I’ve heard from a couple of different places now that July 13th is the “end of the road” for J & J’s Hideaway, the west side landmark bar that’s been keeping the locals watered since the ’80s. If you’re a fan, I’d suggest you get a good eyeful of the building’s Mike Brady chic design while you can, because the bulldozers are knocking at the door.

The Hideaway will be falling to Museum Place, the big mixed-use development that’s been slowly but surely working its way back from the big 7th/Camp Bowie/University/Bailey intersection. One building across from the Hideaway, 3300 West 7th, is nearly completed - a modestly-scaled three-story building featuring luxury condos on the upper two floors over a ground-floor retail space that will hold a 7-Eleven Corner Store, a new type of gas pump-less more-upscale neighborhood store 7-Eleven being developed by the company for a future when they won’t be able to sustain themselves on gas and cheap hot dogs anymore. Another building, the big One Museum Place, has topped out at the big intersection and is in its finishing stages. That building will be ground-floor retail, four floors of office space, and three floors of luxury condos. Edgewater Grill has been announced as one of that building’s retail tenants. Still another, a glass & metal triangle-shaped structure now going up at the big intersection on the former Texaco site, will be ground-level retail (I’ve heard rumors of a sushi place) with three floors of office space above it. The avant garde slanted south facade, I’m told, will reflect a view of the Modern back towards the big intersection.

The Hideaway will make way for another large mixed-use building, which will feature ground-level retail with upscale rental apartments above. Not only is the Hideaway going away, but the entirety of Darcy Street itself is going away - the new building will completely cover the current Darcy right-of-way, and the street will cease to exist in that part of the Cultural District.

Several surrounding buildings, such as the rather nasty strip mall that formerly held a Pro-Cuts, have already been demolished near the Hideaway, and the Hideaway’s demolition will be accompanied by the demolition of the old Post Office across the street. The USPS is moving to the big intersection between University and Bailey, into a new Post Office designed by ultramodern architectural firm Venturi, Scott-Brown, and Associates of Philadelphia. The new Post Office will face the big intersection with a wall of ceramic tiles painted with a mural of a huge thunderstorm crossing the prairie, and in front of that will have a public plaza centered around the soon-to-be-reinstalled steel poles bent by the 2000 tornado.

It’s been a while since the last time I did one of these big development roundups, so let’s do another one, covering the current hotbed of activity - the 7th Street corridor between downtown and the museums. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote about these developments, so let’s dive right in.

Museum Place is really making significant strides in construction these days. The area around the development is a world of torn-up pavement, orange cones, fences, and cranes as work steadily moves from the big 7th/University/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection back into the neighborhood.

Above, the big building of the development, One Museum Place, is getting more glass installed as its facade installation continues. This building will be home to ground-level retail, office space, and condos on the upper two floors.

[Read more]

The penultimate performance of Fort Worth Opera’s 2008 Festival — Saturday’s performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at Bass Hall — really captured everything I have come to appreciate about this company. Start with perfect staging, add in established stars, then bring in lots of young talent.

Donizetti’s retelling of Sir Walter Scott’s novel about the worst wedding night ever is plenty dark and moody, thanks to director David Gately. Most of the scenes come up with a spotlight on a main character who appears to be this white presence floating in a sea of darkness. Things don’t get much brighter than that for most of the characters.

The audience is much more fortunate. Elizabeth Futral — an international star and one leading sopranos in opera today, really demonstrated what a talent of her magnitude can accomplish.
[Read more]

Speculation has been running around ever since Chesapeake Energy announced their purchase of the Pier 1 Place skyscraper from Pier 1 Imports that the gas drilling company would relight the building’s distinctive night lighting system, which has been turned off for months due to money troubles at Pier 1 (I took the above photo on February 11, 2007, at which point the lights were still on).

Now, a fairly strong rumor is running around that Chesapeake will be holding an event of some sort on June 9th to relight the tower. Love them or hate them, it looks like the lights of Pier 1 Place (or should that be Chesapeake Plaza?) will once again be shining into the night sky over downtown Fort Worth.

We’ll let y’all know as we learn more.

In the last few weeks Fort Worth has played host to Main Street Arts Fest, PrairieFest, Fred’s Fest, and Mayfest.

So, if you’ve had your fill of the -fests, you should try something different this weekend: The Fairmount Home Tour. (Of course, if you’re not tired of -fests, then you should make your way over to the Fairmount Home Fest instead. It’s way cooler.)

