Julia Carl, 41, grew up in Fort Worth’s Ryan Place but moved to the Rosemont neighborhood nine years ago, attracted to its location and affordability.
Carl works as an office manager for a home health agency and lives in a small back house with her boyfriend. She has a great relationship with her landlord, who lives in the main house. The land adjacent to the property was vacant for years — until May 2023.
At the start of the summer, Carl watched construction on the lot on Stanley Avenue become two two-story triplexes for a total of six units on a single lot. Sometimes referred to as stealth dorms, these projects have increasingly appeared in neighborhoods in proximity to universities.
Like Carl, other residents of the neighborhood fear the growth and development of TCU is spilling over into their diverse working-class community. Some are calling for a rezoning of the area to protect single-family homes from development brought on by the Berry/University Urban Village.
“I do remember seeing what happened in the Paschal neighborhood with the stealth dorms,” said Calvin Huezo, president of the Rosemont Neighborhood Association and a Paschal High School graduate. “I remember that those were houses and now they’re stealth dorms. I thought it was going to be only that area that they were developing like that.”
What are stealth dorms?
Stealth dorms are housing developments where multiple unrelated individuals, often students, live together in a single building in a neighborhood of primarily single-family homes.
For Carl, the dorms hit close to home — literally.
“I can literally stand on my landlord’s porch on the corner and not quite touch (the triplex) with my foot, but pretty close,” she said. “I’m hoping when they’re done, they put up a privacy fence because I don’t have a fence in the back. I open (the door) and there’s construction the second I step out.”
The units adjacent to Carl’s home are being advertised by the developer on Facebook as close to Texas Christian University. Monthly rent is $2,000.
The Fort Worth Report was unable to find working numbers to get in touch for an interview with the owner and developer, Willem De Vijlder. Messages sent on Facebook were unanswered.
Carl is not alone in dealing with the rapid changes coming to Rosemont.
Changing character
Cristina Plascencia Snoke, 37, was born and raised in Rosemont. She knew her neighborhood would change one day but those changes came so quickly, she was unprepared.
It started with bike lanes on Hemphill. Then the duplexes and triplexes came.
“I knew (changes were) coming,” Plascencia Snoke, a neighborhood advocate, said. “I just didn’t realize how quickly it was going to come. … Apparently, this has been the plan since 2016, but to me, (who) didn’t know we were zoned that way, it seemed like it kind of came out of nowhere and it was happening a lot quicker than I realized.”
Longtime residents of the area acknowledged that the neighborhood used to have a bad reputation years ago, but the community has worked hard to turn things around and transform Rosemont into a family-friendly neighborhood.
While the initial changes were positive — increasing police presence to push out gang activity for example — the changes seen today are affecting the core demographics of the area.
“I’m beginning to see a different shift to where it’s not necessarily the working class, hard-working families,” said Andrea Alvarado, a 21-year resident of Rosemont. “I’ve seen more of the buildings being built that I don’t know if they’re necessarily the stealth dorms, but my goodness, they are multiunit kind of buildings and with those, I’m not really sure what kind of demographic that would be bringing in, whether it necessarily would be TCU or more working-class, but I do see kind of a shift there.”
For resident Thomas Ortez, whose family has lived in the neighborhood since 1955, the influx of students in Rosemont over the years has brought crime, noise and higher property taxes, he said.
“We’re just trying to make this a better area just for family,” Ortez said. “I want to give (my house) to my children. … We all want to stay as a family in this area.”
A portion of the Rosemont area is in the Berry/University Urban Village and subject to its form-based code, a set of development standards imposed between established boundaries to promote mixed-used, walkable areas.
Anchoring an urban village
The current Berry/University Urban Village plan was implemented in 2019 as part of Fort Worth’s Urban Village program which helps the city plan for growth in an up-and-coming area, said Eric Fladager, assistant director for the city of Fort Worth’s planning and data analytics department.
The plan was developed through a series of community input sessions.
“The urban village program focuses on that pedestrian experience and the safety of pedestrians in order to attract more pedestrians to those locations to create a customer base for the businesses that would locate there,” Fladager said.
However, one aspect of the Berry/University Urban Village plan that differs from the other villages is the important role TCU plays as an anchor and destination.
“TCU was a partner with us in all the planning that we’ve done in that area — a significant partner because they see that as this is their environment, this is their front yard or backyard. This is where their students experience Fort Worth,” Fladager said.
The university is listed as a collaborative partner in the Berry/University form-based code, which lists one of its intentions as “promoting the growth and redevelopment needs of Texas Christian University.”
