Hotel on ‘lucrative’ Camp Bowie gets OK despite concerns about historic character
Visitors to Fort Worth’s Cultural District or Dickies Arena will have a new place to stay — a boutique hotel that will change the character of Camp Bowie Boulevard.
Bowie House will bring 120 luxury hotel rooms to the vacant lot on the northeast corner of Camp Bowie and Dorothy Lane. Plans call for a restaurant, bar and meeting space in the roughly 35,600-square-foot building. The rear features a rooftop infinity pool on the second floor that cascades down the side of the building to a garden courtyard.
Renderings show a four-story building with a facade that mimics Camp Bowie’s brick. Nearby residents opposed to the project told the city council the project was out of touch with North Hi Mount and the Camp Bowie corridor, but the council approved a needed zoning change unanimously.
The location, 3710-3736 Camp Bowie Blvd., is close to Dickies Arena and the museums of Fort Worth’s Cultural District. It was the former site of the Ginger Man bar and a church, which have both been bulldozed.
Parking will be valet-only in an underground garage that has about 180 spaces. The entrance is at a median crossing on Camp Bowie, basically where the Ginger Man’s driveway was, to limit the impact on traffic.
Jo Ellard, property owner and developer, told the council she had extensive communication with the neighborhood and went through four designs trying to incorporate suggestions.
“The neighbors have been extremely helpful in helping us design a project that they will be proud of,” she said.
Wade Chappell, executive director of the Camp Bowie District, said the business community on the corridor has been “hungry” for a hotel and praised the project.
“Our shop owners, our property owners and our landlords are all eager to get more folks into town,” he said.
Ellard’s plans go beyond a hotel.
Eleven townhomes will buffer the hotel from the North Hi Mount neighborhood to the west and north, with four along Dorothy Lane and seven along an alley behind homes Clarke Avenue. Each will have a two-car garage and should be no higher than the typical residential home. They will face into the courtyard in the rear of the hotel.
Though the board of the North Hi Mount Neighborhood, which surrounds the project to the north and west, wrote a letter in support of the concept earlier in the summer, speakers Tuesday told the council to reject the plan. Other letters to the zoning commission and the City Council said the board would neither support or oppose the project.
The hotel would bring too much traffic and density to Camp Bowie and Dorothy, they said.
Travel writer June Naylor, who lives nearby, said she understood the need for boutique hotels in cultural districts and said the project looked beautiful.
However, it doesn’t fit on Camp Bowie, she said, noting the historic character of the boulevard is typically low rise buildings. Fort Worth should preserve historic character, she said, and not “sell out” as she believed Austin, Dallas and Houston have.
“We’re better than that,” she said.
Miranda Benton said she spoke for a large number of neighbors who couldn’t speak but were opposed to the project. She said the hotel did not account for parking and traffic may back up on Camp Bowie.
Councilman Dennis Shingleton, in making the motion to approve the zoning change, told residents frustrated with Bowie House “bear with me on this one.”
“You know that something is going to be built on that very, very lucrative commercial property,” Shingleton told the neighborhood. “And in my opinion, I can’t think of anything better than a five-star hotel there that is going to enhance, not only the commercial aspects of Camp Bowie Boulevard, but also that neighborhood.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
