Get Involved to Help save the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

The Fort Worth Community Arts Center is a historic building that has long been foundational to Fort Worth’s Cultural District. It is owned by the city, and managed by Arts Fort Worth. It acts as the cornerstone of the creative community in North Texas, but it’s future is uncertain. The City of Fort Worth is looking to redevelop the building, putting the fate of Fort Worth’s thriving local art scene in jeopardy. Here’s the story of the building, how we got here, and what you can do to help ensure the future of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center as the vibrant centerpiece of Fort Worth’s local arts & culture community.

1954

Phase 1 of the building was the galleries, which housed the oldest museum in Texas. It was designed by Herbert Bayer, an Austrian-trained Bauhaus-inspired architect.

1966

Phase 2 of the building was the William E. Scott Theater. It was designed by Fort Worth’s Cornell-educated architect, Joseph R. Pelich, with theater design by Harvard-educated Donald Oenslager of New York.

1976

Phase 3 was addition of gallery space and the expansive porte-cochere, both designed by architect O’Neill Ford, known as “Texas’ godfather of modern architecture.”

2002

Arts Fort Worth (then known as the Arts Council of Fort Worth) took over the building from The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

2008

The City of Fort Worth began decreasing the amount of money it gave to Arts Fort Worth in order to maintain the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, despite it being a publicly owned building.

2022

The City of Fort Worth hired a consultant, Bennett Partners, to assess the condition of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. The consultant reported that the building needs approximately $26 million in repairs and infrastructure upgrades.

February 14, 2023

The Fort Worth City Council appointed the 1300 Gendy Task Force to study the building and its current and possible future uses. The options they were chosing between were to simply repair the building and make no other changes, to renovate the building to improve its existing use, or to redevelop the building where anything could happen with the building.

  • Councilmember Leonard Firestone (chair)

    Dr. John Barnett, Fort Worth African American Museum and Cultural Center

    Lillie Biggins, retired healthcare executive

    Johnny Campbell, City Center Management Group

    William Giron, Artes de la Rosa

    Matt Homan, Multipurpose Arena Fort Worth

    Wally Jones, Casa Manana

    Glenn Lewis, Linebarger Goggan Blair

    Estela Martinez-Stuart, Visit Fort Worth

    Patrick Newman, Fort Worth Botanic Garden

    Pat Riley, National Cowgirl Museum

    Dawn Taft, artist

    Scott Wilcox, Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Cultural District Alliance

    Ann Zadeh, Community Design Fort Worth

    Michael Hyatt, Fort Worth Zoological Association

    Matt Carter of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo

March 30, 2023

During the only 1300 Gendy Task Force meeting open for public comment, over 300 people arrived and spoke passionately for hours about the importance of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, and urging the task force to maintain the building and all the wonderful things that happen within it. It ended with Leonard Firestone, chair of the 1300 Gendy Task Force saying “Everyone on this task force is in absolute support of perpetuating this facility and the arts. That’s the bottom line.” Watch the video here.

June 6th, 2023

Despite public outcry and their own assurances, the 1300 Gendy Task Force recommended to Fort Worth City Council to redevelop the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

June 13, 2023

The Fort Worth City Council voted to approve the 1300 Gendy Task Force’s recommendation to redevelop the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, initiating a Request For Proposal process from developers. At that meeting, 25 arts advocates spoke up about why the building at 1300 Gendy must continue as a community arts space. Watch the video here.

Immediate before the vote, Mayor Mattie Park gave some assurances:

“As your mayor, I will not approve any RFP that does not maintain a priority and a requirement that includes that theater is maintained and you have a community arts space. It’s imperative to me.”

September 14, 2023

The City of Fort Worth received 4 proposals from developers.

October 4th, 2023

The Evalucation Committee met to chose up to 4 finalists to present to the public. Even though only being 4 proposals submitted, The Projects Group & M2G Ventures were rejected before the public could even see their proposals.

October 11, 2023

The 2 developers, Garfield and Goldenrod, were invited to present their redevelopment proposals for the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

Developers only had 20 minutes to present. The audience only had 30 minutes to ask questions. The community only had 5 days to submit feedback to developers.

(WORTH NOTING: the meeting was not being live-streamed. The city took over 24 hours to upload the video. And the feedback process was uneccesarily complicated and archaic. Support Fort Worth Art worked with city staff to simply the feedback process so that it could be shared & answered more easily.)

The community’s feedback was collected into an 150 page document that was given to the developers to incorporate into their revised proposals.

Garfield Public/Private LLC

Garfield is a real estate development company based in Dallas that focused on buildings with a public / private partnership. While they have not built anything in Fort Worth, they do have experience with performing arts spaces, such as the Buddy Holly Center for Performing Arts & Sciences in Lubbock, Durham Performing Arts Center in North Carolina, and George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City. Also their Project Executive, Matt Edwards, previously worked for The Projects Group in Fort Worth for 14 years.

Their proposal focuses on partnering with Bennett Partners, Byrne Construction, DEI Consultants, and various Dallas-based theater design companies. It proposes having anchor tenants such as The Cliburn, and the Fort Worth African American Museum and Cultural Center, a current tenant of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Their design seeks to compliment the architecture of the Cultural District, and preserve much of the building, including the trees, driveway, and original museum building.

Their initial proposal failed to include any gallery space. Their revised proposal includes a 2-story gallery space between the theaters.

Garfield’s Initial Proposal

Garfield’s Revised Proposal

Goldenrod Companies

Goldenrod is a real estate developer based in Omaha, Nebraska that focuses on for-profit buildings such as hotels, apartment buildings, office buildings, and mixed use developments. While they have not built anything in Fort Worth yet, they have broken ground on 2 mixed use developments in the West 7th area, and received $31 million from the City of Fort Worth to help pay for those developments. As far as we can tell, they have no experience with building arts spaces.

Their proposal focuses on building a 13-story hotel on the space between the Fort Worth Community Arts Center and the Amon Carter Museum, and a 13-story apartment building in the narrow space between the Community Arts Center and Montgomery Street. They have no local partners and declined to hire a local business to help with community outreach.

Their initial proposal did not address any maintenance to the existing building at all, or even mention any of the current tenants such as Arts Fort Worth or KWC Performing Arts. Their revised proposal includes tearing down the original museum building to build a new smaller gallery building.

Goldenrod’s Initial Proposal

Goldenrod’s Revised Proposal

What’s Next?

January 28, 2024

Thanks to Fort Worth Report Arts & Culture journalist Marcheta Fornoff, news broke that the redevelopment timeline for the Fort Worth Community Arts Center had been extended, which came as a surprise to not only advocates, but also city staff, and even the developers.

April 12, 2024

Garfield and Goldenrod’s submitted their final proposals for review by the Evaluation Committee. One developer will be chosen to go into contract negotiations with the City of Fort Worth.

June 4, 2024

The final developer proposal & contract will be presented to Fort Worth City Council during a worksession. This will be the first time the public will know which developer was chosen.

June 26, 2024

Fort Worth City Council will vote whether or not to approve the contract with the final developer. This is when your voice will matter the absolute most. The fate of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center depends on which developer is chosen, what their proposal is, and what their contract says.