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Fort Worth approves $40M for public parking at Texas A&M campus downtown

August 7,2025

See full Fort Worth Report article by Scott Nishimura here.

The city of Fort Worth is pumping $40 million into a public parking garage at the base of Texas A&M University’s planned research building downtown.

The boards of Fort Worth’s Downtown Tax Increment Finance District and Lancaster Corridor Tax Increment Finance District approved Wednesday spending $20 million per district to help with the garage’s construction.

This site plan of Texas A&M University’s downtown campus shows a planned Research & Innovation Building to the north of the university’s Law & Education Building, under construction. (Courtesy image | City of Fort Worth)

State law allows governmental entities to set up tax increment financing, or TIF, to pay for public infrastructure projects. The money, or increment, comes from growth in tax appraisals in each district.

Roger Venables, representing the city’s economic development department, told board members during the Downtown TIF meeting that pitching in $20 million wouldn’t take away money from other proposed projects — given the district’s continued growth in appraised value.

“There are still ample resources to support other projects throughout the district,” he said. “It’s not going to tie up the TIF.”

The Research and Innovation Building, part of a planned multiblock Aggie campus downtown that includes the Texas A&M Law and Education Building now under construction, will be as tall as 14 stories. Plans for it include academic space, the four-floor public parking garage at the building’s base, and one underground parking floor that A&M will control. 

The project was previewed previously as it made its way through other local public entities, including the Fort Worth City Plan Commission and — as a courtesy — Fort Worth’s Downtown Design Review Board, which doesn’t have jurisdiction over the project.

In an interview after the TIF meetings, Venables said the four stories of public parking will include about 440 parking spaces.

Besides demand from A&M, the public parking will serve needs related to fast growth in downtown’s southeast quadrant, including the expanding Fort Worth Convention Center and a planned convention center hotel, Venables said.

Fort Worth’s Research & Innovation Local Government Corporation, formed by the city in 2023 to support development of the A&M campus, will issue debt to pay for all design and construction costs related to the academic space and public parking. The Fort Worth City Council would need to vote to approve any issuance of debt by the LGC.

The TIFs’ $40 million will pay for the costs of building the parking. The city’s contribution is capped at $40 million, Venables said in the interview.

A&M will be responsible for all maintenance and operational costs of the public parking, underground A&M parking and academic space.

Venables said the total cost of the Research and Innovation Building isn’t clear yet, as A&M is still working its way through the project.

The construction timeframe isn’t complete yet, but Venable said the city expects construction to begin next year.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.