A Message From Our President - March 24
March 24,2020
While business as usual has been halted for the duration of this national effort to flatten the curve, business has not stopped. Restaurants have retooled and are serving to go orders. For those who have come downtown recently, you have seen that TPW and contractor crews are doing infrastructure work while our sidewalks and streets are less busy. Stories of neighbors helping neighbors and businesses helping first responders are reminding us that we are all in this together.
Our Mayor and Council, County Judge and Commissioner's Court and their staffs are working what seem like endless days and nights to address the coronavirus impacts and respond to media and citizen questions - all while keeping the everyday municipal service wheels turning.
DFWI staff is working from home and using multiple technologies to collaborate on keeping our core functions and downtown improvement projects moving forward. Our Clean Team and Ambassadors are working throughout downtown, maintaining and patrolling our center city. Mowing, litter removal, graffiti abatement, security patrols...they all continue apace, ensuring that downtown is exceedingly well tended - even during this unusual time.
The City is doing a great job managing the reuse of the Convention Center Arena as a homeless shelter during a time of stretched resources. Trinity Metro is helping by providing bus service to the homeless shelters where both food and social services are still being provided. This is a vulnerable population, and the efforts being spent here are both critical for all of us and lifesaving for those in need.
These are strange times. But you can be sure that just as your company's staffs are pulling together to keep business going, so too are the City, County, Chambers, DFWI, Near Southside and many of the other NGOs that pull together every day to make Fort Worth work so well.
Andy Taft
President, Downtown Fort Worth, Inc.