the existing mall style space) will be a part of the plan.

The Stayton, the three-tower retirement condo project that’s in the So7 development, has been steadily rising from its pit for a while now, and parts of the framework are nearly above ground now.  Eventually, this will all be three 11-story towers, located just north of the Lancaster Avenue bridge.

For a detailed look at the project, read our in-depth article from April ‘09.

These photos come to us from Atlas Properties, the new local owner/manager of the Historic Electric Building in Downtown next to Burnett Park.  The historic 1931 skyscraper has been apartments for quite a while, but under its previous out-of-state owner the building had fallen into rather poor condition.

Since acquiring the building, Atlas has launched into an ongoing renovation and improvement project.  Thus far, they’ve moved the leasing office to the ground floor, remodeled the common areas like hallways and elevator lobbies, and have remodeled the main lobby as well.  Later this week, a new cooling tower is being installed.

These photos show the improvement in the interior condition of the building.  We’ve always thought that the Electric Building was a gorgeous piece of architecture (and a valuable piece of the Downtown residential picture by virtue of its being notably more affordable than other apartment buildings Downtown) that was in need of better keepers to give it some attention, and it’s looking like that’s finally happened.

For more information, check out the Electric Building’s web site.

Yet another example of a small mixed-use structure is now under construction in the Near Southside.  This development, at Grainger & Cannon (just a couple of blocks from West Leuda Park), will feature a ground-floor office for Dr. Chunduri’s neurology clinic, and two apartments on the second floor.  It was designed by Gary Wood Architects.

The site is located in one of the Near Southside’s T4-N (for “Neighborhood”) zones.  The T4-N zoning requires all development to include a residential component (either residences as part of a mixed-use project, or entirely residential).  This helps ensure a wide range of housing choices and prevents monotonous commercial-only development, makes streets safer by providing round-the-clock use and more “eyes on the street,” and creates greater density of residences to give more support to local businesses as the district redevelops.

Below is an elevation drawing of the finished building:

At last night’s West 7th Spring Bash, Mayor Moncrief and representatives of developer Cypress Equities were on hand to officially cut the ribbon on the big new mixed-use development.  Prior to the ribbon cutting, Mayor Moncrief spoke about the development, reiterating several of the points from his State of the City address – that Fort Worth must continue to encourage central-city growth with denser, walkable mixed-use developments rather than solely continue to sprawl.

Cypress shut down Crockett Street between Currie and Norwood, giving plenty of space for attendees to stroll around in a car-free setting.  Residents of the lofts upstairs were out on their balconies having their own parties and waving to Spring Bash attendees below.  Bars were set up in the central plaza, and of course the retailers open thus far were open and encouraging people to visit (Cypress, in fact, gave the mayor a pair of boots from Heritage Boots, one of the development’s ground-floor retailers).  Newly opened Terra Mediterranean Grill was showing off their very cool outdoor bar on Crockett, set up to face the sidewalk.  At the end of the block, a stage was set up where the band Reckless Kelly performed throughout the night.

It was a fun event and a great way to officially open the West 7th development.  Congrats to Cypress Equities on this impressive project – we look forward to seeing how it matures and continues to build out the remaining blocks and fill the last tenant spaces.

Just a reminder that the Spring Bash at the West 7th development is tonight from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.  There will be a ribbon cutting for the development, a performance by the band Reckless Kelly, a beer garden, and more.  It will be held on Crockett between the two loft/retail buildings.  The event benefits Cook Children’s Hospital.  For more info, check our last post on the Spring Bash.

The Near Southside wave of small mixed-use infill developments continues.  This example is going up on St. Louis just south of Pennsylvania, right down the street from the nearly-complete new West Leuda Park (as well as the Leuda-May Apartments and Hattie May Inn, as well as just around the corner from the Rahr Brewery).

This building is another loft-apartment-over-medical-office development, of the kind that is becoming very popular in the Near Southside.  There will likely be even more to come – these small (often single-lot) mixed-use infill structures are a really interesting aspect of the Near Southside’s revitalization.

The Aggarwal Building, a new mixed-use development on Lipscomb just north of Rosedale (across the street from the Bajaj Building), is pretty well complete at this point.  The building was designed by TMA Architects, and is four loft apartments upstairs with a medical office downstairs – another example of the small infill mixed-use buildings being built all over the Near Southside.

We’ve been in touch with some of the people involved in the building and are planning a walkthrough in the not too distant future.  We hear that of the four apartments, one is already occupied, and another has a tenant coming in this summer.  We’ll have an update with contact information on the lofts in another post.