As Carol Klocek leads me on a hard-hat tour this spring of the roomy new facility that now houses the Center for Transforming Lives, we stop to look out over a spacious landscape that will soon become a playground for children — but not just any children.
The playground plays a pivotal role in early childhood development, according to mounds of research. Its importance spans physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development.
In short, it’s the place where kids learn to be human.
I become stuck thinking about the children who will soon roam this ground below us, designed for resilience, joy, and a first chance at life. Klocek breaks in.
“It’s 10 times the size of the playground that the kids have now,” says Klocek, the CEO of the nonprofit Center for Transforming Lives, which provides a range of wraparound services for at-risk women and children, from initial crisis support and high-quality child care, to financial education, housing services, trauma-informed family counseling and job training.
“And it is a very nontraditional playground. It’s built specifically with intent of repairing the neurological damage of trauma. When they go through all the things that they do, when they grow up in places like shelters and housing projects and hotels and all of those places where they just are in containers and concrete and around a lot of the violence, it has a significant physical impact on the brain.”
Klocek explains the impact of all of this to the novice in childhood development. I’ll have to do some research of my own to gain a full grasp.
Early childhood adversity impacts the brain, including its so-called alarm system — the amygdala, which becomes enlarged because it’s constantly on guard. When children grow up in environments marked by instability, trauma, or chronic stress, the amygdala works overtime, scanning for threats.
Over time, that nonstop vigilance can make kids more reactive, anxious, or hyperaware, their emotional circuitry tuned to danger rather than discovery.
At the same time, the brain regions responsible for calm and control don’t develop as robustly. The prefrontal cortex — the headquarters for planning, decision-making, and regulating emotions — can be smaller and slower to mature under chronic stress.
And because stress hormones disrupt the formation of neural connections, children often end up with fewer or weaker pathways linking the brain’s key regions. In practical terms, they’re missing some of the wiring that supports learning, memory, and emotional balance.
These effects are not destiny — children are remarkably resilient — but they underscore why safe, stable, and enriching environments in the early years matter so profoundly.
“So, what we wanted was a playground where the surfaces, the equipment, the colors, and everything else is designed to counteract that through a sense of simultaneous safety and adventure,” she says. “It really requires the children to interact with the environment by taking risks in a protected way — in a creative way.”
JILL JOHNSON
Ribbon Cutting ceremony for the new Center for Transforming Lives in Fort Worth.
This is all part of the Center for Transforming Lives’ new complex at Riverside Drive and East Berry. It’s a $39 million reimagining of an old Montgomery Ward store and warehouse that opened this spring.
Bennett Partners designed the renovation. Beck Construction was the general contractor.
The place is nothing short of transformational.
Its main components include a trauma-informed Child Development Center for 106 children; an Economic Mobility Center designed as an incubator for female entrepreneurs; a therapy wing; and housing services offices.
And, yes, a healing playground crafted to support single mothers and their children who have experienced trauma and poverty.
“The entire building, but particularly the child development center, is trauma informed,” Klocek says. “We’ve used trauma-informed design elements throughout the building, including what are called biophilic elements. You’ll see lots of the natural elements in the building, including the natural light and then the shapes.”
The goal of biophilic design is to connect people to nature, which, it is hoped, improves well-being, reduces stress, and enhances cognitive performance.
Center for Transforming Lives is one of the community’s largest family safety nets, servicing the needs of 3,000 women and children annually through a comprehensive, two-generation and trauma-informed model.
Thanks to housing support, early childhood education, economic mobility services, and counseling services that work across generations, parents and children establish financial security and well-being as a family.
“Our services are designed to remove any barriers to success for women with young children experiencing poverty or homelessness,” says Klocek.
There is more to the mission than merely charity. There is an economic development benefit to the city.
Each family that CTL successfully transitions from homelessness to self-sufficiency saves the community approximately $20,000 per year, CTL says. Last year the agency moved 205 families out of shelters and off the streets and 81% remained stably housed. Savings are estimated at $4.1 million, according to the nonprofit.
Fads and trends may come and go, but single motherhood and poverty continue to endure in society.
New research from CTL shows that in Tarrant County one-third of single mothers with a child under age 5 live in poverty. In some ZIP codes, that number jumps as high as 70%. The Center’s findings highlighted three key factors preventing upward mobility for single mothers, including affordable housing, access to child care, and health care.
The report (focused on Tarrant County) states:
Single mothers spend 51% of their income on rent.
The eviction rate is five times the national average, with four in 10 renters evicted in 2023.
There are only 11 seats for every 100 children needing subsidized child care.
Women with children under age 6 have the highest rates of unemployment (6.7%).
As many as 40% of single mothers lack health insurance.
