Fort Worth resident Johnny Lewis never stops wondering what the Historic Southside could be.
Driving past the half-completed Evans Avenue Plaza for the past 15 years, he thinks about the storyboards still in his garage. They show his neighborhood bustling with activity. By day, residents would walk along tree-lined sidewalks that led to offices and apartments at the plaza or to a local public health center. By night, residents would pack a jazz club.
The vision for the community’s future was developed by his wife, Shirley Lewis, when she ran the Near Southeast Community Development Corporation two decades ago. But the redevelopment never gained traction.
Johnny, 75, has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years. His neighbors were once energized for potential redevelopment, but many left. Their home, in the 76104 ZIP code, has the lowest life expectancy in Texas, according to a 2019 study from UT Southwestern, but Historic Southside still doesn’t have a health clinic. The Evans & Rosedale Urban Village project deadline has also been delayed numerous times.
Residents, the city of Fort Worth and architects all have different explanations for the delayed development, but no one can point to a specific solution.
So it stung when Johnny — riding TEXRail to Dallas — overheard other passengers talking about driving through Historic Southside. They said no one cared about the area.
“I’ve been here 50 years, and I’m talking to people who now say, ‘Let’s just get the hell out,’ and they’re 60, 70 years old,” he said. “They’re tired of not seeing any change.”
A plan over 20 years in the making
The Lewises dreamed big more than two decades ago.
In 1997, Shirley led her nonprofit to build and renovate homes in the Historic Southside. By 2000, the Lewises began an ambitious plan to wholly redevelop the area — and, at first, progress was promising.
Their dream started falling apart about 15 years ago when the city told Shirley she couldn’t use federal funds aimed specifically at nonprofit community housing organizations to purchase land in the area, Johnny said. She lost her land after both parties disagreed on certain terms of the redevelopment deal.
The city has a copy of the 113-page vision plan developed in 2005, which outlines a public health center, a cultural park and retail shops and more, but it hasn’t done much to renovate the area, Johnny said.
“As you can see, this is what we have now,” he said, nodding at the undeveloped land at the Evans Avenue Plaza. “Nothing has been done.”
Kenneth Barr, the Fort Worth mayor between 1996 and 2003, said residents showed a strong interest in the redevelopment of Historic Southside during his tenure.
The city has since invested in the area to stimulate redevelopment, with projects like 2009’s Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, Barr said. In 2012, Fort Worth also added Fire Station No. 5 on Irma Street.
“It’s important for the city to redevelop an area like the Near Southeast part of the city because we’ve got all of the operating costs for fire, police, water, sewer, streets, and it just makes sense to focus redevelopment in those areas from an economic standpoint,” Barr said. “And it makes sense from a quality of life standpoint for the people that live there.”
During the past decade, the city constructed a new library and renovated the area’s historic building, Assistant City Manager Fernando Costa said. The Hazel Harvey Peace Center also houses code compliance and community engagement, neighborhood services, and a diversity and inclusion office.
The city also redesigned and reconstructed West and East Rosedale streets for more traffic and to be pedestrian-friendly, he said.
Despite Historic Southside having some outdated sewer and stormwater infrastructure, Costa said, he doesn’t think infrastructure contributes to the differences between how the areas have developed.
The challenges to getting started
City Hall has been telling residents about plans to repair the streets in Historic Southside for over a decade, Johnny said. Residents and the city have negotiated for more than 20 years, but to him, Fort Worth “didn’t believe that the Black community was worth the investment.”
“If they had, they would put the city’s efforts behind the plan and say, ‘We want it to succeed,’ but they didn’t,” he said.
Instead, Johnny and other residents witnessed all the changes on Magnolia Avenue and in the Near Southside while waiting for Historic Southside’s redevelopment.
“What we say is, ‘Nothing happens on this side of (Interstate) 35,’” he said.
Costa listed many reasons why Historic Southside has not been as successful as its neighbor across the highway: the proximity of homeless shelters along East Lancaster may have been a turnoff for economic activities; the disposable income level between residents of those areas; and the cohesiveness of neighborhood organizations.
“Nevertheless, even taking all those factors into account, it doesn’t fully explain why there’s been such a dramatic difference,” he said.
