The Fort Worth Stockyards is anything but an Old West ghost town. The area sees 9 million visitors a year, according to Craig Cavileer, executive vice president of Majestic Realty, which oversees much of the real estate in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
It wasn’t always so busy. When he first started working in the area, Cavileer said, he described the Stockyards as an “unpolished gem.”
“After you kind of experienced it for an hour or two and did a few little things, you’d leave,” he said.
Majestic Realty spent $250 million in the area during the first phase of its joint project in the Stockyards and plans to spend about double that in the second phase, Cavileer said. The project, which has been in progress for about 10 years, has about five or six years to go before it’s finished, Cavileer said.
Majestic Realty first partnered with Hickman Cos. of Fort Worth on the Stockyards project in 2014. A public-private partnership was formed among Majestic, Hickman’s Stockyards Heritage Development Co. and the city of Fort Worth on the 70 acres of the Stockyards owned by Hickman.
The plan included the adaptive reuse of the World War I-era mule barns into a mixed-use shopping and restaurant haven called Mule Alley and the construction of the Hotel Drover, a 200-room luxury hotel. Mule Alley has attracted national brands such as Ariat and Lucchese, along with top chefs and restaurateurs Tim Love and Marcus Paslay. Hotel Drover opened in 2021 to glowing reviews and was named the best hotel in North Texas by Travel + Leisure magazine.
Robert Allen, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership, told a story about when he brought a site selector, someone who identifies sites for companies to move to, to the Stockyards. Allen said the selector was surprised and had expected it was going to be like Nashville.
“(He said,) ‘I expected drunk people in the streets, loud bars, you know, just kind of your commercial-grade Nashville,’” Allen said.
Instead, Allen said, the site selector thought it was a family-friendly place — something that can be a struggle to maintain along with growth.
Looking forward, Cavileer believes keeping the authenticity of the Stockyards is key to its success — and the biggest challenge going forward. That means managing traffic, safety and the vibe of the place as the number of visitors increases and the area grows.
“I’d tell you that’s our greatest challenge, and we’re losing a lot of sleep over it,” Cavileer said. “But we’re committed to move slowly and thoughtfully, so that we don’t lose that”
Looking forward, Cavileer said more hospitality space in the Stockyards is a possibility, as is attracting Western lifestyle companies to relocate headquarters to the area. But, he said, there’s no “big idea” for what’s next for the Stockyards. Instead, the Stockyards is the big idea — Majestic is just making small additions.
“Everybody thinks we did all this here, (but) we built one building,” Cavileer said. “But somehow, 9 million people showed up. (Hotel Drover is) only 180,000 square feet. We spent $120 million on it. Who would have thought $120 million and another ($75 million-$80 million) on Mule Alley would draw another 6 million people? We can’t explain it.”
Seth Bodine is a business and economic development reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at seth.bodine@fortworthreport.org and follow@sbodine120 on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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