“This research is essential to understanding the challenges faced by single-mother-led families living in poverty and identifying effective ways to support them,” says Bethany Edwards, CTL’s director of research and evaluation at Center for Transforming Lives, and author of the report. “For the first time, we have a comprehensive picture of the very real challenges facing these families, from lack of affordable housing to lack of child care to lack of mental health support. You can really see how these factors play into one another and why it is so difficult for these families to break the cycle of poverty without integrated support.”
According to Data USA, the median household income in Tarrant County in 2023 was $81,905. For single mothers, the average income is $33,909, while the average rent for a two-bedroom home is $1,700 a month.
“Due to the perfect storm of record-high rent rates, lack of affordable child care, and wages that have stagnated, low-income families headed by single mothers are simply priced out of the market,” said Carol Klocek, CEO of Center for Transforming Lives. “Even working multiple jobs, single mothers have a difficult time keeping a roof over their children’s heads.”
Moreover, Klocek says, government subsidized housing involves as much as a seven-year wait.
The move to the new campus — its 100,000 square feet dwarfs its old building in downtown — will significantly expand capacity to provide services: a 30% increase in families served is projected during the first year.
The new location — next to a bus stop and four-line bus transfer station — will also improve community access in a historically underserved area in southeast Fort Worth, where the poverty rate for single mothers with children under age 6 is 71%.
The new building replaces the CTL’s headquarters in downtown on Fourth Street since 1954. Then called the YWCA — which was rebranded CTL in 2015 — the nonprofit purchased the 1928 Elks Lodge in the mid-1950s.
The new complex on Riverside, as best as I can tell, is the organization’s fourth since its founding in 1907.
The building on Riverside was once part of the Montgomery Ward retail empire. The building opened in 1961 as the second Wards in Fort Worth. The first, attached to the mail order house — before the miracle of Amazon, there was the miracle of mail-order catalogs — on West Seventh, opened in 1924.
Montgomery Ward shut down stores and operations in the aftermath of bankruptcy in 2000.
The new complex also has allowed the nonprofit to add a new tool to the mission. Ending the cycle of generational poverty in many instances is best done as an entrepreneur. Many have good ideas and concepts but don’t have the support.
The Riverside Coworking, Kitchens & Studios is designed to give women and families the space — and the support — to build thriving businesses. Inside CTL’s new Riverside Campus, the incubator pairs practical resources with something rare and revolutionary in the world of entrepreneurship: free drop-in child care.
By removing one of the most persistent barriers for parents, the center opens the door to a more inclusive and sustainable path to economic stability and independence.
JILL JOHNSON
Ribbon Cutting ceremony for the new Center for Transforming Lives in Fort Worth.
Riverside Coworking is intentionally built as an ecosystem, not just a workspace. Members will find desk options and meeting rooms alongside a 24-hour commercial kitchen, a classroom-style teaching kitchen, a makerspace filled with equipment for artisans and creators, and fully outfitted audio and visual studios for content production.
The amenities include phone booths, a wellness room, printing and Wi-Fi, snacks, and coffee, while free workshops and events foster community and skill-building.
The space is open not only to CTL clients. The public at-large is invited to take advantage of the space, with prices and scholarships designed to keep it accessible to all.
The new venture is a natural extension of CTL’s “Level Up” small-business program, which has already walked nearly 200 low-income entrepreneurs through everything from business planning to financial management to marketing. Graduates can apply for a matched-savings grant of up to $5,000, helping them turn a plan into a storefront, a kitchen, or a digital platform.
With the addition of Riverside Coworking, CTL expects to help launch or expand roughly 100 small businesses annually.
That’s a win-win for individual families and the entire community.
“By combining child care and other support services within the small-business incubator, we’re unlocking the potential of parents as innovators,” Klocek says. “We’re empowering mothers to pursue their dreams so they can thrive. The two-generation approach nurtures mothers, who are building change, and their children, who will inherit it.”
According to a 2023 report by GoDaddy.com, single-mother entrepreneurs account for roughly one in three women-owned businesses in the U.S. and — within that group — 69% aspire to grow their business into a small or mid-size company or even a corporation (compared with 52% of women business owners without children). The survey also found that 51% of single-mom microbusinesses were launched within the past three years (versus 39% overall) and that these entrepreneurs were more likely to start their business while still employed elsewhere.
“This is a way that they can join a community of like-minded women who are all on that path of reaching their dreams,” Klocek says.
As we work our way back to a second-story landing overlooking the playground, Klocek points out a live oak tree, which has witnessed the goings-on here for generations.
“Isn’t it a fantastic old live oak?” Klocek says. “We call it the survivor tree because it has survived all the storms and change. And then it kind of represents the families we serve.”
Families once bereft of hope, are now seeing a future for themselves and their children, thanks to work being done at the Center for Transforming Lives.
Now in a building that matches its mission.
