Hate to break it to you, Fort Worth, but the greater North Texas region isn’t shrinking any time soon.
In and around our big city, feet on the ground and cars on the highways are only projected to rise in numbers — new residents total about 100,000 each year, according to the City of Fort Worth. And by 2045, an eye-watering 11 million people will likely call North Texas home.
Three ways local officials are tackling that fate have earned some hardware from a coalition of several local governments. The Celebrating Leadership in Development Excellence, or simply CLIDE, gave The Fort a 2019 CLIDE Award as kudos for architecture, urban planning, and development.
These are the three that got some nods of approval:
Fort Worth’s update to its preservation ordinance
The city’s preservation ordinance is the result of stakeholders aiming to protect Fort Worth’s cultural resources. That includes bolstering the Historic Site Tax Exemption program.
Some perks of the ordinance include allowing the city to focus on bringing in new developments, an initiative CLIDE thinks is pretty rad.
Stockyards guidelines
Since a year and a half ago when Fort Worth established new design guidelines for projects in the Stockyards, a handsome $14 million total in projects have been initiated.
Fort Worth aims for a mix of historic and modern features in the region. A makeover to East Exchange Avenue and the New Isis Theater are examples of this.
Meissner-Brown Building
From a funeral home to an ambulance center to a church after its construction in 1937, the Meissner-Brown building required some much needed TLC after decades of use. It got just that in 2016 when the building was refreshed into a commercial space.
The $1.8 million the city invested in the program didn’t go unnoticed.