In 2019, the city awarded Dallas-based Hoque Global a contract to redevelop Evans and Rosedale. The project, expected to result in $70 million worth of investment, has been delayed multiple times. The city previously told the Report that work on the redevelopment project is expected to begin in early 2024.
People are justified in their frustration toward the slow progress, Costa said, but this contract is probably the best opportunity in two decades to get things done.
“We’re going to do everything we can as Hoque Global’s partner to succeed in bringing desirable new development to Historic Southside,” he said.
Ray Boothe, principal architect of Boothe Architects Inc., said he has tried multiple times over the decades to line up projects that would have helped redevelop Historic Southside — including bidding on the Evans & Rosedale Urban Village project — but not a lot came to fruition.
Over the years, Boothe said, he and his partner have experienced mistrust from the Historic Southside community both privately and publicly. The community prefers people with similar backgrounds to develop projects, Boothe said.
“We’re all in this to make a living, but we don’t do the kinds of things that I’ve done … I’ll make probably a lot more money doing something somewhere else, but you develop a love for what it is we’re trying to do here and have done,” he said.
The other side of the highway
Barr remembered exactly when renovation for Near Southside started.
In 1993, he decided to run for City Council, and his first meeting was where hospital CEOs agreed to find solutions to improve the area — together.
“Between Ryan Place being a strong neighborhood association, Fairmount (District) getting the historic designation and then Near Southside coming to the Medical District — that’s been a big factor in improving the area,” he said.
Before that, Magnolia Avenue was perceived as a dangerous area that people rarely wanted to frequent, Boothe said.
The extensive renovations didn’t just happen overnight, he said. Multiple parties with different interests — doctors, real estate agents, local business owners and more — met monthly to generate interest for the Near Southside redevelopment.
Boothe did not recall the city providing much support for initial efforts to renovate Near Southside. The neighborhood persevered, and then the city got dragged along, he said.
“If you have a whole list of things that the city needs to just hand you, that’s not really developing the area,” Boothe said.
Historic Southside has not had an organization as geographically concentrated and well-resourced as Near Southside, which has become an advantage on the west side of I-35, Costa said.
I-35 represents more of a psychological barrier than physical barrier between the prosperous Near Southside and the “not-yet-fully-successful” Historic Southside, he said.
The freeway was built when Fort Worth was a highly segregated city, and it — along with other highways — tends to reinforce that psychological factor for business leaders in the city, he said.
Boothe said leaders like Johnny understood what his architecture firm was trying to do, but community leaders cannot fight against their neighborhood too much — it’ll lead them to lose trust.
“It just takes time for people to change, but I don’t know what would change that,” he said.
Despite the disagreements, Boothe said, he still has hopes to help renovate the area.
“You never totally give up,” he said. “You just need to be part of something bigger to make it happen.”
Future dreams
Johnny is sensing some positive change in the area thanks to the nonprofit BRAVE/R Together, he said.
The nonprofit was started to help residents in Historic Southside, Morningside and Hillside after a 2019 report said the 76104 ZIP code had the lowest life expectancy in the state, said Shawn Lassiter, founder and executive director.
The organization is a liaison between residents and all potential supporters, such as donors and the city, Lassiter said.
BRAVE/R Together awards money to grassroots organizations supporting the three areas and supports community ambassadors — residents who talk to their neighbors to identify potential problems the nonprofit can help address.
“Without the community ambassadors, I know for sure we would not be where we are,” Lassiter said. “We were able to gain trust with those community ambassadors, and they then led the community to trust the organization.”
BRAVE/R Together represents youthful energy, which Johnny finds necessary for the area’s redevelopment, he said. He hopes for young people’s engagement with Historic Southside, regardless of their racial background.
Every day in Johnny’s near future, he will continue assisting children at Kids Environmental Education Network Group, continue volunteering around the area and continue wondering what 76104 could have been — had his wife’s plans come true 15 years ago.
And he will continue driving past the half-renovated plaza and the neighborhood he seldom recognizes, despite having lived there for half a century. Sometimes, if the memories cut too deep, he finds a different path to avoid the plaza to get home.
He still has hopes for Historic Southside — he always will. He just wishes that if renovations ever do happen, his wife, who died five years ago, could be there to witness the change with him.
Dang Le is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at dang.le@fortworthreport.org or via Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.