Wilks Development
The occasion of its 93rd birthday on Tuesday will likely be remembered as the best in the complicated life of the Fort Worth Public Market building.
Officials with Wilks Development, a real estate development and investment company based in Benbrook, joined others in breaking ground on the long-awaited and highly anticipated redevelopment of one of the city’s most iconic structures, which sits on the southwest end of downtown, at 1400 Henderson St.
Officials dug shovels into a long mound of poured dirt to more reenact the ceremonial start of construction, which will take about two years to complete, officials say.
Emerging from the cobwebs and rising from the vacant lot behind the historic Spanish Colonial Revival edifice will be The Harden at Public Market, an active senior living facility of 199 rooms in a five-story structure that will include a parking garage.
Inside the actual old Public Market will be amenities for residents, including a fitness center, shared working space, a lounge, as well as the leasing office for the property. Also, a coffee shop/café from a to-be-determined vendor will be located in about the same place as a bakery that set up shop there long ago.
There will be public access to the market building.
The cost of the project will be about $54 million, says Kyle Wilks, president of Wilks Development. The project is being undertaken as a public-private partnership involving Wilks and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Those taking part in the groundbreaking include, from left, Mark Dabney of BOKA Powell architects, Randy Gideon, Wilks Development Senior Vice President Jess Green, Historic Fort Worth Inc. Executive Director Jerre Tracy, Kyle Wilks, NE Construction's Andre Nicholas, HUD's Kenneth Cooper, and Wilks Executive Senior Vice President Josh Wilks.
The property was listed as a Texas historic landmark in 1980 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Those designations will allow Wilks historic tax credits available to developers who renovate historic properties.
“[When] we purchased it, we didn't know what it would be exactly, but we knew it would be something significant,” Wilks says. “And we loved it. Our [family] background is in masonry. So, our family always loved this building. We've really had a lot of respect for it because the craftsmanship that it takes to build something like this.
“We knew whatever we settled on had to do a couple of things. One, it had to be very respectful of the history and the community, and then whatever we put in the Public Market building would need to resonate with the community and be something that was public facing. We are proud to be a part of the restoration of this iconic building and to preserve its legacy for the generations to come.”
Wilks Development purchased the building from Bob Simpson in 2014. The company has worked on this concept for it for two years.
“There's 24 months of hard work grinding every day to get to this point so that you can the construction guys rolling,” Wilks says. “So, it's like being done with part one, ready to go into part two.”
The name of the building is an homage to the original developer, John J. Harden, an Oklahoma native who began developing real estate in Fort Worth in 1928. His first two projects were the Rose Hill Burial Park, the final resting place of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald 35 years later, and the Bluebonnet Hills neighborhood near TCU.
Harden had previously developed public market buildings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Fort Worth’s Public Market building was designed by B. Gaylord Noftsger, another Oklahoman. It was constructed in six months, the total cost $200,000.
It opened on June 20, 1930.
“This is a very significant site to the architectural fabric of Fort Worth,” says Mark Dabney, who leads the Fort Worth office of BOKA Powell architects. “When this building opened in 1930, this was a vibrant neighborhood. There were homes just right over there on Rio Grande Avenue, all the way down Henderson to Seventh Street and back up to Summit Avenue.”
The Public Market building was used by local farmers and vendors, as well as other businesses. It was built to give farmers a central marketing place and to clear streets of parked produce wagons.
Under terms of Harden’s agreement with the city, the city passed an ordinance regulating huckstering on streets and agreed not to permit construction of a similar market within a 2-mile radius for a period of 10 years. The city also permitted the market to charge a maximum rent of 65 cents daily per stall. Thirty-five cents would be charged the first year, according to reports published at the time.
It closed in 1941, a victim of the Great Depression. The building was sold to a lumber company and subsequently other owners.
It fell into disrepair in the decades since but has been a source of intrigue among developers and the general populace for years because of its distinctive identity and location.
“We do a lot of work in Fort Worth,” Wilks says. “We have businesses in Fort Worth. I've probably driven on I-30, I don't know, 20,000 times, and have seen this building. So, when Mr. Simpson gave us the opportunity to buy it, we jumped on it.”
