Seattle-based REI is coming to Fort Worth, a source confirms exclusively to GlobeSt.com.The outdoor emporium will open a store at Waterside, the “Conscious Place” Trademark Property Co.-developed project off Arborlawn Drive and Bryant Irvin Road in southwest Fort Worth. The development is scheduled to open late 2016. Located on the Trinity River, the location is a, well, natural fit for the retailer. It will join already-announced anchor tenant Whole Foods Market (also a Fort Worth first), as well as Zoe’s Kitchen, Taco Diner and Blaze Pizza. REI opened its first Tarrant County store late last year in Southlake’s Park Village. The 22,050-square-foot store was its third in North Texas, with other locations in Dallas and Plano. Officials with REI were not able to return calls regarding more details about the Fort Worth store. Comparable venues employ as many as 50 people; the retailer opened its first area location in 1993.

The proposed cinema/indoor entertainment center at McCrosky Road and Texas 35 was authorized by City Council and the Bay City Community Development Corporation (BCCDC) board in a joint meeting at City Hall Monday night. After an hour-long closed meeting, members of both entities approved in open session moving ahead with the BCCDC project that was the subject of a joint executive session last week.

Council passed the resolution authorizing the complex on first and second readings Monday night.  “As we move forward, we need to put in a management structure to manage this project,” said Bill Cornman, a city council and BCCDC board member.

“This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done – the most complicated,” Cornman said.   Both council and BCCDC members praised BCCDC Executive Director D.C. Dunham for her three years of work on bringing the 47,000-square-foot Schulman entertainment center here.

Dunham pointed out after the meeting that “nothing has changed” in the proposed lease agreement. “We’re not giving up anything,” she said. BCCDC will build the complex and Schulman will lease it from BCCDC. The proposal calls for Schulman to repay the city within three to five years.

It will cost about $8 million to build the center, initial projections show. She said the city could sell the facility to Schuman Entertainment should it want, for example, to pay off the construction costs in the first three years of the lease. Arthur Milberger, as an investor in Schulman’s Movie Bowl Grille-Bay City, will donate the land for the project and they will invest $4 million in furniture, fixtures, equipment and operating capital. In addition to getting the lease signed, Dunham said the project will require final design drawings and engineering and a preliminary budget before talking with possible lenders.

The dispute over a sewer treatment center that was keeping restaurants from being built in Trophy Club has been resolved. The Trophy Club Town Council unanimously approved the site plan to expand the sewer plant Tuesday night, clearing the way for the restaurants to be built. Meat U Anywhere BBQ and Bread Winners Cafe were approved to connect to the Municipal Utility District’s water and sewer system Sept. 30. The next day, the town Planning & Zoning Commission approved the site plan for the district to expand is wastewater treatment center.

Because the treatment center is at capacity, it could not handle the two additional restaurants without being expanded. “They finally did the right thing,” said Russell Holley, who is selling the land for Meat U Anywhere. “I’m glad we can move on.”

Mayor Nick Sanders said the town staff will be meeting with utility district officials this week about a building permit. “We’re excited to hopefully get started very soon,” district general manager Jennifer McKnight said. The treatment center could add some capacity by mid-2016 if construction starts this month. The entire project will take about 18 months.

Andy Sedino, owner of Meat U Anywhere, said getting the sewer connections allowed him to move forward with closing on the property. “We personally attended the MUD meeting where we received approval and personally shook hands and shared our gratitude,” Sedino said. “As an operator you want to be in a community that wants you.” Kendra Shier, vice president of operations for Bread Winners Cafe, said it was not as far along as Meat U Anywhere. “We were still in drawings with the architect,” Shier said. “The delay had no impact on our timeline whatsoever.”

Bread Winners is scheduled to open in October 2016. Officials with the utility district and Trophy Club had been at odds over the sewer plant since May when the town required the district to go through detailed permitting and planning to update the aging treatment center, on the far northeast edge of Trophy Club. The district, which owns the treatment center, had construction crews working on the site when the town halted the work.

Town officials said the treatment center is in an environmentally sensitive area bordering Army Corps of Engineers land, so the expansion needs to be permitted properly.The district argued that the treatment center was at capacity and couldn’t accommodate additional connections, especially in the winter when the microbiological breakdown of waste slows down. The expansion will add a more efficient filtering process to the treatment center that could handle more waste. The district said the town delayed that project, creating a potential health and environmental risk.

The district board decided August not to approve additional water and sewer connections until the expansion of the sewer plant was approved. That put the two new restaurants, the first Trophy Club has attracted in a decade, in limbo.

