Fort Worth - Museum Place - Cultural District

[FortWorthology]

Current official tenant list - plenty more to come:

Aloft Hotel

7-Eleven

Potbelly

La Duni

Village Tavern

Celebrity Bakery

Legacy Bank

Domain

Eddie V.'s Edgewater Grill

Nicolas

Ra Sushi

[FortWorthology]

Museum Place update:

One Museum Place has topped out!

Facade work is underway as well:

The glassy Flatiron-style building is about to go vertical across the street:

7-Eleven's Corner Store & condo building is pretty well finished out now:

The new Post Office is moving right along as well:

[FortWorthology]

Creating a plaza for the Cultural District.

The area shown in the red circle above is the subject in question - as part of the Museum Place development, a public plaza is will be constructed at the reworked intersection of West 7th Street and Arch Adams. How can a plaza occupy the middle of a street? Read on and find out - it's an interesting bit of urban design.

The problem is thus - how to create a large public space in the development, while not taking too much room from the buildings themselves? You could certainly close off a street to do so, but you'd have to close off a smaller street, and it's likely to be too out-of-the-way to get much use. No, the plaza needs to be the heart of the development. That means 7th Street - but you can't permanently close off 7th. It's too crucial to the connectivity of the area. A way had to be found to create a large public space that could be closed for events but left open to car traffic the rest of the time - while still slowing traffic enough that people would not feel intimidated by the sometimes speedy pace of cars on 7th.

Finally, an ingenious solution was devised. The 7th & Arch Adams intersection (which is being radically reconfigured - the curved portion of Arch Adams that runs alongside the existing 7-Eleven is going away, to be replaced by a mixed-use building. Instead, the small offshoot of Arch Adams further west, in front of the new 7-Eleven Corner Store/condo building and Village Homes townhomes - will become the new Arch Adams) will become the plaza. It'll be a wider open space surrounded by mixed-use structures and retail, giving a constant human presence (making people feel safer due to having "eyes on the street"), and still creating a comforting sense of enclosure being surrounded by 4-8 story buildings. The traffic calming design and plaza design are actually the same - the intersection is being raised up, and paved with rougher brick & stone. This creates an unending pedestrian design - the intersection is at curb height, so the transition from sidewalk to plaza to sidewalk is unbroken - and by creating a rougher surface and a noticeable height difference, it helps to slow traffic on 7th as well.

Using techniques such as these, the streets can become truly multipurpose - even on normal days, cars will travel more slowly through the area and make pedestrians feel more comfortable. The buildings that set back a bit add to the plaza's space. For special events, the plaza could easily be blocked off completely to make a total pedestrian space.

It's an interesting bit of urban design, and it's good to see developers thinking outside the box a bit to create unique and inviting spaces for the Cultural District.

[FortWorthology]

One Museum Place getting its facade and window frames. For the uninitiated, this building will be ground floor retail, office space above, and topped by two floors of condos:

The Museum Place "Flatiron" rises across the street. This building will be ground-floor retail with office space above - and yes, the billboard should be coming down soon:

This lot, stretching along Arch Adams from Camp Bowie to 7th, will be home to the new Aloft Hotel:

The realignment of Arch Adams north of 7th is now underway. The current Arch Adams north of 7th (which curves around to meet up with Arch Adams south of 7th) will be removed, and the old street right-of-way will actually be within a new mixed-use building. The small side street in front of the new 7-Eleven Corner Store/condos and the Village Homes townhomes will be the new Arch Adams north of 7th.

The 7-Eleven Corner Store/condo building is getting its finishing touches. I figure the new store will be moving in pretty soon.

[FortWorthology]

Above, the big building of the development, One Museum Place, is getting more glass installed as its facade installation continues. This building will be home to ground-level retail, office space, and condos on the upper two floors. Below, a close-up of some of the facade work, showing the brick and granite that will make up the majority of this side of the building:

Meanwhile, across the street:

The new

[krazeeboi]

Nice to see the progress! Keep the pics comin'.

[FortWorthology]

The "Flatiron" is now rising. Here's the framing going up:

[FortWorthology]

Here's another that's come a long way:

[eastsider]

This is a very impressive development. The Flatiron Building has a very interesting look to it and the Post Office facade is a great idea in the way it plays off the tornado damaged supports.