Ed and Sasha Bass are not pleased by the question. The question is about Sundance Square — the renowned Fort Worth treasure designed, nurtured, developed, built, and rebuilt by Ed Bass over the last four decades — and what becomes of it after Ed Bass.
Fort Worth has grown up around Sundance the last four decades. “That Question,” as it gets to be referred to during a rare joint interview the Fort Worth couple granted to Fort Worth Magazine in mid-April, has increasingly bubbled in the city as Ed Bass, 75, ages. The concern has risen to a new level lately, as Sasha Bass has taken a more visible role at Sundance with her husband out of the public view during COVID. A number of Sundance’s merchants are in a slow burn over a year’s worth of management changes at Sundance Square, resulting confusion and lack of communication, a raft of at least 20 store and restaurant closures since the beginning of 2020, and what they view as a botched response to COVID-19. Some Fort Worth leaders have even found themselves drawn into the matter and forced to tiptoe around it.
The Basses say Sundance will persist and enjoy its day in the sun again. “It’s an adaptation, a major adaptation,” Ed Bass said during the interview. “That’s what business does.”
Back to That Question.
“I don’t think that’s a fair question to ask,” Ed Bass says. “What’s going to happen to Fort Worth when I die? When am I going to die? Well, we’ll see in 20 years.”
“Hold on,” Sasha Bass, 39, and who married Ed in 2018, says. “It’s a bit rude, because if you believe in what Ed Bass has done and contributed to this community — how consistent, reliable, committed he has been — that question is very insulting. Because if he did this truly right, it’s going to be all right. Because he has inspired people, not just like me, people like Bill [Boecker, president of the Sundance management company]. Younger people that are so inspired to keep this alive and going, not for a decade, hopefully not 20, but for future generations. And that’s what Ed Bass has built. So, the people that are worried, I would say, they need to have faith and they need to have vision and they need to believe. Because it sounds like they’re people with little faith and hope.”
Mayor Betsy Price, who’s been taking a victory lap as she nears the end of 10 years in office as the city’s mayor, was asked a variant of the question in March at a meeting of a breakfast club she was invited to attend. Is there anything the city can do to help?
“We’ve lost a lot of businesses in Sundance,” Price said in a subsequent interview with the magazine. “I’m not privy to whether those businesses were on the edge to begin with. But any time you have a major swath of your city that’s essentially shut down and kind of not performing, it’s concerning. But there’s very little I can do and drive that, at this point … They had a major plan for that end of town, and Ed did a beautiful job implementing that in the last 10 years.”
“People want to continue to be respectful about this and want to continue to rely on this incredibly energetic part of our city,” Bob Jameson, CEO of Visit Fort Worth, said in an interview.
“We’re missing some important parts of the story,” he says. “Two big groups of people: people traveling and people working downtown.”
Downtown hotel room nights fell to 350,000 in 2020 from 780,000 the prior year, Jameson says. Citywide, hotels posted a 49% occupancy rate for December 2020, with the National Finals Rodeo in town. “The interesting thing is the 2019 occupancy for December was 56%,” Jameson says. “We almost reached that year over year.”
Neither Sundance Square nor Downtown Fort Worth Inc., the economic development organization, were able to provide estimates on the percentages of downtown employees working via remote. Downtown Fort Worth Inc. responded to a request for records available under the Texas Open Records Act for Downtown Tax Increment Finance District and Public Improvement District expenditures in Sundance Square. Andy Taft, the president, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Sporting a Pony Tail The Basses agreed to a joint interview April 15 at their Sundance Square offices in The Westbrook building overlooking Sundance Plaza. The April 15 interview covered a wide range of topics, from the Bass family’s more than 40 years of history in building Sundance Square to what its future looks like post-COVID. We were not permitted, under rules set by a spokesman and agreed to by the magazine, to ask the couple about tenants’ complaints, changes in management over the last year, and revisions to programs such as valet parking. Under the agreement, the magazine directed those questions to the Sundance spokesman, Bryan Eppstein. Sasha Bass spent more than three hours with the magazine, including a walking tour of the square. Ed spent the first 90 minutes of that time with us.
