Here’s a look at the developments coming to this booming Fort Worth neighborhood
The Near Southside is booming.
A $8.6 million reconstruction of South Main Street that began and 2015 spurred apartments, restaurants and public art.
The city on Nov. 1 added 10 years to a special taxing district that has helped to fund road, water and sidewalk projects that lay the groundwork for more development. Already, there are plans for a hotel, more apartments and public art.
Nobleman Hotel
A historic fire station at 503 Bryan Ave. will get new life as the centerpiece for the Nobleman Hotel. The fire station closed in 1965.
The 148-room hotel will wrap around the fire station, which will serve as the hotel’s lobby.
The project was once feared dead, but was revived after Dallas-based Bedford Lodging purchased the property from real estate investment firm CanTex Capital in March.
Bedford Lodging expects to open the hotel in 2024.
200 West Vickery
Plans for this project are still in the early stages, but the City Council in October got a look at plans for a mixed-use development at 200 West Vickery Blvd., the site of the parking lot for the T&P Station.
The city, Trinity Metro and Near Southside Inc. have been looking to develop this land since at least 2018.
Dubbed the “Katy Station Lofts,” the development would house roughly 200 to 240 units with half set aside for affordable housing.
The plans show an office building on the western third of the lot with apartments and shops taking up the rest of the property.
The buildings would be separated by a 14,500-square foot plaza leading under the freeway to the train station.
South Main and Rosedale Gateways
Near Southside Inc. held two community meetings in August to discuss plans to renovate the Interstate 30 underpass at South Main Street and Interstate 35W underpasses at Rosedale Avenue.
The plan would use public art as a way to both clean up and brighten the underpasses in a way that makes residents more comfortable with using them.
San Antonio-based artist Bill Fitzgibbons showed residents an example of how he’d used light and color in Birmingham, Alabama, to increase pedestrian traffic through a railroad underpass separating the city’s Railroad Park neighborhood from its downtown.
The installation transformed the underpass from a place people would walk two blocks to avoid to a place where residents and tourists alike go to take selfies and wedding pictures.
“That is the magic of public art. Here is a place people were afraid to go under, and now it’s where they go to take their wedding pictures,” he said.
A special taxing district will review plans for the two underpasses in December and vote on whether to approve funding for construction and installation.
Laundry Building and Church
The western side of Hemphill Street between West Broadway Avenue and West Peter Smith Street is one of the oldest blocks in the city, and home to the Gustavaus Adolphus Church.
The 1912 chapel built by Swedish immigrants was on the road to demolition, but Near Southside Inc. is working with developers to save the the church and an old laundry building to incorporate them into a new apartment complex.
Plans for the development are in the early stages, but roughly 300 apartments would be built around the two buildings with a parking garage located on the south end across from the Oncor substation, Brennan told the City Council in October.
The project hinges on funding from the special taxing district to address an old storm drain running under the property, he said.
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