All that had happened towards building a Fort Worth Streetcar was a study to look into the idea if conceiving a Streetcar Baby was a good idea. And if Fort Worth should accept the proposal and marry itself to a long range plan to grow a bigger family of streetcars.
This was an arranged attempt at marriage, gone about all backwards from the modern American way of conceiving a plan and then birthing it to fruition.
Apparently the Fort Wort Streetcar Debacle has caused a schism in town, with some young people and business owners, located south of downtown, sending out emails trying to bring about a boycott of Sundance Square.
For those of you who don't know Fort Worth, Sundance Square is a collection of downtown Fort Worth parking lots. The parking lots are under the control of the Sundance Square leader, Ed Bass. The Sundance Square people try to spin Sundance Square as a downtown revitalization project that revitalized downtown Fort Worth, with Sundance Square actually being a multi-block area of downtown, not just parking lots. But, to those who has been to other downtown's squares, the only thing in downtown Fort Worth that resembles a square is the downtown Fort Worth parking lots.
From what I have seen, over my years of being here, Ed Bass is behind a lot of questionable things about downtown Fort Worth. Which the locals don't find questionable, instead they act all grateful. acting as if they are Ed Bass' serfs, greatly grateful for the great things he deigns to bestow upon them.
That they have never learned, or been taught, to bestow upon themselves. Such as vote to fund a new performance hall, or museum, or public square, or streetcar, or anything.
As a person who came from an area without the Fort Worth style of relying on the kindness of supposedly philanthropic benefactors to do good things for my town, I early on found the reliance on the Bass Family to be detrimental to the health of Fort Worth.
Like it was some sort of modern era company town.
To my outsider's eyes, the Bass Performance Hall is nothing to be pleased about. It does not fit its surroundings, is not set back from the street, is across from a Barnes & Noble and kitty corner from a big pub that sits on one of the Bass parking lots.And it has two totally incongruous giant angels stuck to its sides blowing on big horns.
Other examples of the Bass taste in architecture in downtown Fort Worth are equally bad. All of which I am certain Howard Roark would happily blow up if he could.
And Ed Bass was behind thwarting what may have been Fort Worth's first actual iconic structure recognizable to the rest of America and the world, that being the now thwarted downtown Tarrant County College.
Many blame Ed Bass for being behind the Fort Worth Streetcar being aborted. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. I doubt Ed Bass is wrong all the time and I think he may have been right to think Fort Worth is not ready for streetcars.
Streetcar systems work in densely populated urban areas where a lot of people live and work. The downtown Fort Worth area and the areas to the north and south of downtown are not densely populated areas where people live and work. It is rather telling that there is no grocery store in downtown Fort Worth, or north of downtown Fort Worth or south of downtown Fort Worth, in the area of the proposed streetcar.
There were some who thought, "build it and they will come." Methinks that is wishful of the same sort as those who thought build the Santa Fe Rail Market and they will come.
I think Fort Worth sent out task forces to study other town's streetcars. I believe a task force went to Seattle to look at Seattle's South Lake Union Trolley known as SLUT. Did they not notice how filled in the served by the SLUT was? How many people were working and living within the area served by SLUT? Did they not ask which came first? The SLUT or the people?
Did they not notice how heavily used Seattle's bus system is? Did they not go into downtown Seattle's bus/rail tunnel and see the cavernous stations teeming with people and buses and trains with lots of riders? Do they not notice how underused Fort Worth's buses are? How many people ride Molly the Trolley a year?
And, did they check out the ridership statistics on the SLUT? Even though it serves a much busier area than that where the Fort Worth Streetcar was proposed to run, the SLUT's ridership is less, per day, than the Fort Worth Streetcar's projected daily ridership.
In my opinion the day Fort Worth can no longer afford to have huge parking lots in its downtown core, due to the value of that land being so dear, is the day streetcars become viable in Fort Worth. Until that day building a streetcar line would be based on wishful thinking and waste a lot of money, hoping that if you build it, they will come.
Like a Field of Dreams. Only that Dream worked.
2 comments:
Granma used to say even the richest people can't buy good taste. You're right on about the lack of good taste in FW and the constant need to immitate other cities. I always hear about FW officials going to other cities to get a close up look at how other cities do things like how to help the homeless population or how to build physical infrastructures.
The Bass family certainly throw their financial weight around when it comes to the downtown sector and cutting horse related things at the Will Rogers complex. I cannot figure out why they chose to cram that nice Bass Hall into that dinky corner when they have so much money and own so much of downtown properties. It's a shame because when appropriately situated that music hall could be so attractive. Even the imported Italian angels would look awesome where there's adequate space for them to shine.
What a shame. If the Basses' billions can't buy good taste, what chances do we have for the mayor's and CHK's dirty gas millions for simply good morality as they frack our community.
Thank you Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. I thought I was alone in realizing how out of whack that Bass Performance Hall is with its surroundings.
I suppose in the right setting those angels with horns might not look goofy. But, in its current location it would seem more fitting to stick two longhorn heads, with long longhorns, instead of angels blowing horns.
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