It’s time for developers, investors to look at Panther Island, Fort Worth mayor says
With the prospect of federal money to construct Fort Worth’s Panther Island unlikely, Mayor Betsy Price says it is time for “brighter minds” in the private sector to consider how to finish the $1.17 billion project.
Washington officials this week rejected a request for $38 million to continue designing and building the Trinity River project, opting instead to provide $1.5 million for a long debated feasibility study. With no construction dollars in sight, Price told the Star-Telegram on Thursday she hoped to convene a group of developers and real estate experts to discuss how the roughly 800-acre patch of land north downtown can become a center for growth.
“It’s time to get good developers and good investors together, people who do this kind of thing for a living, and start a conversation,” Price said. “I think we need to look at the whole project. Is it going to look like what we envisioned or is it time to change?”
Panther Island, known by the Corps as the Central City Project, hopes to mitigate a Trinity River flood by cutting a bypass channel. The outcome would form an 800-acre island ripe for development. Since the project’s inception in the early 2000s, renderings have shown the island as a walkable mix of commercial and residential properties bisected by channels, giving the landscape a river-walk feel.
The Tarrant Regional Water District, the local sponsor of the project, is a major landowner in the area, but Price said the city is responsible for ensuring quality development there. In October the Fort Worth City Council approved stripping references to the Trinity River Vision Authority from the city’s development code to make it clear that prospective developers need to go to the city, not the TRVA, with ideas.
Design standards for the area include a pedestrian friendly layout of buildings that can support 10,000 residents as well as commercial office space. Robert Sturns, the city’s director of economic development, said those standards could morph. The area could become more dense or may be marketed as a site for a corporate headquarters.
Water district general manger Jim Oliver was skeptical about turning to private developers at this stage of the project.
“If someone has an idea, we’d be willing to listen,” Oliver said.
But Oliver said the district has discussed some of the land it owns in the past with developers who appeared skittish. He said the companies, which he wouldn’t name, told the district the possible return on investment was too far out for them to invest now.
The district purchased chunks of land in the path of the channel, but also owns land that required environmental clean up. The district owns about 150 acres, 30 of which is ready for development. The rest would be marketable after the levees come down when the channel is built, Oliver said.
The idea has been that the sale of these properties would fund improvements to the island, such as the canals, Oliver said. If the goal was to pay for the construction of the channel, the district would have to sell the land for more than three times the value, he speculated.
Mark Mazzanti, a former Corps executive who has been hired to coordinate the local project, told the Star-Telegram this week there were a number of options to move forward. That may be a major topic of discussion at Tuesday’s water district meeting, but Mazzanti declined to go into detail.
In the past, the Corps has been authorized to allow local sponsors to build projects on their own and be reimbursed later, but Congress has not approved the appropriation for that in several years, he said. The president’s 2021 budget proposal calls for $250 million to restart the program, but it’s unclear if Congress will approve it.
Price said she’s hopeful a group of private developers can offer a wide range of solutions and noted the city’s history of successful public-private partnerships. The latest is the $540 million Dickies Arena. The city contributed $225 million that will paid back through taxes on tickets, parking, livestock facilities and hotel rooms. The Fort Worth Zoo and a homeless housing program are also public-private partnerships.
The most successful is AllianceTexas, the commercial, industrial and residential mega development that surrounds the country’s first industrial airport. Hillwood, a Ross Perot Jr.-founded developer that manages Alliance, estimated the development contributed $7.8 billion in economic activity in 2019 and $242.8 million in property taxes to North Texas.
“We’ve done this before,” Price said. “We can’t wait another 16 years for federal funding.”
Army Corps Partnerships
Though Price’s idea focuses on spurring development on Panther Island, the Corps is exploring public-private partnerships for the construction and maintenance of water projects, called P3s. Two projects underway are larger in scope than Panther Island but offer similar benefits. Both are relatively new projects compared to the nearly two-decade old Trinity River endeavor.
In Texas, private investment focused on economic development, not flood control, will significantly enhance the capacity of the Brazos Island Harbor near Brownsville.
Three liquefied natural gas companies, Next Decade, Annova and Texas LNG, have picked up part of the tab for deepening the Brownsville Ship Channel from the Gulf of Mexico to their shipping locations. It’s a $310 million project that the Corps estimates will be done in half the time and for $72 million to $150 million less than if the Corps did it alone, according to a project summary.
The three private companies will invest $38.75 billion in Brownsville operations. The project will boost the companies’ operations in the Port of Brownsville, adding up to 600 jobs with an average salary of $70,000 a year. The median household income there is around $36,000, according to the Corps.
In North Dakota an ambitious $2.75 billion plan to re-route a river around Fargo with a 30-mile channel is the Army Corps’ first public-private partnership.
There, the Red River of the North flows to Canada between Fargo and Morehead, Minn. It poses a significant flood risk to both cities — volunteers have use millions of sandbags to keep the waters away from both towns.
Originally the Corps was going to construct both parts of the long-term flood protection plan: an upstream dam system south of the two cities and the channel to the west of Fargo.
Instead the Corps is responsible for just the dam system. Private companies will design, dig and maintain the channel, said diversion consultant Rocky Schneider. The Corps has committed to about $750 million, Schneider said, and received a $100 million appropriation this week, the largest allocation the St. Paul district of the Corps has ever received.
Three “teams” of private companies have bid on the channel section, he said, and a contract should be awarded soon. They’ll be reimbursed overtime through three voter-approved tax districts and will commit to maintaining the channel for 30 years.
The process has taken about six years, but locals have been optimistic the unique partnership will expedite the project, he said. A Corps summary of the Fargo-Morehad diversion anticipates a $100 million savings for the federal government. Without the partnership, the agency estimated the work would take at least 16 years. With it, the time frame is reduced to just over six years. The project is expected to be done by 2027.
“There’s a lot of assurance to the public that someone isn’t going to just build a trench and walk away,” Schneider said. “We think the quality of work will be far superior.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
