Fort Worth’s Kress Building sold to owner of El Fenix chain

June 24,2015

BY SANDRA BAKER
sabaker@star-telegram.com

The historic Kress Building in downtown Fort Worth has been sold to the owner of the Dallas-based El Fenix restaurant chain.

Design work is underway for a restaurant on the first floor of the building, at 604 Main St., where the Fox & Hound restaurant and pub was previously located. But the owners aren’t saying yet which concept it will be, said Robert Clinesmith, asset manager for Karns Commercial Real Estate.

“We are about to put in a fabulous restaurant on the first floor,” Clinesmith said. “It’s going to rock beyond belief. We have designers from around the world.”

Mike Karns is owner and CEO of the Firebird Restaurant Group, which bought El Fenix in 2008. Firebird Restaurant currently operates four brands across 35 locations in Texas and Oklahoma including El Fenix, Snuffer’s Restaurant and Bar, Meso Maya and Taqueria La Ventana, plus a supply company, Sunrise Mexican Foods, according to its website.

Its affiliate, Triton Commercial Real Estate, bought the Kress in late March from Kress Ft. Worth Llc., a entity of Wichita Falls-based real estate investment group of the Moran family. The Morans bought the building in 2008.

Clinesmith said Firebird Restaurant is in an aggressive expansion mode.

“The building is amazing. The location is amazing. Fort Worth is a great location. Everything about it was right,” Clinesmith said.

The Fox and Hound English Pub & Grille occupied the first floor until it suddenly moved out in April of 2014, four months after its parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

S.H. Kress Co. built the structure in 1936 and operated it until 1960. In 1973, a partnership of the O’Hara family in Fort Worth bought the building. Continental National Bank used the upper three floors for a decade until the early 1980s. Those floors reopened in 2006 as 24 loft apartments. Those are all leased, Clinesmith said.