With Texas A&M Fort Worth’s new campus on the horizon, city planners and developers no longer want visitors to see the southeast quadrant of downtown as the outskirts of the business district. They see it as another entry, a gateway, to downtown. 

“We want this to be a welcoming environment and a place that Fort Worth residents are going to be attending and enjoying being a part of,” said Kelly Porter, the city’s assistant director of transportation and public works. “We’re trying to get everything right, do the planning now and work together on a joint vision, so there’s no competing visions.”

In that area is the Fort Worth Convention Center, which is undergoing a major renovation, the Fort Worth Water Gardens, the University of Texas at Arlington’s Fort Worth center, Fort Worth Central Station, Sheraton and Omni hotels, and the planned Texas A&M Fort Worth campus. Porter has been meeting regularly with developers to ensure that they plan for the parking needs for the area.

“We know we’re going to have a new demand for parking,” said Porter, after he presented a plan for around 3,800 parking spots in that area of downtown at a recent research and innovation local government corporation meeting with city leaders. “We’re not going to snap our fingers, and everybody’s going to be on transit or on a scooter tomorrow. So we need to deliver parking for the needed demand, but we also don’t want to overbuild the parking.”

At the Sept. 24 meeting, City Council members approved entering an agreement for project development in southeast downtown not to exceed $765,000. For the development of the Texas A&M Fort Worth campus, the council approved an interlocal agreement with Texas A&M University System for preconstruction design and authorized project development bonds that will not exceed $18 million. 

Roger Venables, the city’s aviation director who is working on the downtown campus, revealed more details on Texas A&M Fort Worth’s second building, the Research and Innovation building, to city leaders. 

The building, which will house public and private companies, will stand at 11 stories. There will be about 220,000 square feet available in the building, with 150,000 square feet going to Texas A&M agencies and programs and 70,000 square feet of commercial space. The building will also include about 680 parking spaces. With the council’s action, the design plans for the second building of the downtown campus can move forward.

“What that really means is you have full architectural schematics, full sets of construction plans, building permits,” Venables said. “You’ve got a guaranteed maximum price for construction of the project that’s probably going to take us about 11 to 12 months for the developer to complete.” 

Venables projects that this design phase for the Research and Innovation building will last until next November. The first building — the Law and Education building — for Texas A&M Fort Worth already broke ground last summer. It is expected to be complete by December 2025. Once building one is complete, the second one can break ground shortly after.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.

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