Jack Z. Smith 
Cowtown's Costa: man with a plan
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Most Fort Worth residents probably never have heard of Fernando Costa, even though the newly appointed assistant city manager has made a remarkable impact in 10 years at City Hall.
As Fort Worth's planning director for most of his tenure, he has guided the city in adopting much more thoughtful and effective planning and development policies. These strategies have helped revitalize the central city inside Loop 820, strengthen the tax base and discourage urban sprawl.
Costa has given the city a clear long-range vision of what it wants to become while helping formulate a meaningful blueprint for realizing that vision: the city's Comprehensive Plan, which he took a lead role in drafting in his first year here. It's updated annually and cited frequently.
Costa's impact is highly visible today in development occurring or planned in 16 designated "urban villages" where the city is encouraging pedestrian-friendly development that incorporates a variety of land uses -- e.g., residential, retail, office, public transit and recreational -- in the same area.
That higher-density development allows many urban residents to shorten work commutes and use mass transit -- or perhaps walk to work. The mixed-use approach reduces urban sprawl, freeway congestion and air pollution.
Two prominent examples of the urban village and mixed-use concepts that Costa champions are the dazzling development rising around the intersection of West Seventh Street, University Drive and Camp Bowie Boulevard west of downtown and the revitalization effort on once-deteriorating West Berry Street bordering Texas Christian University.
Within weeks of Costa's arrival at City Hall on April 20, 1998, I began hearing a steady buzz about him from excited civic leaders and aficionados of central-city revitalization. They correctly pegged Costa as a visionary leader with the foresight, drive and personality to re-energize the city's punchless, understaffed planning department.
"I saw it as a challenge," Costa told me Tuesday. "Generally speaking, I'm happy that the planning function has become a more important part of the way that city officials make decisions about Fort Worth's growth and development. ... Mayor [Mike] Moncrief often refers to the Comprehensive Plan as the city's game book, as a general guide for making decisions, because it describes the kind of city that we want ... and outlines the kinds of policies and programs and projects that can lead us to realize that vision."
Costa, 54, was born in Cuba, but his family fled the Castro regime in 1961 and moved to Miami when he was a child. He has a strong academic background in civil engineering and city planning. He came to Fort Worth after 11 years in Atlanta, where he headed the city planning department and helped plan its hosting of the 1996 Summer Olympics.
He's a resident of Fort Worth's Mistletoe Heights neighborhood just southwest of downtown and a proud father of three daughters (ages 25, 18 and 16). He was divorced two years ago, ending a 26-year marriage. He's president of the Rotary Club of Fort Worth.
Costa credits Fort Worth's Bass family with blazing the way for Cowtown's revitalization through its enormous downtown redevelopment effort. The Basses had traveled the world and seen how great metropolises could be energized by people living, working and enjoying recreational pursuits in an urban core, in stark contrast to the dead, dull downtown Cowtown of the 1970s.
Costa understands those things, too. Shortly after arriving here, he was patiently preaching the virtues of higher-density, mixed-use development that reduced reliance on the automobile. That concept now is gaining wide acceptance in North Central Texas.
"I don't get the kind of strange looks I did 10 years ago," he said. "Attitudes across the region have changed dramatically."
As a new assistant city manager, Costa supervises four vital departments: Planning and Development, Water, Engineering, and Transportation and Public Works. Few who know him doubt that he is up to the task.
Jack Z. Smith is a Star-Telegram editorial writer. 817-390-7724
