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

The City’s Decision

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.

May 21, 2024

City staff informed the developers that neither of their proposals were chosen by the city. Not Garfield, not Goldenrod.

They could not say what would would happen next, if they would restart the request for proposal process or if they would repair the building.

June 4, 2024

Assistant City Manager Fernando Costa presented an update to Fort Worth City Council, informing them that “we’re going back to the drawing board”. He also stressed the urgency of the situation, reminding them of the $26 million in needed repairs, saying “we're holding your breath because on any day major systems at the Community Art Center could fail so this is not the situation that we can allow to continue indefinitely and so we're seeking a solution that will be broadly acceptable to the community”.

Arts Fort Worth Ends Management of

the Fort Worth Community Arts Center

July 11, 2024

KWC Performing Arts (formerly known as Kids Who Care) suddenly announces that they would close after 35 years of arts education. Given that they were one of the main tenants of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, this created a huge budget shortfall for Arts Fort Worth, who was already struggling to maintain financial backers ever since the city announced they were looking to redevelop the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, throwing the building’s future in to question.

July 24, 2024

Arts Fort Worth made the unexpected announcement that they would end their management of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Read their full statement here.

The financial burden of keeping the building open without the proper support from the city became too great, putting all of Arts Fort Worth’s mission in jeopardy (including the Fort Worth Public Art program and the grant funding). Rather than risk a total collapse of Fort Worth’s arts ecosystem, they decided to vacate the building after 22 years of management.

They ceased all their programming in the building. Anyone who had a contract to rent the space will be good until December 31st. Starting on January 1st, 2025 the building will close to the public. All tenants will move out by April 2025, and Arts Fort Worth will leave the building by July 2025, at which point it will be under the management of the City of Fort Worth.

With this announcement also came the news that Arts Fort Worth’s contract with the city now falls under the Library Department where they have more allies, instead of FW Lab (which combines the budget, planning, and data analytics departments).

July 29, 2024

David Cooke, Fort Worth’s City Manager since 2014, announced he will be retiring in February 2025. Fort Worth City Council will be seeking his replacement before David Cooke’s retirement and before they are up for election again in May 2025. Hopefully this city council appoints a new city manager who is much more friendly to the arts and the long-term health of the city.

Two weeks later, Assistant City Manager Fernando Costa, announced he would be retiring as well after 26 years of serving as Fort Worth’s longest-tenured assistant city manager. Fernando has been a long-time arts advocate, as well as someone who always listened to the community and helped the city navigate delicate projects. He oversaw the 1300 Task Force and Request for Proposal process. The city is not looking to replace his position. Now Jessica McEachern is the assistant city manager over the Library department, and therefore Arts Fort Worth.

What’s Next?

The City of Fort Worth will look to redevelop the Fort Worth Community Arts Center at 1300 Gendy Street, but we don’t yet have a timeline. Hopefully they have learned from their past mistakes, and this time will put the community first & foremost, and learn who the building is for & what purpose it will serve before they request any more proposals for redevelopment.

Meanwhile, Fort Worth’s art spaces will soon be overwhelmed as artists who had shows planned for Fort Worth Community Arts Center scramble to find new spaces.

Arts Fort Worth is working towards finding a new community arts space, even if it is temporary, while they navigate the changing power structure in city staff.

Right now it is important that we urge city council to properly fund Arts Fort Worth as they seek to open temporary community art spaces that can again act as the foundation to Fort Worth’s arts ecosystem.

We’ll share further news as we learn more.