Fort Worth Needs An Incentive To Fix Its Downtown Embarrassments

I see this incentive type headline in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and find myself once again wondering why this type thing is not seen as a problem in the town which the Star-Telegram ill serves as its only newspaper.

"AC Hotel, a brand popular in Europe, gets key incentive to build in downtown Fort Worth"

Does anyone in Fort Worth wonder what the problem is with downtown Fort Worth which requires incentives to get someone to build a hotel? Or why the voters have to be bothered to vote to help subsidize the building of a downtown convention center hotel?

I don't think towns with functional downtown's need to resort to incentivizing developers to develop downtown hotels, department stores and other such items common in most thriving downtown's which are not ghost towns on the busiest shopping day of the year, that being the day after Thanksgiving.

How many downtown hotels do you think New York City has had to offer incentives to get built? Or Chicago? Or San Francisco? Or Seattle?

Seattle has dozens of downtown hotels all built without the city offering bribes. The latest expansion of downtown Seattle's Washington State Convention Center includes another convention center hotel. Hotel developers competed to get to be the developer to develop that new hotel. And nothing as absurd as asking voters to help subsidize such a hotel happens in downtown's where developers want to develop hotels.

Fort Worth seems to have some sort of repeating pattern of having to offer what amount to bribes to get some developer to develop something. That or Fort Worth succumbs to ridiculous flattery, or a combo of both.

Such as when a sporting goods store called Cabela's wanted to build the first Cabela's in Texas. Cabela's convinced the rubes who incompetently run Fort Worth that this sporting goods store would become the #1 tourist attraction in Texas, thus making all the incentives Cabela's was asking for a bargain.

Fort Worth fell for that con job. Soon the Fort Worth Cabela's was not the only one in Texas. Now it is not even the only Cabela's in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metro zone.

No way do I know of all the instances where the Fort Worth city government has been conned into incentives, or abusing eminent domain. Such as what was done so that Radio Shack could build their long defunct corporate headquarters in downtown Fort Worth.

Or that Mercado boondoggle on North Main Street, south of the Fort Worth Stockyards.

Or the Santa Fe Rail Market Boondoggle. I know a con job was involved in that embarrassment, misrepresenting what that lame development would be. Were incentives also part of the scam?

Why doesn't Fort Worth focus on fixing its downtown? How many more years will that park celebrating Fort Worth's heritage, appropriately called Heritage Park, act as a metaphor for what is wrong with downtown Fort Worth? A boarded up eyesore allowed to deteriorate, sitting at a prime location at the north end of downtown Fort Worth.

Maybe the city could offer some developer incentives to re-open Heritage Park in all its former scenic glory.

Another fix for downtown Fort Worth?

Cease referring to part of the downtown area as Sundance Square. This is just goofy and confusing to the town's few tourists, even with the addition of an actual square, after decades of there being no square in Sundance Square, the downtown zone is still being called Sundance Square, with the actual square called Sundance Square Plaza, sponsored by Nissan.

And how does Fort Worth ever expect to have a vibrant downtown if few people live there? And why would many people choose to live in a downtown with no department stores, no grocery stores, and few restaurants?

And lose that embarrassing Molley the Trolley public transit device. Converting an old bus to look like a trolley and then charging people $5 to use this public transit is just bizarre. And like already said, embarrassing...