Amid an ongoing downtown revitalization effort, Fort Worth officials approved nearly $7.4M in infrastructure reimbursements that clear the way for a pair of historic buildings to get new life as residential facilities.
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The 300K SF office building at 115 W. Seventh St. that formerly housed Oncor and Fort Worth National Bank will be converted to 330 apartment units, while the 82K SF Binyon-O'Keefe Building at 210 E. Seventh St. is set to become a 100-unit senior housing development.
The board of Tax Increment Finance Zone No. 8, which covers the city's Lancaster Corridor, approved the infrastructure reimbursements for the building conversions Wednesday, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
Chicago-based 3L Real Estate will receive a more than $4.7M reimbursement for its planned $58M conversion of the downtown office building it bought in 2023. The TIF board approval requires 20% of the building’s 330 units maintain below-market rents for 10 years.
“This is bringing people downtown,” board member Johnny Campbell said during the meeting. “It has the affordable component, which is the thing we need to be doing for development, and it's solving what they're now calling ‘zombie buildings.’”
Austin-based O-SDA Industries will get a $2.6M reimbursement for its $26M conversion of the Binyon-O'Keefe Building into an affordable housing development for seniors. Formerly owned by XTO Energy, the more than 100-year-old building will be renamed Georgian Oaks once the conversion is completed by the end of next year.
In addition to the TIF board reimbursement, O-SDA Industries has around $4M in historic tax credits on the project, Project Manager Alice Cruz said. The building’s downtown location is near the historic Le Meridien Fort Worth hotel that underwent a multimillion-dollar facelift before reopening last year. That was paramount in the firm’s decision to move forward.
“We want to build where there are amenities for residents, and also where we would want to live,” Cruz said. “I would always want to live in downtown Fort Worth, there's great amenities.”
Fort Worth has more than $2B in downtown development on the way, including work that will reimagine Panther Island as a mixed-use waterfront district.
The first phase of work on the $701M Fort Worth Convention Center expansion is expected to be completed early next year. The full project will add new exhibit halls and another ballroom as well as update exhibit halls and meeting space. It will also add an entrance on the southeast side of the center facing the new Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus.
Work on that campus’ $185M Law and Education Building is underway, with the $260M Research and Innovation Building slated to follow. Plans also call for the 3.5-acre campus to feature A&M's Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts Building.
Private companies are jumping into the fray. Dallas-based Dart Interests scooped up four parcels totaling 4.6 acres late last year with plans to enhance vibrancy in the downtown area.
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