Housing community named for legendary Fort Worth basketball coach breaks ground in Stop Six
Dunbar High School alumni sang the praises of their legendary basketball coach Robert Hughes Sr. on Thursday as they celebrated the ground breaking of an affordable apartment complex named in his honor.
“Who’s house? Hughes House,” said Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Gyna Bivens leading the audience in a call and response.
The project is the latest phase in the Stop Six Neighborhood Choice Initiative, which aims to replace the 300-unit Cavile Place public housing public housing project with roughly 1,000 mixed income units along with 12,000 square feet of commercial space in the historic east Fort Worth neighborhood.
The program was seeded by a $35 million grant in April 2020 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which covers roughly 10% of the estimated $334 million redevelopment.
The first phase, the Cowan Place Senior Living facility, broke ground Sept. 16. That project will include 174 units when completed in this fall.
Hughes House, on the corner of East Rosedale Street and Amanda Avenue, will have 519 mixed income apartments and townhomes. The phase that broke ground Thursday will have 162 units with 145 set aside for affordable housing with the rest being rented at market rate.
Fort Worth has been growing at a rapid pace, and the city needs to make sure neighborhoods like Stop Six need to be included in that growth, said Mayor Mattie Parker.
“What this project in particular recognizes is that the individuals who built Stop Six get to return to Stop Six and make sure their families have a legacy here moving forward,” she said.
Around a third of the former residents of the 300-unit Cavile Place want to return to live in the new housing, said Esther Shin, president of the community development nonprofit Urban Strategies Inc.
That is higher than the national average, Shin said, and she credited the nonprofit Fort Worth Housing Solutions for its work spearheading and coordinating the redevelopment.
The dream of this development came from meetings with the community, said Fort Worth Housing Solutions president Mary-Margaret Lemmons. She pointed to the roughly 70 community working sessions that helped shape the project.
“The community has always had a strong voice in what we wanted this to become, and we appreciate your input, we want your input and will continue to ask for it,” she said.
Hughes is the nation’s winningest boys basketball coach and a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He won three state titles at I.M. Terrell and two at Dunbar.
His former players have gone on to become successful community members with one, James Cash, going on to become a co-owner of the Boston Celtics, his daughter Robin Hughes said speaking at the ceremony Thursday.
He’s inspired former Stop Six residents to come back and invest in the community, with Bivens pointing to developer Jeremis Smith, whose company Legacy Construction Solutions is building houses in the neighborhood.
“We understand the impact he’s had on this community, so it’s our honor to include him for generations to come,” Lemmons said.
Construction on this phase of Hughes House is expected wrap up as early in December 2024, according to Fort Worth Housing Solutions. The nonprofit doesn’t have firm dates for when the other phases of Hughes House will break ground.
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