There are no easy parts to any city’s property zoning process, only some parts that are harder than others. Tensions are usually high because property rights are so important. Fort Worth’s City Council, staff and Zoning Commission learned that lesson anew during the past three months as they worked through a contentious definition of what constitutes a “single housekeeping unit.” With a unanimous council vote Tuesday night, they reached their goal — admirably.

The outcome involved compromise from council members, property owners and neighborhood groups. People from opposing sides who spoke to the council Tuesday indicated they were pleased. Defining a “single housekeeping unit” is important because that’s a key zoning ordinance term that protects the heart of the community, its single-family neighborhoods. Up to five unrelated people in a single housekeeping unit may occupy a home in a single-family neighborhood. That gives owners of rental property greater ability to find tenants than if they could rent only to families.

In December, the council lowered the limit for unrelated people living in TCU-area homes from five to three. The very difficult discussion, lasting six months, targeted “stealth dorms” for students. The need for a definition of “single housekeeping unit” was apparent even then. The city staff admits dropping the ball when, in July, it sent a proposed definition for Zoning Commission approval without notifying all interested parties. Council members heard lots of complaints and, in August, sent the issue back to the commission for more work.

Things got back on track with a public meeting later that month, another Zoning Commission hearing in September, and lots more work by the staff to hear complaints and refine the proposal. Rental property owners hit the roof over “presumptions” considered and initially approved by the commission. Those steps would have automatically ruled out as single housekeeping units any homes with keyed or deadbolt locks on interior doors, homes where members of the unit changed significantly in a 12-month period, or where members used a different address for such things as voter registration or driver’s license. The final staff recommendation tossed out those presumptions and made other changes in the definition to appease neighbors and rental property owners.There were cheers in the council chambers when the deal was approved.

A renovation proposal for the Fort Worth Stockyards’ horse and mule barns, 122-124 East Exchange Avenue, received approval Tuesday at the Historic and Cultural Landmarks Commission meeting, with the exception that developers work with city staff to make adjustments to the renovation plans.

The proposed alterations to the horse and mule barns include the addition of glass windows and door openings all around the structure, as well as canopies over the openings on the building’s south elevation. The north elevation will be renovated to accommodate storefront retail space, with transparent glass windows that would allow customers to see inside.

Some members of the Historic and Cultural Landmarks Commission expressed concern that the glass would make the north elevation look too much like a storefront and lose its historic character, so the commission motioned to approve the project with the caveat that developers and city staff discuss ways to reduce the number of openings added to the building.

“It definitely loses a lot of its historical foundation with all of those openings,” commission member Eric Brooks said. “I was just wondering if there is a way to just lighten that up because it looks like a storefront. It looks like a storefront. Just a regular storefront.”

Historic preservation consultant Libby Willis, who was the former executive director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation of Fort Worth, said she approves of the rest of the renovation project. However, she fears the storefronts will make the structure look less like horse and mule barns.

“We just don’t ever want to close out the option to sometimes have those used as barns again,” she said. “That’s the whole key, is keeping your options open. That’s what you want to do with historic buildings.”

Fort Worth-based architecture firm Bennett Benner Partners will develop the project. Principal Michael Bennett said his team is doing their best to stay true to the original design from when the building was first constructed in 1911. While his team was unable to find the original renderings for the building, they were able to find photos by the building’s original contractors, which aided in the renovation planning, he said.

To recreate the original design, Bennett said, the renovation plan includes opening existing windows that are currently closed, as well as removing parts of the building that were not part of the original structure, such as a loading dock and a portion of one of the barns.

The project will cost about $40 million and is slated to begin in early 2016, Bennett said.

The renovation of the horse and mule barns is part of a bigger $175 million project to renovate the Stockyards, approved by the City Council in 2014. California-based Majestic Realty is heading the project along with the Hickman family, who owns 70 acres in the Stockyards.

Along with the approval of the horse and mule barn project, four structures — including the horse and mule barns — received approval to be given the city’s highest historic designation.

The O’Keefe-Long Building, 101-107 West Exchange Avenue; Stockyards Lodge No. 1244, 2408 North Main Street; and building on 115-125 West Exchange Avenue received approval to be designated as “Highly Significant and Endangered (HSE),” giving the buildings the highest levels of protection and tax incentives.

The Historical and Cultural Landmarks Commission handles matters dealing with historic districts and structures, such as recommending that the City Council put historic designations on certain structures. The members of the commission are appointed by City Council.

To receive the designation, buildings have to meet at least five items on the city’s Criteria for Historic Designation.

