Proposed Transit Hub to Connect Future Butler Place Project to Rest of Fort Worth's Downtown
July 3,2023
See full Fort Worth Report article by Sandra Sadek here.
Fort Worth officials want to connect downtown to the site of Butler Place using remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds.
An ordinance approved June 27 by City Council allocated $100,000 from Fort Worth’s remaining $7.6 million American Rescue Plan Act dollars for developing, planning and designing a new transit hub to connect downtown to the 41-acre site of the former now vacant public housing, Butler Place.
The hub would feature a ride-share waiting area, bike parking, bike sharing and other transit features that would directly connect underground with Central Station’s Amtrak, future high-speed rail and the local bus and rail network that leads to the airport and other parts of the city. It would also connect to the future Texas A&M campus and the convention center currently undergoing expansion.
A council memo describes the project as part of an “ongoing recovery effort to strengthen the economic health of the city.”
Andy Taft, president of Downtown Fort Worth Inc., said this connectivity is crucial to ensure the successful future redevelopment of Butler Place amid other downtown projects.
“What's happening is that all of the partners recognize that the expansion of the convention center and the new hotel, the intermodal terminal that we already have there at Central Station, Texas A&M and Butler, are all coming together in a reasonably short amount of time. We want to make sure that the implications of all of those major projects are taken into consideration,” Taft said.
Council approved $2.9 million that same day for the Texas A&M University Research and Innovation Hub.
Butler Place first opened in 1940 as one of 52 public works administration projects for low-income housing under former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Because of the site’s isolation, surrounded by I-30, I-35W and US 287, and an overconcentration of poverty, the site was vacated and residents relocated across the city in an effort to improve living conditions.
Sandra Sadek is a Report for America corps member, covering growth for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at sandra.sadek@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter at @ssadek19.
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