Fort Worth plan to invest $3M in this neighborhood called its ‘most ambitious’ yet
Carmen Martinez has lived on the north side for 53 years, and she doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon.
She raised her children there and stayed to care for her aging parents. A lot has changed in that time, but much remains the same.
High poverty and high crime have put the north side in a precarious place, city officials said. Blight, made worse by aging housing, poor sidewalks and a lack of street lights, has crept into the neighborhood. That is why the city plans to spend $3 million in neighborhood improvements.
“I used to know everyone up and down the street. Now I don’t,” Martinez said, standing in front of her home on Lee Avenue. “Anything to improve the look of the neighborhood will go a long way.”
Pending Fort Worth City Council approval in January, the north side will be the third neighborhood targeted with capital improvements designed to improve safety, aesthetics and investment. Stop Six and Ash Crescent have benefited from the program in past years, but the north side will be the largest and broadest application of the program.
Aubrey Thagard, director of the city’s neighborhood services department, called the north side target “our most ambitious undertaking yet.”
“It isn’t necessarily the most dire, but it is an area that needs stabilization,” Thagard said. “We can stop the decay.”
More than 11,600 people live on the north side, almost three times the populations of Stop Six and Ash Crescent combined. The improvements in those neighborhoods targeted specific areas of concern.
Councilman Carlos Flores, who lives on the north side, says the goal in his neighborhood is “to uplift the whole community.”
Already the area benefits from a Neighborhood Empowerment Zone, which waives fees and allows owners to apply for tax breaks for home improvements. In the 1400 block of Lee Avenue, five new homes are under construction through a city partnership designed to encourage home ownership.
The majority of north side homes are about 70 years old, Flores said, and they are “legacy homes” passed down from generation to generation. As they age, lower- or fixed-income residents can struggle to maintain them.
“As people see the city investing in their neighborhood, they’ll start making their own improvements,” he said. “We can stabilize the fabric of the neighborhood.”
Flores is hoping the investment will be as successful as it has been in Stop Six and Ash Crescent.
In Stop Six, a historic east Fort Worth neighborhood, crime has dropped 23 percent and home values have increased 24 percent since the city began work there.
Ash Crescent, which is in Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray’s district, has also seen improvements since the city started investing earlier this year. About 170 tons of trash and brush were removed from overgrown streets and vacant lots, and the city identified about 15 substandard homes, she said.
Before the city targeted the area, the neighborhood lacked an association or “collective voice for change,” she said. Now the Belmont Neighborhood Association spurs community involvement.
“I would say community pride was very low. On a scale of one to 10, it was about a two,” Gray said, adding that the city’s one-time investment has sharply improved morale.
The north side’s crime rate of 71 offenses per 1,000 people is higher than the city’s of 61 but lower than that of Ash Crescent and Stop Six. Nearly 28 percent of its residents live at or below the poverty line and more than 9 percent of the neighborhood is unemployed.
About 39 percent of the residential properties are owned by landlords and 15 percent of homes are overcrowded, a concern for Flores, who said he wants to encourage home ownership.
The neighborhood hasn’t necessarily slipped, Flores said. Instead it is simply an older neighborhood built before sidewalks and curbs were typical.
Sidewalks dot the north side. Some streets have them, others don’t. One stretches in front of Martinez’s home, but ends a few houses down.
For her, improving walkability will be key.
“It can be dangerous,” Martinez said.
While the Fort Worth Stockyards is a prominent landmark north of downtown, the north side target zone stops short of North Main to focus strongly on the residential neighborhood. It’s roughly bound by 23rd Street in the north, Jacksboro Highway in the south, Ellis Avenue to the east and Roosevelt Avenue to the west. It largely follows the existing Neighborhood Empowerment Zone.
Next month, the city staff will ask the council to expand that zone as part of the targeting.
Along with the $2.87 million planned for the north side, other resources have been devoted to improving the area, Thagard said. In 2018, $5.4 million was invested in the north side Community Center, including Community Development Block Grants, to improve access for residents and expand the facility and programs.
The neighborhood services department will also reach out to community leaders to find out what else residents need, Thagard said.
The additional city investment is good news for newer residents, too. Cassie Warren and her husband live in a home they bought in the same block as Martinez about a year ago. The couple purchased two other homes in the neighborhood and she’s organizing a neighborhood watch.
“I think people have been discouraged,” she said. “There’s a lot of great people who live up here.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2018 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Fort Worth plan to invest $3M in this neighborhood called its ‘most ambitious’ yet."
