By Monday, all but one of the nonprofit tenants at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center will have moved out. Months after the city rejected two plans to redevelop the site, some residents and arts advocates are wondering what will take its place in the heart of the city’s cultural district.
What happens next hinges on two new hires in city leadership.
Jay Chapa was sworn in as the new city manager at the end of January, and the search for a new economic development director is expected to start soon.
“It is essential that both individuals have the opportunity to fully assess the project and contribute to the next steps to ensure its long-term success,” Preethi Thomas, a city spokesperson, said in an email.
For now, the future of the city-owned building at 1300 Gendy St. remains murky. An inspection report from 2022 found the facility needed roughly $26 million in repairs, a number that later grew to around $30 million, accounting for inflation.
The city then began a process to reimagine the property.
One finalist proposal advocated tearing down the historic structure and building a new space that listed indoor and outdoor performance spaces for music and theater, a maker space, two restaurants and the forthcoming Fort Worth African American Museum in its plans.
The other recommended keeping the W.E. Scott Theatre, but tearing down the rest of the historic structure to add a hotel, an apartment building and a new art incubator on the property.
“As a city, we need to be more clear on our vision,” Mayor Mattie Parker said last spring after announcing that neither plan would move forward.
Wesley Kirk, artist and founder of Support Fort Worth Art, said he hasn’t heard much from the city about what the community engagement process will look like when it begins again, but he has some ideas.
“When we restart the process, it needs to be community first so that we figure out what it is we're building,” he said. “Who's it for, what is it, what purposes does it need to serve? And then [seek] requests proposals from the developers for ideas that meet those needs.”
One of the big tensions with the last process was that the city was looking for a way for the facility to be self-sustaining financially while residents asked for space that was open to the public, he said.
“The numbers just don't make sense if it's a publicly owned building serving a public purpose, but there's no public funding behind it,” Kirk continued. “Then it's just going to have to be a for-profit venture, which is not what anyone wants to see in that building.”
Unlike Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, the city of Fort Worth does not have its own office or department of arts and culture.
Instead, the city has a contract with Arts Fort Worth to manage its grants and public art programs. The nonprofit also served as the anchor tenant for the community arts center for more than 20 years and managed the city-owned facility for the other nonprofits that used the space.
However, in July of 2024, Arts Fort Worth announced it would no longer manage the building due to “unsustainable” costs and close its doors to the public by Jan. 1, 2025.
Arts Fort Worth continues to operate and manage the public art and grants program for the city and will vacate the former community arts center soon.
In this period of change, executive director and president of Arts Fort Worth Wesley Gentle said that the nonprofit is continuing to work to build community and assess its needs with its first citywide arts summit.
“We're really trying to tee up some of these important conversations so we can hear from our community more about the questions they want answered,” he said, “and so we can get a better feel for ourselves about what the opportunities are to move the arts forward.”
Arts Forward, a citywide summit for creatives, will take place at 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. March 29 at Texas 3165 E. Rosedale St. on the Texas Wesleyan University campus.
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