Healing the cities

Southern Living, Mar 1996 by Morris, Philip

The ills affecting Southern downtowns are familiar: empty storefronts, ugly parking lots where historic buildings stood, nothing going on after office hours. But wait a minute. Who are these people flocking to restaurants and movies in downtown Fort Worth? And who are these people moving to downtown Birmingham? Turns out some cities went to work turning things around. Let's take a tour.

FORT WORTH

Even at low ebb in the early 1970s, downtown Fort Worth held on to its "where the West began" cow town character. Random demolition had leveled many blocks, but a defiantly old-fashioned, brick-paved Main Street still led past flavorful buildings.

Some obvious mistakes had been made. A new shopping mall turned inward behind a concrete bunker facade, and glassy new office towers ignored what was nearby. But when, in the late 1970s, the prominent Bass family purchased two down-at-the-heels blocks on Main, restoring and filling gaps with compatible structures to create Sundance Square, Fort Worth turned a corner.

From then on, the push became how to make Fort Worth more Fort Worth--not some version of imported progress--and how to put downtown back in the center of community life. When initial attempts at expanding retail shopping faltered, the emphasis went to creating a lively dining and entertainment mix along with housing.

That vision has materialized. Edward Bass built Sundance West, a $30 million mixed-use development that includes the multiscreen AMC Sundance 11 (first in a Texas downtown for more than a generation) and, above that, seven floors of luxury apartments.

Today an Art Deco-style theater facade recaptures the excitement of moviegoing. Nearby, the long-empty Sanger Building has been converted to apartments, with a branch of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth on the ground floor.

Here are moves that have contributed to the turnaround.

* In 1982 a central business district master plan was drafted, and Downtown Fort Worth, Inc., a private, non-profit organization, put the plan in motion.

* In 1986, Texas' first public improvement district was established.

* A new tax district will finance a two-block underground parking garage with a park on top at the heart of Sundance Square.

The momentum continues. Conversion of the 18-story Electric Building to apartments as well as other new residential developments have been completed. An expansion of Sundance Square now under construction will fill a vacant block east of Main. Adjacent to that, a new 2,000-seat, $60 million Beaux Arts-style performing arts hall is rising. And the inward-turned Tandy Center mall is being opened up with storefronts as Fort Worth Outlet Square.

With more than a little help from its friends, plus deep and wide community support, downtown Fort Worth has learned how to rope and ride again.

ORLANDO

Orlando's Disney-sparked boon left downtown looking like what it was--the modest center of a rich agricultural region. The pleasantly scaled Orange Avenue had gotten seedy, while new suburban-style towers nearby distanced themselves. As a place, it was going nowhere.

An organization to revitalize downtown was established in 1972, but it was in the 1980s under Mayor Bill Frederick that the city got serious about shaping the character and future of the traditional downtown core, says Tom Kohler, the executive director of the Downtown Development Board since 1979. "The mayor brought in new professionals, and we went to work on various design and economic development tools to create the kind of place people deserved."

Those tools include the following.

* Land development codes that encourage preservation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings and facade restoration grants.

* Ground floor retail use along key blocks.

* Emphasis on pedestrian amenities (wider sidewalks, patterned paving, benches, trees, and human-scale light standards) as well as a system of artful, but useful, signs.

* Major public landscape upgrading of Lake Eola and gateways into downtown.

Orlando has learned to do many things well and consistently over a long period of time. "City council and succeeding administrations have stayed with the program," says Tom, "and that has made all the difference. You don't do this overnight."

RALEIGH

Under a strategy instituted by Mayor G. Smedes York in the early 1980s, Raleigh established a public/private partnership with the Downtown Raleigh Development Corporation and its board representing major businesses. Since that time, nearly $1 billion in public and private funds has been invested in downtown to create an urban core worthy of this capital city.

These are among this city's accomplishments.

* Three public parking decks have been built to serve new private office tower developments and still keep nearby historic downtown blocks intact.

* Streetscape improvements by landscape architect Dan Sears were implemented, including removal of overhead utility wires in cooperation with Carolina Power & Light.

* Urban design guidelines administered by the Raleigh city planning department resulted in ground-floor retail for the new 29-story First Union Capital Center and improved sidewalk frontage for the recently built Wake County Public Safety Center.