This week, a Wal-Mart “Neighborhood Market” grocery strore was announced for development on Fort Worth Avenue near Hampton road. Shortly after posting the news on our Facebook page, 50+ comments were made from the community, all against the development, asking questions like, “Why?!”, and “Can this be stopped?!” Andrew Howard, who lives next to the proposed site hung his head and shrugged, ” We were supposed to get a movie theater…wide sidewalks, and small retail spaces…they held townhalls and showed us pictures…and now this?”
In 2004, I attended an early meeting of the Fort Worth Avenue Development group. In the meeting strong neighborhood leaders stood up and passionately discussed why we should organize and start asking the city to re-analyze the corridor and help create a more walkable, livable street. Since its inception, the group has done incredible work at changing development codes, promoting the street as a boulevard, pushing through TIF’s, and bringing awareness to the need for redeveloping form. Renderings of redesigned streetscapes have been made, national urban design experts have been brought to the corridor to discuss next steps, developers have laid out water color visions of West Village like buildings, and planning charrettes involving the community have been carried out in earnest. (more…)