In preparation for the interview, the magazine also drew from a private virtual presentation that Sasha Bass gave in March to the Investors Council of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, a group of that organization’s highest donors. She furnished a copy of the presentation to the magazine for purposes of the interview, under the condition we were not to reproduce or link to it from our website.
The interview and presentation were the first known instances of the Basses discussing the future of Sundance, post-COVID, to a group, in public, or with the news media. They’re also the first known instances of Sasha Bass discussing her role in the Sundance partnership. Bass, a senior vice president of the Fine Line Group, the family office of Ed and Sasha Bass, is a longtime community advocate. During the video, she offered to guide walking tours of Sundance to members of the Investors Council and invited them to contact her. Ed Bass appears in a video tribute during his wife’s presentation.
At our invitation, the affable and modest Ed Bass, sporting a pony tail and wearing a black ball cap and peacoat for this cool and rainy afternoon, opened the interview with a history of Sundance’s development, standing in front of a large map hanging on the conference room wall.
Tenants complain they’ve been kept in the dark by Sundance management as restaurants and retailers have closed during COVID.
We ask Bass, is Sundance’s vision changing?
“I wouldn’t say the vision is changing,” Bass says. “No, I think it’s very much the same vision, but how do you create something within that vision?”
Sundance has been in the middle of market shifts during the last 40 years, he notes. Beginning in 1991, Sundance developed 20 screens in two movie palaces. “That boomed for a period of time.” But cable TV, premium services, and online streaming dealt the movies a blow, and Sundance eventually cut back to one movie house. Similarly, in 1996, Barnes & Noble opened a big store with a Starbucks at Sundance across from the site of Bass Hall, which premiered two years later as home to the city’s major performing arts organizations. “At that time, people came to bookstores to hang out, to spend an hour thumbing through stuff,” Bass says. “And that really, really worked.” But the web and reading devices like the iPad and Kindle made bookstores passé, and eight years later, H&M — an international apparel retailer — replaced the Barnes & Noble.
Now, soft goods retailing, which Sundance spent much of the last decade courting, has gone the way of the internet. Sundance’s losses in the last year have included national retailers like Ann Taylor Loft and White House Black Market, brands Sundance recruited just within the last several years.
That attrition was ongoing before COVID, Bass says. Of Sundance’s apparel stores, he says, “they were doing OK … We were not setting records amongst these outfits that had multiple, multiple locations. We kind of got into it at its peak, and it’s declined since.”
Bass added he doesn’t view apparel as having a prominent place in the next round of remerchandising at Sundance, known for multitiered master planning that contemplates potential uses for each space, depending on how many years in the future it becomes available. “I don’t think COVID changed anything. It just accelerated it by five years.”
The plaza opened in late 2013 with a raft of new retailers and restaurants around it, and they did well for a time, Bass says. “We had a certain line of merchandise that a broad demographic would come to. But people don’t come and hang out in stores as entertainment anymore.”
It’s too soon to tell where Sundance goes next with its mix, Bass says.
“What’s going to come back?” he says. “I think [our] guiding principles are going to be, again, a place where people want to come … in their leisure time. Is it all going to be dining? Could, someday. Are there going to be other forms? Well, we don’t know. You can’t gauge the market right now.”
Sundance, as has been the Bass strategy for years, will remain patient and won’t be in a rush, Bass says. Sundance lost two of its restaurants — Bird Café and Taco Diner — facing the plaza in the last year. It’s recruited the popular Dallas restaurateur Regino Rojas to open a combo Revolver Taco and Purepecha — a reservations-only chef tasting menu — in the Taco Diner space. Rojas, a longtime caterer to Bass functions, is expected to open this spring. The Bird Café spot will take a while longer, Bass indicates.
“We have a prime [location] where the Bird Café was,” he says. “An absolutely prime space. And we’re not rushing out to find somebody to throw in there.”
Sundance will continue to look for a mix that invites a broad customer base, Bass says. “It’s always been important to us.”
“Everybody feels welcome here,” Sasha Bass says. “And the way I describe it for people now is Ed figured out how to democratize downtown.”