On Tuesday, assistant planning director Dana Burghdoff and Ibanez Architecture consultant Randy Gideon will brief the City Council on the design standards document approved back in September. The Urban Design Commission and Zoning Commission will also have a briefing and hold a public hearing before voting on the task force’s recommendations within the next two months. The City Council will vote in January.

Ventures Development Group LLC announced the ground breaking of a new multifamily, mixed-use development across from Broadway Baptist Church on the Near Southside. The 2.1-acre parcel of land is located at the corner of Jennings and Broadway streets. The 5-story, 209-unit apartment will have 2,600-sqaure-feet of retail space on the ground floor and four live/work studio lofts.

“We are very pleased to introduce South 400 Apartments to Near Southside and are equally excited to be a part of the revitalization efforts of this unique community,” said Sean Siebert, partner of Ventures Development Group (VDG). “Our collective team has worked diligently with the city of Fort Worth to create a one of kind place in an eclectic, urban neighborhood. We are thrilled to be moving into the construction phase.”

In conjunction with the development, the tax increment district approved infrastructure improvements, updated streetscapes, and environmental remediation to be completed along with this new build.” VDG has hired the multi-family division of Stream Realty Partners to manage the project. Pre-leasing will begin in the second quarter of 2016.

South 400 Apartments will include a Sky Lounge overlooking the Fort Worth skyline. VDG most recently completed The Phoenix Apartments on College Avenue. “I am very excited about the S. Jennings Apartment project,” said Paul Paine, president of Fort Worth South. “The Near Southside has become a highly desirable place to live because of the area’s increasing popularity as we have some of the best restaurants and nightlife entertainment spots in all of Fort Worth.”

Ventures Development Group was established in 2006 by Sean Siebert and Rob McConnell.

Since its 2012 opening, Klyde Warren Park, the open space built on a deck atop a highway canyon, has changed opinions near and far about a city not typically known for its public planning prowess. Peter Park stood in the southeast corner of Klyde Warren Park this spring with people attending a Congress for the New Urbanism conference, looking at what has quickly become known as Dallas’ landmark urban design breakthrough. “It’s a fine public example of why urban spaces are important and how they can succeed,” the Denver-based city planner said in an interview last week. On any given day, the park that connects Uptown and downtown is filled with office workers grabbing lunch at food trucks, downtown residents perfecting yoga poses and children splashing through water features.

It’s simultaneously a gathering place for locals and at the top of recommendation lists for visitors. And now the park over Woodall Rodgers Freeway on downtown’s north end is helping spur a reassessment of the rest of the downtown highways. Several government officials, civic leaders, urban planners and local developers have been meeting behind closed doors for months on a project called CityMAP. The study is focused on the future of the aging highways that surround downtown. Most of them were built in the post-World War II era of massive freeway construction, dividing long-established neighborhoods and fueling suburban sprawl, white flight and urban decline.

The goal isn’t just to create more deck parks, though more could be in store. There are deeper hopes that updating major infrastructure in the urban core will restitch neighborhoods, spur developments with a dense mix of residences and job centers and give thousands of people the option to ditch their cars altogether.

The study is being spearheaded by what is perhaps the unlikeliest of suspects: the Texas Department of Transportation. And the public will finally get its first glimpse of — and input into — the brainstorming process during a series of public meetings that begin this week. “If it all happens behind closed doors, there’s not the appropriate level of feedback,” said Patrick Kennedy, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism’s North Texas chapter and one of the people involved in shaping CityMAP.

EXPLORING OPTIONS

The last three letters in CityMAP stand for “master assessment process.” It will look at options for rebuilding, tweaking or even replacing downtown highways.

TxDOT officials describe the finished City-MAP product as a menu of options for downtown highways. It is expected to list the potential costs, impact on traffic and design options for Interstate 30, Interstate 345, Wood-all Rodgers and Interstate 35E. The study was spearheaded by Victor Vandergriff, who was appointed to the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT, in 2013. Shortly after his six-year term began, the Arlington lawyer decided that untangling the consistently congested web of downtown Dallas highways would be his chief priority. But in a departure from the typical focuses of transportation departments and regional planning organizations, City-MAP isn’t just considering road capacity, population growth and traffic estimates.

Park said those focuses damaged urban cores across America because they allowed infrastructure to become physical barriers to the kind of one-on-one social and economic interchanges that built sustainable cities in the first place.