[Read more]

At the sixteenth annual Congress of the New Urbanism, held in Austin last week, Fort Worth South, Inc. was up for the Driehaus Award for Form-Based Codes. The new Near Southside Development Standards and Guidelines were recently approved by the city, and guide development in that district into following high standards of true urban design. They’re very well done and very progressive; if you haven’t read over them, and you’re interested in this sort of thing, check them out (PDF link). They’ll give you an idea of how the Near Southside will develop from now on. Form-based codes address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks. The regulations and standards in Form-based codes, presented in both diagrams and words, are keyed to a regulating plan that designates the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development rather than only distinctions in land-use types.

The Driehaus Award, sponsored by the Form-Based Codes Institute, is an award given to planners and such that create top-quality, innovative, and progress design guidelines and codes that represent the finest in proper urban development. It makes me very proud to announce that we won! That’s right - the Near Southside Development Standards and Guidelines have won the Driehaus Award!

This is a big honor for the city and Fort Worth South. For a city that is (very incorrectly) perceived by some as not being very progressive in this regard, this is a big step that will make a lot of people sit up and pay attention to our continued urban renaissance as it moves forward. A big congratulations to Mike Brennan, Fort Worth South’s project planner, and the rest of the FWSI staff for this great payoff to all their hard work.

This is just the latest in a series of great steps for the Near Southside. Mark my words - that area is really going to become something special and fantastic as it continues to infill and redevelop.

The area shown in the red circle above is the subject in question - as part of the Museum Place development, a public plaza is will be constructed at the reworked intersection of West 7th Street and Arch Adams (Map). How can a plaza occupy the middle of a street? Read on and find out - it’s an interesting bit of urban design.

The problem is thus - how to create a large public space in the development, while not taking too much room from the buildings themselves? You could certainly close off a street to do so, but you’d have to close off a smaller street, and it’s likely to be too out-of-the-way to get much use. No, the plaza needs to be the heart of the development. That means 7th Street - but you can’t permanently close off 7th. It’s too crucial to the connectivity of the area. A way had to be found to create a large public space that could be closed for events but left open to car traffic the rest of the time - while still slowing traffic enough that people would not feel intimidated by the sometimes speedy pace of cars on 7th.

Finally, an ingenious solution was devised. [Read more]

What does Fort Worth sound like? When is a parking garage a work of art?

No, I am not pretending to be a Zen master today, but these two questions are actually related and have to do with the building above. That’s the new downtown parking project called Parking in Color, and it will provide parking for the Fort Worth Convention Center and will be located between the Convention Center and the new Omni Hotel. The project is commissioned by Fort Worth Public Art, a City of Fort Worth program administered by the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County.

I know that parking garages don’t exactly get most people too excited, but the city hopes this building will do more than hold 8,000 cars.
[Read more]

Today, over at West and Clear sister site Fort Worthology, I showed the in-depth walkthrough of two historic building restorations I was able to tour. One was the restoration of the Sawyer Grocery buildings from 1909 and 1910 on South Main, being converted to apartments over ground-floor retail by local developer Eddie Vanston, while the other is Eddie’s next project, the Miller Manufacturing Company building of 1911. | Map of the Building’s Location

As it turns out, the Miller Manufacturing building has one heck of a wild event in its past, and it would make a grand Pantherphile post here on West and Clear as well. So, let’s dive right into the story of the Miller Manufacturing Company Labor Strike of 1922.

[Read more]

One of downtown’s ugliest structures is getting a makeover. The ’60s-vintage annex tower across the street from the ’20s-era Hilton hotel has been purchased for conversion into office condos. A tip of the hat (which I can do literally!) to Sandra Baker in the Startlegram for the announcement.

What are office condos? They’re basically just like regular office buildings, but instead of leasing the office space within, tenants purchase the space themselves. It’s essentially the same difference between an apartment and a (residential) condo. The concept has never been tried in Fort Worth, so this is new territory.

The new owners are supposed to be gutting the building to its structure, and are also talking about adding new windows into some of its blank sides. Frankly, the building needs every bit of help it can get - it’s easily one of the ugliest structures in Fort Worth. The new owners are also said to be looking at adding ground-floor retail space, which would be another major improvement and is something that’s needed on that end of downtown.