During her presentation to the Investors Council, Sasha Bass spoke at length about public spaces playing a more important role in Sundance’s plan. Sundance is including landscape in its master plan, she says. “If we ever get a disease, we don’t lose everything all at once,” she says. “So, we’re master planning all of our landscaping, with more local flora, fauna, and trees. More variety.”
Bass says Sundance plans to use landscape to beautify Third Street east to the Trinity River, helping establish a stronger connection linking downtown to the waterway. About 40% of Sundance’s land is undeveloped, mostly east of the City Center towers.
With its plaza closed during the pandemic, but the Main Street walkway open since after Christmas, Sundance has used temporary potted landscape to demarcate the open and closed areas.
And Sundance, an anchor of Fort Worth’s annual downtown MAIN ST. Arts Festival, is incorporating more local art, music, and entrepreneurs into Sundance, Bass says. The couple last year launched a $100,000 fund for visual artists to encourage them to create works about living through COVID. Sasha Bass, a member of the art committee of the Madison Avenue Art Conservancy, a nonprofit connected to a small park on Manhattan in New York, says the couple sees the potential for several murals on walls throughout Sundance Square.
New entrepreneurial retailers that opened last year at Sundance are the Estelle Colored Glass shop, selling imported Polish glass; a shop by the jeweler Cari O’Keefe; a store selling plants called Urban Plantology; and a studio of the Fort Worth artist Jay Wilkinson. Fort Worth’s Arcadia Coffee is scheduled to open a small coffee shop around May or June.
Those shops are among a group of 10 – 15 that Sundance Square plans to recruit as of a “call to entrepreneurs” to be announced in May. Sundance will give the entrepreneurs each at least six months, with $10,000 in finish-out invested by the company.
“We’re re-imagining what the next 10 years will look like,” Bass says in her presentation, reminding viewers her husband is known for saying “Fort Worth needed a heart transplant” when the family began working on Sundance Square.
“We’re looking for operators that have heart, that have a great quality product, that want to showcase their product, on our campus,” she says. And “when visitors come, they can only get [those products] in Fort Worth. And they’re going to have to come back to Fort Worth to get that piece of jewelry or that product.”
Many small retailers and restaurants survived COVID with local support, Bass says. Sundance early on in the pandemic bought meals from restaurants at the square to serve to first responders.
“One of the things that COVID taught us, and why we re-imagined the spaces this way, is that the owner-operated businesses were the ones that were open, feeding the first responders, feeding our staff, and we were really surprised by some businesses that could have stayed open, could have afforded to stay open, did not,” she says during the presentation.
At the same time, Sundance has come under heavy fire from tenants on its posture of preventing group gatherings during COVID.
“We made a real serious commitment of people over profits when we went into COVID,” Bass says during the presentation. “We were going to create a safe environment. Every time we’re about to reopen, the numbers skyrocket. When the medical community has a metric that tells us it’s safe to reopen, that’s perhaps when we feel [we can reopen] as well.”
Crystal Wise
Called Up to the Majors The day a scout for Sundance Square dropped in on one of the two retail stores Rock Pistillo and his wife, Tammy, operated in downtown Granbury, moving their successful business was a no-brainer. Spellbound and Destiny were doing well, selling décor, gifts, apparel, and accessories.
“It’s like being in the minor leagues and being called up to the majors,” he says. The couple consolidated their stores into a new one called Yours Truly and opened at Sundance Square in November 2017.
“This was a rare opportunity,” Pistillo says over cocktails and fried snacks on an April evening at the P.F. Chang’s at Sundance Square. “It was a great opportunity until the plague hit, and the evil empire hit. We were on our way to being a million-dollar store.”
Yours Truly closed the store for good in January and moved online, owing $150,000 in rent to Sundance and a business bankruptcy likely, Pistillo says.
Pistillo says Sundance management has hurt its retailers and restaurants over the last year. He’s not alone. Two management overhauls at Sundance last year left tenants confused about who was in charge and, they say, even who to call for anything from leasing to maintenance and security. One group of former security officers, hired by Sundance last year, ended up out of the organization in a contract dispute and is suing Sasha Bass and the organization in State District Court in Fort Worth. A judge has moved the case into arbitration.
