What’s next for Farrington Field? DFW urban planning experts suggest a path forward.
Much remains unknown about both the future of Fort Worth’s Farrington Field.
A panel of experts from the urban planning nonprofit Urban Land Institute’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter presented what they called a process rather than a product for how the field and adjoining Billingsley Field House could be redeveloped.
The 11-person panel spent the past two and a half days visiting, researching and evaluating potential ways to develop the site. The city of Fort Worth and school district each contributed $25,000 to support the group’s study.
First, the city and the school district need to work out a deal to determine which of the two will be primarily responsible for the area’s redevelopment. The property is currently owned jointly, but the panel advised having a single point of contact to manage the project.
They suggested the city would be better at handling management rather than the school district. Managing development is part of the city’s core function, whereas the school district’s core function is to educate, the panel said.
The city should also do a cost/benefit analysis to determine how much it will cost to bring the facilities up to current building codes versus just leaving the stadium and field house alone, the panel advised.
Once that’s done both the city and the district can determine if any form of redevelopment is worth it, said panel chair and real estate executive Frank Bliss said.
There’s also an issue with what’s underground, said James Feild, chief development officer with Cienda Partners. Because Farrington Field was built in 1938, there aren’t good plans to tell exactly what kind of water and sewer infrastructure is under the building.
Feild shared his experience from a similar job site where lack of information about subterranean pre-World War 2 plumbing led to an additional $250,000 in construction costs just to diagnose the problems.
Those unknowns need to be addressed first before any development can begin, Bliss said. He estimated they could be addressed in four months.
Once the unknowns costs are addressed, the panel has offered to come back and do another assessment of what the Farrington Field site could be. The second go-around wouldn’t cost anything extra.
The city would then assemble an advisory board made up of members from the community with development experience. This panel would evaluate proposals from outside firms for how to redevelop the site.
That evaluation and selection process will include public input and is expected to take about 12 months to complete.
The panel estimated any potential development could break ground within a year of the developer being selected. They estimated it would be 10 years before any potential redevelopment could be complete.
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