Fort Worth plans to move City Hall to one of downtown’s most well known buildings.
One of downtown Fort Worth’s most iconic and largely vacant buildings, the former Pier 1 Imports headquarters, will likely soon have a new tenant.
The city of Fort Worth plans to buy the glass and gray granite building for use as a new City Hall.
City Manager David Cooke and Mayor Betsy Price announced Wednesday a plan to buy the 20-story tower on the northwestern edge of downtown. The City Council will be asked to approve the purchase Dec. 15, and the sale could close on Feb. 1.
If the deal is finalized, city offices would move into the modern, glassy structure — known for lighting up purple during TCU football weekends — in the next two years, they said. The building is on the eastern bank of the Trinity River at 100 Energy Way.
A purchase price was not disclosed, but Cooke said the cost would be less than $100 million, which would be far less than the estimated $200 million that would have been needed to build a new City Hall structure. In 2014, the last time the building was sold, it went for $87 million. Cooke said the purchase price was lower than that. He did not expect renovations to push the total cost above $100 million.
“The new space allows for city services to be housed in one building, with the ultimate goal of this City Hall providing easy access for the public and great transparency and a chance for the public to be able to interact with us,” Price said during a news conference at the current City Hall at 200 Texas St., on downtown’s south end. “It’s got great parking, and it will have great spaces.”
The building was constructed in 2004 to house Pier 1’s headquarters. It has changed hands multiple times and was the North Texas headquarters of Chesapeake Energy during the Barnett Shale natural gas boom a decade ago.
Pier 1, once a nationally-respected home furnishings store with more than 1,000 locations, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year and closed all its stores, although its brand remains alive in the e-commerce realm.
The building is owned by Hertz Investment Group, Cooke said. It has an appraised value of $71 million, according to the Tarrant Appraisal District.
At one point the Fort Worth school district explored purchasing the building for its headquarters but determined it wasn’t the right fit, a district spokeswoman said.
The move would create a shakeup in the city’s downtown area. Fort Worth’s City Hall has been in the area of Throckmorton and Ninth streets for 130 years.
The current City Hall building at that intersection, which opened in 1972, is next door to the 1936 City Hall, which is now the Public Safety Building, which had replaced an 1893 building in the same vicinity.
Cooke said the purchase would be made using tax notes that require a vote by City Council but do not need voters’ approval in a bond election. The tax notes are typically financed for seven to 10 years, he said, but allow flexibility for refinancing if interest rates or other factors change. Taxes will not increase as a result of the purchase, a city spokeswoman said.
The move is part of a plan that’s been in the works for more than a year to modernize and consolidate the city’s office buildings, and opens the door for significant changes to downtown Fort Worth.
Cooke first floated the idea of consolidating or selling some of the city’s 11 downtown properties last year.
The original plan was to build a new City Hall next to the current location, but the plan to buy the Pier 1 building will cost less and can be implemented more quickly, while reducing operating expenses and eliminating annual payments for leased facilities, according to a news release.
Cooke said the opportunity to buy the Pier 1 building came up during the past month.
“It’s an incredible deal for the taxpayers,” he said. “We just can’t pass it up, actually.”
The Pier 1 building has 409,000 square feet of office space, and is about one-third full.
Cooke said the city wouldn’t need all the office space, and likely would serve as landlord for other tenants at least until their leases are completed, which would provide revenue for the city.
It’s too early to say precisely which city offices would be moved to the Pier 1 building. City officials have recently talked about consolidating a new city hall with a relocated downtown library.
The city spends nearly $700,000 annually on office leases in various spots, including two downtown police buildings and space at La Gran Plaza.
The move would place City Hall about a one-mile walk from downtown’s Sundance Square, where dozens of restaurants and shops are often packed with local government employees on a break from work. The current City Hall is less than a half-mile from Sundance Square.
Price said she wasn’t concerned that the Pier 1 building was too far on the fringes of downtown.
“I feel like we’re still in the core, where we need to be,” she said. “I feel with all the surface parking that’s there, parking will be free then for residents to use. Our employee parking will be consolidated. So it will be easy access to town, and easy access to the courthouse.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 2:26 PM.