After the pandemic hit, Sundance closed the ultra-popular Sundance Plaza gathering spot, leaving the impression businesses were also closed, retailers and restaurateur operators say. Management reopened the Main Street walk-through portion of the plaza after Christmas, but the plaza is still closed to gatherings. Sundance brought in its annual Christmas tree to the plaza but left the walkway closed and declined to bring in Santa Claus for his usual visits and photo opportunities with children, even though other developments like Clearfork had Santa greet children from behind a protective partition. There’s a dearth of communication from Sundance, say tenants who were used to quarterly get-togethers and briefings by management.
Sundance’s parking valet — as recently as a year ago free to customers with validation and heavily subsidized by Sundance with nominal cost to merchants — was shut down for much of the last year after COVID. Sundance brought it back March 22 under a significantly more expensive pricing structure for merchants, who have so far shunned it and refused to validate.
Central Business District retail vacancy, with Sundance as the anchor, reached 13.8% in 2020, compared to 7.1% in 2019, according to data released during the annual Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth Forecast earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Sundance tenants have watched as a major redevelopment of the Stockyards has gained traction among consumers, and the Clearfork development has moved to support its retailers.
The plaza has been a lightning rod for tenants, who continue to pay for maintenance through the common area maintenance charges in their leases. Sundance successfully petitioned the city to bag parking meters for the Dec. 17 – 31 period, citing special event loading and unloading, and preventing people from parking there, according to city records.
Pistillo, a research scientist, says the plaza could easily be opened with social distancing. He’s skeptical that the generally accepted 6-foot distancing is meaningful. “I thrive on data,” he says. “Show me where 6 feet is meaningful. It isn’t. It was an arbitrary number.”
Mike Micallef, the president of Reata Restaurants, a longtime Sundance tenant, says the plaza should be open. “People can make the decision and take whatever risks are associated with that,” he says in an interview.
Marie Holliday, another longtime downtown businesswoman, says keeping the plaza closed while bringing in the tree accomplished little. “People congregated on the street to get photos or were in the Starbucks [on the plaza] without social distance. It didn’t accomplish anything.”
Eppstein noted that Sundance followed the recommendations of medical advisors it sought out at the beginning of the pandemic. The restrictions on the plaza are easily justified, he says. “We don’t want to have aggregation of crowds in the plaza when we’re right at the second peak” of COVID, he says. “We’ll go ahead and have a spectacular tree. We’re not going to have a Santa Claus. That just seemed to be responsible.”
Changes to the popular valet drew questions from tenants and customers immediately. Sundance has used valet parking as a loss leader for years, while the lure of free parking drew customers in and helped build the square.
Merchants used to happily pay $4 per car to validate their customers’ valet parking. The new valet pricing structure starts at $7 for the first 30 minutes and goes up to $21 for a full day. Even without participation from merchants, about 2,000 customers used the valet during its first two weeks, footing the bill, Eppstein says.
Under its new parking program, Sundance is offering free self-parking on surface lots, with validation. On-street parking at city meters continues to be free at night and on weekends, and parking in City Center garages continues to be free on weeknights and weekends, subsidized by the Downtown Tax Increment Finance District.
Why make these changes now, particularly with downtown’s downturn during COVID?
“It brings too much traffic into the downtown corridor,” Eppstein says of the valet. Some of that comes from Uber and Lyft drivers and “abuse” of the system by local travelers whom he says have used the valet to park for free and take the train to the airport.
During her presentation, Sasha Bass said “we’re not building a transit-traffic-centric development. I think we’re past that era.” Eppstein confirmed that comment was about Sundance’s desire to reduce congestion downtown.
Sundance Square isn’t risking losing customers to competitors, Eppstein says. “There are free parking options, and people embrace it and use it.”
Fewer cars in the district might intuitively mean fewer people who can patronize Sundance merchants, but Eppstein says that’s not true. “We’re trying to make it more pedestrian-friendly.”
When Sundance suspended valet service during COVID, Reata applied to the city to run its own valet lane. But Sundance also applied when it switched to a new valet operator, and the city deferred to Sundance as the previous operator, city officials told the magazine.
