Can’t find parking in your TCU neighborhood? Get out your checkbook, Fort Worth says
We live in a push-pull world. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and nowhere is that more evident than in a booming metropolis like Fort Worth. Growth comes with pluses and minuses, and chief among the minuses is that suddenly more people are jockeying for limited parking space, especially near TCU.
In recent years, as the university has expanded its footprint, the West Berry commercial corridor has exploded in popularity and zoning changes have allowed for more multi-resident dwellings, homeowners in the formerly quiet neighborhoods adjacent TCU have felt the squeeze when it comes to parking. Some, like Martha Tim Latta, look out their front windows at certain times of day and see an unbroken wall of vehicles lining their streets, many of them belonging to TCU students, and they’re left to wonder if there’s anything they can do about it.
Latta and her husband, John, moved to a mid-century bungalow in the Frisco Heights neighborhood, just east of TCU, 12 years ago. They left Dallas looking for a slower pace of life, but they didn’t want to sacrifice the comforts and conveniences of city living. To them, Fort Worth was the ideal place.
Today, with “stealth dorms” — rental properties primarily housing students — in their neighborhood and an official university-owned dorm being built nearby, they feel the sense of tranquility they once enjoyed has partially disappeared due to the crush of cars in front of their house.
One side of the Lattas’ street is a no-parking zone between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., but outside that it’s a free for all, and the other side of the street has no restrictions.
Latta, who leads the Frisco Heights Neighborhood Alliance, thought she had a solution: She approached the city of Fort Worth and asked if they could zone her street for resident-only parking. Other neighborhoods — part of Crestline Road near Dickies Arena, for example — have the same type of restriction, which alleviates congestion and leaves street parking open for those who live there.
The response was not what she expected. First, the city told Latta she would need to commission her own parking impact study. Next, she was told she would need to pay for the required signage. But the city doesn’t recommend a firm to conduct the study, nor will it provide a price estimate.
“I don’t know how much it was going to cost, but I know it was going to be more than the few hundred dollars we have in the neighborhood alliance bank account,” Latta said. After that, figuring it was hopeless, she gave up.
Numerous firms across Texas perform traffic and parking impact studies. Most of these studies are commissioned by real estate developers and municipalities, and they can cost a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the size and scope of the project. One local firm told the Star-Telegram that a comprehensive study can run as much as $25,000 or more.
Fort Worth has five “nonresidential parking generators”: TCU, the UNT Health Science Center, the Will Rogers Memorial Center/Dickie’s Arena, the Stockyards and the Magnolia Historic Area.
Certain neighborhoods near these locations are already eligible, under a city ordinance, to be zoned for resident-only parking. But, as a spokesperson for the city of Fort Worth confirmed, homeowners wishing to add a new street to the resident-only parking program must pay for the study in order to prove a need exists.
In some cases, businesses have footed the bill on behalf of residents. Dickies Arena paid for the study on Crestline, a city spokesperson said. Most of the time, though, its the residents or the neighborhood associations who shell out the money.
Todd Waldvogel, TCU’s associate vice chancellor for facilities and campus planning, knows the Lattas well. He met with them privately to discuss their concerns not long ago, and he says they are good neighbors to the university.
Waldvogel doesn’t deny that some commuter students might use the Lattas’ street for parking, but he believes the bigger issue is the fact that fewer homes in Frisco Heights are owner occupied. If that’s the case, resident-only parking might not offer relief.
“It used to be a lot of privately owned facilities that have now been redeveloped as duplexes and housing focused on attracting students,” he said. “The zoning that allows for that has been tough on these old 1920s neighborhoods ... the homeowners liked that they could rent out their carriage houses, but the same zoning that allowed for that allowed for the duplexes to come in. Developers took advantage of it.”
Because the lots in Frisco Heights were created for single-family homes, there’s little room for parking in front of or behind the duplexes that have gone up in recent years. That leaves street parking as the only option in some cases.
For its part, TCU is addressing a lack of student parking in its growth master plan, Waldvogel said. By the fall of 2026, the university expects to open a parking garage on the east side of campus near Frisco Heights with more than 900 spaces. The school is also exploring ways of making the east side of campus more pedestrian friendly, eliminating the need for students to drive between buildings as they go from class to class.
Waldvogel said as enrollment grows, the university will start registering more student vehicles for parking lots on the west side of campus where the school isn’t pressed as tightly against the surrounding neighborhoods. He also said the university would find ways to better utilize its campus shuttle system as well as educate its students about being good neighbors.
“There will be growing pains,” said Waldvogel, “and we just need to talk to them about having manners and about our expectations.”
TCU’s facilities department prides itself on being “an open book,” Waldvogel said, and he welcomes dialogue with neighbors about TCU’s growth and the accompanying headaches that arise.
“Vibrant neighborhoods are important to us, too,” he said. “The last thing we want are the neighborhoods around us faltering.”
Speaking to the Star-Telegram, Fort Worth city council member Elizabeth Beck, whose 9th District encompasses the area around TCU, said parking has long been a pain point for her constituents, and she said she’s not a fan of making residents purchase a parking study to remedy the problem.
While Beck wasn’t initially contacted by Latta, she is now looking into her specific case in search of a solution.
“We have these requirements,” Beck said, “but there’s no guidance. We just tell people to call a traffic engineer and get a study, but we need to be more user friendly and provide residents with a place to start. Not many folks, even sophisticated folks, know where to begin, and it can be daunting. We should help them navigate that process.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2025 at 9:20 AM.