Mule Alley developer to take over Fort Worth’s Cowtown Coliseum. Here’s what it means.
It’s time to retire, said Don Jury, one of the seven co-owners of the longtime Cowtown Coliseum operator.
For almost four decades Rodeo Plaza Inc. has managed the 111-year-old city coliseum, providing weekend rodeos as one of the last remaining authentic Western events in Fort Worth’s historic Stockyards. That may soon come to end as RPI works out a deal to sell its rights to the aging building to Fort Worth Stockyards Heritage Development Company.
The developers of Mule Alley, the retail center across Exchange Avenue to the south, will take over management of the coliseum if the deal goes through.
Time has come for someone else to take on the responsibility of Cowtown Coliseum, Jury said.
“It’s really hard for you to give up something that you love and cherish,” Jury said. “I honestly believe they will be a much better steward.”
Wearing a Stockyards rodeo jacket, he spoke Tuesday to the Fort Worth City Council ahead of a unanimous vote passing a new operating agreement necessary to allow the sale to go through. Such a vote was necessary because the city owns the property.
Jury said RPI was no longer equipped to maintain the coliseum. The building lacks dedicated parking and space to store animals overnight, he said. Stockyards Heritage has the ability to invest in the arena built in 1908 and make the improvements needed to keep it active for years to come, he said.
Rodeos will continue at the coliseum “for the time being,” he said.
The contract offers little detail about the coliseum’s future. It describes only “a broad variety of on-brand western entertainment and other programming” to draw guests to Hotel Drover. That 200-room boutique Marriott Autograph hotel is also being developed by Stockyards Heritage Development at the southern end of Mule Alley.
The new agreement is a financial win for the city and could mean improvements to the aging coliseum, which has not seen a major upgrade in decades.
Since 2002 the city has paid an annual subsidy of about $185,000 to RPI to operate weekend rodeos and other events at the coliseum. That will end. Instead, the city will receive 20% of all net profit made through coliseum programming.
It’s not clear how much that 20% will yield for the city, but it will be used to fund remodeling. According to the agreement Stockyards Heritage and the city will split improvement costs 50/50.
Andra Beatty of the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame, which operates in the coliseum, urged the council to postpone the vote and hold a public hearing. Not enough was known about the new agreement, she said, questioning what would happen to rodeo employees as well as the hall of fame.
Melissa Wade Hunter joined Beatty in asking for a no vote. Developers make grand promises they often don’t follow through on, she said. The Stockyards was once a mecca for cowboys and agriculture-related business and is endanger of losing its heritage to tourism, she said.
“Keep the real cowboys. Keep the real rodeos,” she said.
The Stockyards Championship Rodeo is a weekly pro-am event that has drawn cowboys, families and tourists to the Stockyards since 1986.
But the Stockyards, now nearly 130 years old, is in the midst of a revival.
Along with the Drover Hotel and a Shake Shack, Mule Alley, the $17.5 million shopping center, has attracted a brewpub-music hall by Dallas-based Twisted Root Burger Co. and Truck Yard; El Paso-based Lucchese Bootmaker and upscale Lucchese Collection shops; and the new home of advertising technology company Simpli.fi, along with the RIDE TV network, restaurants and the American Paint Horse Association.
Councilman Carlos Flores said he understood that the vote seemed like a quick turnaround, but he believed RPI and Stockyards Heritage had been talking for months about a potential deal.
He recalled taking cattle to the stockyards for sale when it was still functioning and said his grandfather worked in the packing plants there.
“I get it,” he said. “Historical preservation is very important to me.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 9:40 PM.