The Rev. Gerald Britt said that pattern played out in several Dallas neighborhoods, particularly in the city’s poorer southern half. Such physical isolation simply begat more of the kind of poverty that people have a hard time overcoming in a car-centric city. “We need to consider whether neighborhoods need to be for cars or for human beings,” said Britt, the external affairs vice president for CitySquare, a nonprofit that helps Dallas’ poor.

TOLL ROAD CONTROVERSY

The last master plan for the downtown corridors was completed in 1998. Its chief solution for relieving congestion on Interstates 30 and 35E was Trinity Parkway, a still-unbuilt toll road that remains controversial. Vandergriff has made it clear that TxDOT is not likely to get involved in that project, which is being spearheaded by Dallas and the North Texas Tollway Authority.

CityMAP will, however, detail the traffic and mobility effects on all other downtown highways if Trinity Parkway is built and if it’s not. Vandergriff said he involved developers, experts and civic leaders so that TxDOT rebuilds or renovates in a way that leaves options for the city and developers to add infrastructure for other modes of transportation and recreational projects that tie dense urban districts together.

And while TxDOT will take the lead on updating those other downtown highways, it will be up to the Dallas City Council to choose which options they prefer and decide the order in which they are built. “We not only need a game plan, but the city’s leaders need to give TxDOT direction to execute that game plan,” said Matt Tranchin, executive director of the political action group Coalition for a New Dallas. The organization has advocated tearing down I-345 to free up undeveloped and underdeveloped land between downtown and Deep Ellum. It is a political offshoot of a grassroots group co-founded by Kennedy, president of the local Congress for the New Urbanism.

Before the springtime tour of Klyde Warren, CNU attendees stood in the Chase Tower Sky Lobby and looked 40 stories below to I-345, which connects Central Expressway and Interstate 45 along downtown’s eastern edge. Park, the visiting city planner, portrayed the long-debated elevated highway as the epitome of 20th century urban planning that made cars more important than people, businesses or neighborhoods. As he spoke, his audience stood near the skyscraper’s windows and watched vehicles travel the bridge over parking lots and undeveloped parcels of land in the urban core. Decades earlier, the land below and around I-345 was part of a sea of city streets and rail lines brimming with buildings. “We are using our taxpayer money in ways that devalue private property value,” Park said. “That seems kind of un-American in a way.”

“Urban villages” aren’t just urban anymore. New mixed-use developments in downtown Arlington and North Richland Hills will combine retail shops and residential living, helping drive business success.

A $70 million development in North Richland Hills, Iron Horse Village, even includes a planned transit station on the TEX Rail commuter line from Fort Worth to DFW Airport. Developers say the village will include 257 apartments in the first phase, all marketable to downtown commuters or frequent travelers.

The first floors of the four-story buildings are designated for small neighborhood shops or restaurants — the kind of “walkable” local retail found in mixed-use centers in Fort Worth and Dallas.

Arlington’s $49 million 101 Center is expected to break ground this month, bringing six floors of shops and apartments to a complex on the site of the old downtown library. It’s the first city-style mixed-use center in Arlington, bringing downtown the kind of night and weekend traffic familiar from Dallas’ Uptown or Fort Worth’s West Seventh. Developers say the project will include 221 apartments, including “live-work” units providing small home offices adjacent to apartments.

Southlake Town Square is in its own building boom, expanding with a six-story office building, 30 larger brownstone homes and 36 $1 million condominiums. Sales tax receipts show steady growth across Tar-rant County, defying logic amid the local job downturn reported Friday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

August data show that the Fort Worth-Arlington area has lost jobs through the first eight months of 2015, primarily because of the collapse of oil prices and the decline in fracking in the Barnett Shale.

While Fort Worth-Arlington has lost 2,300 jobs, the Dallas area has added 48,700 jobs, mostly due to growth in business and professional service companies. Yet many Tarrant County cities are seeing sales tax growth of 5 percent or more, indicating that the energy losses may be offset.

Continued growth at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics would help even more. The company says the F-35 program is already driving 10,000 jobs at 73 North Texas suppliers and supporting 28,000 indirect jobs. Even with recent job losses, the announcement of major new retail-residential developments is a positive sign. There is plenty of reason for developers to remain confident in the future growth and success of Tarrant County and North Texas.

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS

A mixed-used development aimed at young professionals and akin to the booming West Seventh Street corridor in Fort Worth is in the works for the area near a planned rail station. Sitting north of the recently completed North Tarrant Express project and running parallel to the Cotton Belt rail line, Iron Horse Village will eventually include 469 high-end apartments, though initially 257 apartments will be built in the first phase, said Robin McCaffrey, an architect and planner who is coordinating the project for Dallas-based developer Dan Smalley.

