A couple days ago I was asked if I'd heard anything of late about Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision, also known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District, or, by many, as America's Biggest Boondoggle.
I told the person asking that I'd heard nothing about The Boondoggle, of late.
And then, yesterday, that which you see above, showed up on Facebook. A blurb about the agency which oversees America's Biggest Boondoggle.
No real information was included. Just that a new board member had been appointed to something called the "Panther Island oversight group".
Don't know what this oversight group might be overseeing, what with there being, after a couple decades, still no faux island, or much of anything to see of this supposed vision, that long ago, around the start of this century, was touted as being a vitally needed flood control and economic scheme.
Supposedly vitally needed for flood control where no floods had happened for over half a century, due to flood control levees already in place.
So, vitally needed that the public was never asked to approve of this project via any sort of funding bond issue.
To try and secure federal funds, the local congresswoman, Kay Granger's son, J.D. Granger, was appointed, at a high salary, to oversee the Trinity River Vision, hoping this would motivate Kay to help get federal funding.
That never happened. Eventually Kay was no longer the congresswoman in the Boondoggle's area, and so her son's employment was terminated.
During the course of J.D. Granger's inept executing of the Boondoggle's Vision, he initated nonsensical things which had nothing to do with any sort of sane development. Things like Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Parties on the polluted Trinity River. And a soon to fail, due to getting flooded, wakeboard park, also on the polluted Trinity River.
J.D. Granger oversaw the construction of three supposedly signature bridges, taking an absurd seven years to build, over day land. Three simple freeway overpass type bridges. All these years later, still waiting for a cement-lined ditch to be dug under the bridges, with Trinity River water diverted into the bridges, creating the imaginary island.
An imaginary island which any sane city would be embarrassed to call an island.
Fort Worth has a long history of these type embarrassments. For decades a multi-block area of Fort Worth's downtown was called Sundance Square, with signage pointing to it. With there being no actual square there, this confused many of Fort Worth's few tourist visitors. Eventually a couple parking lots were turned into a sort of square type thing, and labeled "Sundance Square Plaza".
When I lived in Fort Worth these type things puzzled me. There was so much to be puzzled by.
Like when, also in downtown Fort Worth, a totally lame little 'public market' was opened, called, if I remember right, "Sante Fe Public Market". It was touted to be modeled after other town's public markets, like Pike Place, in Seattle, and public markets in Europe.
It was also touted as being the first public market in Fort Worth.
Touted as such when, within walking distance, there was a historical marker marking the location of a still existing art deco style building, which had been a Fort Worth public market.
This type misinformation came to me via Fort Worth's ultra lame newspaper of record, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A newspaper which apparently did not know that just a few miles to the east, in a town called Dallas, there was a HUGE public farmers market. Every time I had visitors from the Pacific Northwest, when I lived in DFW, I'd take them to the DFW highlights, including the Dallas Farmers Market.
And every time my PNW visitors to DFW would remark that the Dallas Farmers Market reminded them of Pike Place, only flatter.
Whilst living in the DFW zone I was routinely perplexed by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and that entity's tendency towards weird cheerleading type propaganda about this, that and the other thing in Fort Worth, including, for a while, a weird habit of touting some ordinary Fort Worth thing somehow making towns, far and wide, green with envy.
That which I took to calling Fort Worth's Green with Envy Syndrome, seemed to disappear after I made a webpage making mock of such with multiple instances of the syndrome.
Back to the Trinity River Vision, that also has long perplexed me. How is it that which seems to be a relatively simple project has so little so show for it after so many years?
During the 25 years since Fort Worth's embarrassing Boondoggle began, New York City totally rebuilt the area where the Twin Towers stood.
The town between Fort Worth and Dallas, Arlington, has built a new football stadium for the Dallas Cowboys, and a new ballpark next door to the football stadium, for the Texas Rangers.
Long after Fort Worth's Boondoggle began, and completed for years, Seattle dug a new transit tunnel under downtown, then tore down an elevated highway on the Seattle waterfront, then re-built the waterfront, which has now become Seattle's new HOT tourist attraction.
In the years Fort Worth struggled to build three little bridges over dry land, Tacoma turned America's biggest EPA superfund site into the multi-billion buck Point Ruston development. That is at the north end of Tacoma's waterfront. At the south end, Tacoma built the Thea Foss Waterway
So, there you go, my current thinking regarding Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision....
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