“I believe the cost of valet will deter guests from coming to Sundance Square,” Micallef says. “I don’t think valet has to be free, but I do believe we need to match our competitors’ prices. Right now, the restaurants are the only driver of retail traffic in Sundance Square.”
Micallef sees no logic in Sundance’s belief that making valet more expensive will reduce congestion.
“People will still be driving around downtown looking for street parking or the free garages, or utilizing Uber/Lyft, which is still cars on the road,” he says.
Micallef also pointed out the years of heavy subsidy of free parking spaces in downtown garages over the years. “Obviously, the TIF believes free parking is essential in getting people to come downtown.”
Holliday, one of downtown’s longest-tenured retailers, closed her Marie Antoinette Parfumerie across from the Renaissance Worthington Fort Worth Hotel in November, as sales dropped 80% during the year. The store, downtown for more than 29 years, drew 65% of its business from out-of-town visitors, says Holliday, who has kept her dentistry and another retail shop, Flowers To Go, at Sundance Square.
Holliday has been among the most outspoken publicly about what she sees as the diminution of the Sundance community ethos in the last year under the new management groups.
In November 2019, Sundance announced an ownership and management division in Sundance Square, severing the City Center towers and parking garages into a separate entity. In the same release, Sundance announced that Ed and Sasha Bass had recently taken 100% interest in Sundance Square from the family, and that Ed, Sasha, Sid and Lee Bass were in a partnership that owned the City Center. Ed and Sasha Bass announced they hired the Henry S. Miller real estate firm to take over management and leasing from the popular internal group headed by Johnny Campbell. Miller took over Jan. 1 last year, with Campbell shifting over to head the twin towers and garages.
That arrangement lasted several months, and then in the fall, Ed and Sasha Bass announced they were taking management back in-house, headed by Henry S. Miller III and Bill Boecker, the president of the Bass’ family office. Where the management group before 2020 lavished tenants with regular communications, tenants who call today say they often can’t get a response. Tenants, for one, who called to ask for rent deferrals during COVID often couldn’t get an answer. Some told the magazine they stopped paying rent during the height of the pandemic and haven’t heard from management, while others said management pressed them to pay their rent.
“Nobody understands what [management’s] objective is or what the plan is,” says Holliday, who confirmed management ended up forgiving six months of back rent on the perfume shop when she told them she wanted to terminate her lease. “You use the pandemic to start over what was already a successful downtown.”
Sundance’s website was out of date for months and only recently was updated to reflect closures. Even though COVID has shut down the events that Sundance traditionally threw its heft behind, Sundance has done little to promote its merchants in the last year, she says.
“There is no marketing of Sundance Square to encourage people to come downtown,” she says.
Eppstein says about 95% of Sundance’s marketing has been related to events. “The thing about the pandemic that’s been most paralyzing is that events have had to be put on hold,” he says. “Sundance Square wasn’t alone in canceling events.”
Chris Gensheimer is in a reflective mood, months after negotiating an exit to the leases on his Retro Cowboy and Earth Bones retail stores after 20 years at Sundance Square.
“Zero. A big goose egg,” he says, after being asked to what extent COVID provides Sundance with legitimate cover for its management struggles. “I think they used it as a cover, for what, there’s no answer why.”
Gensheimer, who says his business model was no longer sustainable and that he was looking for a way out of his leases before the management changes and COVID, hurts for his friends who are still grinding it out downtown.
“All of us made Sundance Square a great place to visit,” he says. “It was hard work. We knew the game. To greet people and make them laugh and make sure they had a good time. That’s why I’m perplexed as to why.”
The old Sundance management wasn’t perfect, he says. “They tried to handle too much.” He, for one, would have gone outside for more creative talent.
“How long does it take to put this back together?” he wonders. “It’s a lifetime. But the big players are still in place. It has infrastructure. It’s still safe. The things that Ed Bass did to make it aesthetically pleasing are still there.”
Two people have asked Greg Morse, CEO of Worthington National Bank, how much money he paid to install a marble floor in the lobby of the historic Burk Burnett Building he moved the bank into 16 years ago at Sundance Square: Ed Bass, then, and, more recently, Sasha Bass.
“She said, ‘How much did you spend on it?’” Morse says in an interview. “I said only one other person has ever asked me that.”