In a statement from TCU, Todd Waldvogel, associate vice chancellor for Facilities and Campus Planning, said the university participated in the development of the code to enhance previous guidance to establish appropriate transitions from high-density areas into the nearby communities.
“The most impactful development has been the addition of Hyatt Place, which enhances that area of Berry Street and helps bring hotel visitors to this part of Fort Worth. We anticipate being able to work within the city’s framework to accomplish our objectives,” he wrote.
Waldvogel did not respond to the Report’s list of questions.
City staff and officials consider the Berry/University Urban Village as successful, Fladager said, and shows demand for this type of denser neighborhood in Fort Worth.
“It can be better and I think it will be better over time,” he said. “The more the plan in the form-based code is implemented, the better it’s going to be.”
However, when asked about concerns from residents regarding the influx of university students into Rosemont, Fladager said the neighborhood’s boundaries have changed over time. Rosemont did not include its current northern portion that is today part of the Berry/University Urban Village.
He said that as cities grow and evolve, the types of places where people are looking to live change, and the code allows for those changes to meet Fort Worth’s goal for any given area.
“The goal is not to push out people who are here, the goal is not to have all these single-family houses that are in this area go away,” Fladager said. “The goal is simply that as change occurs, we want it to fit the intent of the form-based code and the plan.”
Former City Council member Ann Zadeh, who represented the area during the city’s planning of the Berry/University project, said more places for people to live is a positive thing. She strongly believes that everyone should be involved in these processes and that the city should work to ensure that involvement.
Rezoning
The fear of stealth dorms is not new in Fort Worth. With TCU’s increasing enrollment, neighboring communities have had to adapt to the new tenants: college students.
However, there are solutions and steps city officials can take to protect family neighborhoods from stealth dorms. In Ryan Place, a neighborhood just north of Rosemont and adjacent to TCU, council member Elizabeth Beck led the city to rezone the entire area. Lots designated for multifamily dwellings, and thus prime property for stealth dorm development, were rezoned single-family.
Now, if a developer wants to change a lot back to multifamily, the neighborhood has to be notified.
Beck, who also represents a small northern portion of Rosemont in the Berry/University Urban Village, declined to comment, saying through the City Council spokesperson that she would defer to council member Jeanette Martinez on the subject.
The majority of the Rosemont neighborhood is in Martinez’s district who said concerns about gentrification were voiced by her constituents during her 2023 campaign.
At a December 2023 Rosemont Neighborhood Association meeting, Martinez told residents she has begun working to rezone all of Rosemont to single-family, similar to what was done in Ryan Place. Ultimately, this step will protect the predominantly Hispanic area from stealth dorms.
However, Martinez told residents at the meeting that some parts of Rosemont, especially the ones in the Berry/University form-based code plan zoned for multifamily will remain zoned for multifamily as such and the whole process of rezoning elsewhere in the neighborhood may take years.
“I am working with my colleague, councilwoman Beck, to determine what areas we will focus on and will share more as that information becomes available,” Martinez said in an email, noting that she recently had a meeting on the subject.
Accommodating change
Carl said so many neighborhoods have already been lost to TCU.
“All the neighborhoods need to be protected because where is everybody going to live,” Carl said. “Everything’s just getting so expensive. No one’s able to go anywhere. Just because you don’t live somewhere doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
However, residents like Alvarado, who has a daughter in college, understand that the students coming to study in Fort Worth also need a place to stay.
“My daughter is in college, and she’s struggling to find a place near her school where she can actually walk to it … so I understand the dilemma. But I also see the neighborhood where people are established and they’re close to their jobs … and if they’re displaced, more than likely they’d have to go outside of the city which might make their lives more difficult. So it’d be great if someone can figure out a resolution that would accommodate both,” Alvarado said.
For Rosemont residents, the rezoning and notification process gives them a chance to support or not support a project in their neighborhood.
“Rezoning is not going to stop these developers from coming in and still wanting to apply to rezone because it is a prime location for TCU. It’s still going to happen but it slows the process down and it gives people a voice,” Plascencia Snoke said.
Zadeh told the Fort Worth Report it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look at some of the areas zoned B (two-family) in Rosemont. However, the portions of the neighborhood in the Berry/University area should remain zoned as it is so as to accommodate future plans including a train station.
“I think that their concern about the B zoning in their neighborhood is absolutely factual, that it needs to be looked at,” Zadeh said. “But (the Rosemont) part of the form-based code is right around the train station and for me, that is just so important that we continue to have appropriate development to support transit.”
Should things not change, some Rosemont residents question what the future holds.
“If they leave it the way it is, I see Berry Street becoming another version of 7th Street,” Huezo said. “We’re not gonna give up and go without a fight for sure.”
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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 X@ssadek19.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.