Called a “transit oriented development,” the estimated $70 million project will play off a planned station for the TEX Rail commuter rail that will link downtown Fort Worth and Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The apartment complex will be a few hundred yards from the rail station and within walking distance of shops and restaurants in North Richland Hills, Tarrant County’s third largest city.

“I don’t actually have to own a car if I don’t want to,” McCaffrey said. “Only a few places can offer that capability.” Iron Horse Village will be part of a 100-acre development plan that will be divided into sections, city planning manager Clayton Comstock said. Comstock said once the multifamily developments are built, “retail will come naturally.”

Another section is mostly commercial and could feature office buildings up to 10 stories high in an area fronting Loop 820/ North Tarrant Express. That area now houses a Sam’s Club, WalMart and other big-box retailers. City officials hope that the option to redevelop that section into office towers will prevent businesses from just leaving empty big-box buildings should they ever leave their present site. The train station is expected to open in 2018 when the rail line begins service. Other stations are planned for Fort Worth, Grapevine, Haltom City, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and the Smithfield neighborhood of North Richland Hills, according to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which is overseeing TEX Rail.

The first floors of the buildings in Iron Horse Village will be marketed as business space, but the developer may allow tenants to live there, depending on how quickly restaurants, shops and bakeries move in, McCaffrey said. The buildings in that section will be limited to four stories, Comstock said.

“Our style is not going to be some sort of retro image of the 1890s,” McCaffrey said. “It’s going to be a more contemporary style structure for the younger, more hip market. I think we can offer everything that they’re looking for.” Construction is expected to begin in about seven to eight months. The first apartments should be available in spring 2017. McCaffrey said he did not know what rents will be, but they will be at least what is being charged in the HomeTown NRH planned development off Boulevard 26. Apartment owners there charge monthly rents anywhere between about $900 for a 628-square-foot loft apartment to about $3,000 for a 2,400-square-foot, four-bedroom apartment.

The final section, north of the transit area, will be single-family homes, town houses and some businesses, Comstock said. He said he expects single-family homes to dominate in that section of the development.

A mixed-used development aimed at young professionals and akin to the booming West Seventh Street corridor in Fort Worth is in the works for the area near a planned rail station. Sitting north of the recently completed North Tarrant Express project and running parallel to the Cotton Belt rail line, Iron Horse Village will eventually include 469 high-end apartments, though initially 257 apartments will be built in the first phase, said Robin McCaffrey, an architect and planner who is coordinating the project for Dallas-based developer Dan Smalley.

Called a “transit oriented development,” the estimated $70 million project will play off a planned station for the TEX Rail commuter rail that will link downtown Fort Worth and Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The apartment complex will be a few hundred yards from the rail station and within walking distance of shops and restaurants in North Richland Hills, Tarrant County’s third largest city.

“I don’t actually have to own a car if I don’t want to,” McCaffrey said. “Only a few places can offer that capability.” Iron Horse Village will be part of a 100-acre development plan that will be divided into sections, city planning manager Clayton Comstock said. Comstock said once the multifamily developments are built, “retail will come naturally.”

Another section is mostly commercial and could feature office buildings up to 10 stories high in an area fronting Loop 820/North Tarrant Express. That area now houses a Sam’s Club, WalMart and other big-box retailers. City officials hope that the option to redevelop that section into office towers will prevent businesses from just leaving empty big-box buildings should they ever leave their present site. The train station is expected to open in 2018 when the rail line begins service. Other stations are planned for Fort Worth, Grapevine, Haltom City, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and the Smithfield neighborhood of North Richland Hills, according to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, which is overseeing TEX Rail.

The first floors of the buildings in Iron Horse Village will be marketed as business space, but the developer may allow tenants to live there, depending on how quickly restaurants, shops and bakeries move in, McCaffrey said. The buildings in that section will be limited to four stories, Comstock said. “Our style is not going to be some sort of retro image of the 1890s,” McCaffrey said. “It’s going to be a more contemporary style structure for the younger, more hip market. I think we can offer everything that they’re looking for.”

Construction is expected to begin in about seven to eight months. The first apartments should be available in spring 2017. McCaffrey said he did not know what rents will be, but they will be at least what is being charged in the HomeTown NRH planned development off Boulevard 26. Apartment owners there charge monthly rents anywhere between about $900 for a 628-square-foot loft apartment to about $3,000 for a 2,400-square-foot, four-bedroom apartment. The final section, north of the transit area, will be single-family homes, town houses and some businesses, Comstock said. He said he expects single-family homes to dominate in that section of the development.
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