Morse, whose lease is coming up for renewal in August 2022, says he was hunting the right contact at Sundance last fall when he was finally directed to Sasha Bass after two months of emails and calls to other people. Over lunch at Del Frisco’s Grille overlooking the Plaza, Morse told her he was interested in an extension.
“She said, ‘I need to know how committed you are; we may want to make that into a hotel,’” Morse says. “That’s when I said there’s a hotel in our block that’s 5% occupied.”
As a measure of his commitment, Morse says he offered to pay five years of rent up front, at a discount, for a lease renewal. “We’ve been here for 16 years, we’ve paid $4.5 million in rent, and we don’t complain,” he says.
Morse sees the differences in management groups. “Under Johnny Campbell’s regime, if we had a light bulb go out and you call, that light bulb was changed within 15 minutes at the most. They were meticulous.”
Lease negotiations were tough, but the rewards substantial, he says. “I had heard once you signed the lease, you’re on the team,” he says. “That’s exactly what happened. The negotiations were brutal, but once you signed the lease, you were best friends.”
And today?
“How do I say this gingerly,” Morse says. “They obviously experienced a management change, and some people and entities they hired did not work out. They’re in flux right now.” And then Morse recalls, “it took me a week to get my trash taken out one time.”
Crystal Wise
3-D model of proposed Sundance Square changes
Sun Showers Sasha Bass is taking us on a walking tour of Sundance Square in the light rain. It’s the tour she offered during her presentation to the Chamber’s Investors Council.
We’re walking through the quaint courtyard between the buildings that house the Riscky’s BBQ and Five Guys burger joint. It’s off the path, for sure, but known to anyone who’s spent time padding around Sundance. A member of the Sundance staff unlocks a storefront door, and we walk into the small brick-walled former Sundance office of Rent A Frog Valet. It’s to be the newest location of Arcadia Coffee.
In the upcoming “call for entrepreneurs,” other concepts Sundance is considering include Provincial Mexico arts & crafts, knitting and art supply, vinyl and skateboard, California wine and spa products, and a speak-easy bar, Bass said.
“We’re starting with six months, and if they are pacing well, numbers-wise, we’ll easily extend them another six,” Bass says.
“Our goal is that if we did our analysis right, and we focused on the right things, and they bring the sweat equity into it and the heart, that hopefully they evolve into a permanent tenant.”
The prospective terms are in the works. “Maybe it’s a percentage of gross,” Bass says. “We’re de-risking it for six months for them. No large deposits. No giant five-year leases.”
We’re now walking through Sundance Plaza’s walk-through, the portion of Main Street the city agreed to close as part of the plaza. Why not reopen the plaza with limited seating and social distancing?
“We have been thinking about opening the plaza since COVID happened,” Bass says. “At the beginning of COVID, the biggest challenge was getting supplies to clean. We couldn’t even get supplies, in enough volume to clean all of our buildings. And then we couldn’t get masks. Right when we’re ready, or we think we’re ready to open, the [COVID] numbers just rise. And I think the largest problem right now is thinking about people gathering.” That includes keeping the plaza’s restrooms clean. “I think that’s the biggest challenge right now.”
We end our tour inside the shops of jeweler Cari O’Keefe and Estelle Colored Glass. O’Keefe, whose products range from $25 into the thousands, is keeping limited hours during COVID, and Estelle is online-only, which Bass says will likely remain the case even after COVID.
“We want to have a gallery downtown,” Bass says. “I don’t know what it looks like. Maybe it’s a co-op, maybe it’s someone that wants to undertake it where you can come to downtown and buy a piece of art. An accessible piece of art. Not super-expensive but accessible art by a true Fort Worth artist.”
Bass is near the end of our visit, and it’s been about 90 minutes since we asked The Question. Bass is reflective.
“I have the deepest respect for Ed Bass” and what he’s done for the city, she says. The vision persists, she says. “Where’s the faith? Where’s the faith? Where’s the commitment to that vision? That’s the place I come from.”
Birth of a Downtown
Sundance Square today is a 37-block, mixed-use development in downtown Fort Worth, renowned for its architectural and planning values and its gold reputation for safety.
Its beginnings were modest. Ed Bass’ brother, Sid Bass, initially had the family’s lead. The family’s first pieces were the Americana Hotel — now The Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel— which opened in 1981, the twin City Center office towers in the early 1980s, and two blocks of restored historic buildings and newly built replicas.
Ed Bass, the eccentric Bass brother who later funded the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona to determine if it was possible for people to live in space, started splitting time between New Mexico, where he was a developer and builder, and Fort Worth in 1980. In 1981, he got a suite at the new Americana, now the Worthington Renaissance, and later a floor at the Blackstone Hotel.
In 1983, Bass opened the Caravan of Dreams in a building he bought, looking for a way to boost nightlife. “Downtown was the prestige office address,” he says. “But at the same time, everything else was so decrepit.”
Bass eventually took over the family’s Sundance lead from Sid Bass. “There was a real miscalculation, I think, in the early development on what kind of scale it takes to support some retail; a few nice shops is not a destination. And having a lot of people around 9 to 5 is not a community of users.” In 1992, Sundance opened Sundance West, a 58-luxury apartment building. “It changed everything.”
Major activity drivers included movie screens, the opening of Bass Hall in 1998, several new midrise Class A office buildings, and, in 2013, Sundance Plaza, flanked by three of those buildings and new shops and restaurants.
The Downtown Tax Increment Finance District has contributed $21.36 million for infrastructure at Sundance Square since inception in 1995, most recently $11 million for Sundance Plaza. The TIF also subsidizes free parking in garages around Sundance Square and the City Center. Current taxable value of property in the TIF is $1.497 billion, compared $322.4 million for the 1995 base year.
Sundance Square, the Cornerstone
1970s-early ‘80s: Bass family buys bulk of property for what’s today the 37-block Sundance Square area downtown
1981: Bass-developed Americana Hotel – today The Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel – opens
Early 1980s: With Sid Bass in his family’s lead, Bass-developed twin City Center Towers open
1980-81: Sundance Square renovates its first two buildings – “Blocks 41 and 42” – that today contain tenants such as Razzoo’s, Riscky’s BBQ, and Haltom Jewelers
1983: Ed Bass opens Caravan of Dreams venue to begin building downtown nightlife
1986: Downtown Public Improvement District founded
1986: First MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival, led by Robert Bass, held
1991: Sundance opens AMC Sundance 11, downtown’s first new movieplex in decades
1992: Sundance opens 12-story, 58-unit Sundance West apartment building
1993: Sundance opens the renovated Sanger Lofts mixed-use retail and residential building
1995: Downtown Tax Increment Finance District founded
1996: Plaza Block opens with nine-screen AMC Palace 9 and Barnes & Noble
1998: Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Perfomance Hall opens
2001: Caravan closes, replaced by Reata Restaurant
2002: 12-story Chase Bank building opens
2008: 16-story Carnegie office building opens
2011: ESPN uses Sundance Square as production headquarters for Super Bowl XLV
2013: Sundance Plaza opens, flanked by two new Class A office buildings: The Westbrook and Commerce Building
2014: The Cassidy office building completed
2014: The Cheesecake Factory, White House Black Market, and Overland Sheepskin Co. open
2016: H&M opens in former Barnes & Noble space
2017: Bank of America moves Fort Worth offices into City Center 2
2019: Sundance Square announces split of management, with Ed and Sasha Bass retaining ownership and management of Sundance Square, and City Center Management assuming management of the office towers and parking garages, with a partnership of Ed, Sasha, Sid and Lee Bass owning the towers and garages.
2020: Management split occurs early January
2020: COVID-19 pandemic occurs
Sundance Square Closings
These are stores and restaurants that have closed at Sundance since the beginning of 2020.
Ann Taylor Loft
Barse Sterling Silver
Bird Café
Dallas Cowboys Store
Earth Bones
Houston Street Toy Co.
Jos. A. Bank
Kinkade Gallery
Marie Antoinette Parfumerie
Piranha Killer Sushi
Pizzeria Uno
Retro Cowboy
Schakolad
Taco Diner
Taverna
Texas Rangers
White House Black Market
Willow House
Yours Truly
Source: Fort Worth Magazine research
