Let's look at the first of these two articles, the one which suggests Fort Worth has fallen behind. Here’s a plan to up our game.
The article's first two paragraphs focus on something I have mentioned more than once...
When a jumbo jet touches down at DFW International Airport, passengers often hear the flight attendant activate the intercom and say, “Welcome to Dallas.”
The greeting illustrates an unwelcome truth for Fort Worth community leaders representing the other named city in the DFW brand. Their community lives in the shadows of their Big D neighbor to the east. It’s an identity problem noted in the 492-page economic development plan just released by the city.
Just last August, after experiencing what is described above, landing at D/FW via American Airlines, I mentioned the usual pilot welcome to Dallas, with no mention made of the location of American Airlines headquarters, Fort Worth. This had a local, named Tim R. opining via a Facebook comment that he flies almost weekly and has never heard such a thing. Uh huh, I thought.
Pilots uttering that welcome to Dallas is no big deal. I mentioned it, as does this article in the Star-Telegram, because it is a symptom of something else, that being Fort Worth's absence from the national and international radar screen.
The second article Identity crisis: Is Fort Worth becoming a Dallas suburb? addresses that first article's Fort Worth national invisibility issue in its first two paragraphs...
When Toyota scoured the Metroplex to move its North America headquarters from California, Fort Worth wasn’t even on the list.
And, in a recent study, when people were asked where Fort Worth falls on the list of the nation’s largest 50 cities? They responded 45th. Fort Worth is the 16th largest city and in a couple years could move up to the No. 12 spot.
According to the Star-Telegram's Identity Crisis article Fort Worth spent $350,000 to find out this crisis exists and that this identity crisis is what prevents Fort Worth from attracting business.
Uh huh.
So, out of the study a supposed plan has arisen which the Star-Telegram says is "ambitious", with its focus on adding office and residential space downtown, along with corporate headquarters, attempting to add 30 companies.
The paragraph about the attempt to add 30 corporations to the central business district...
The plan is ambitious. It focuses on growing the central business district with more office and residential space, but also with corporate headquarters and jobs. In the next five years, Fort Worth should attempt to add 30 companies.
Again. Uh huh. This type thing is what we mean when using the delusional word.
How many corporate headquarters have bailed from downtown Fort Worth in recent years? And why? We have the massive failure of the new Radio Shack corporate headquarters. We have Pier One Imports corporate headquarters, replaced temporarily with Chesapeake Energy til that embarrassment was run out of town. And, most recently, XTO Energy escaped downtown Fort Worth by heading south to Houston.
And now, somehow in the next five years Fort Worth is going to magically fix what is wrong and thus attract a couple dozen new companies to its downtown business district where no department stores, grocery stores and few restaurants exist, with public transit helped by a bus converted to look like a trolley called Molly the Trolley?
Regarding that "plan" two paragraphs from the Fort Worth Falls Behind article which illustrates part of Fort Worth's actual "attitude" problem...
Still, city and community leaders should be congratulated for commissioning this comprehensive exploration that doesn’t candy-coat economic weaknesses. Other cities might have put lipstick on their shortcomings and come up with a typical 30-year plan that gathers dust on a shelf.
Fort Worth is notably identifying challenges and adopting strategies to tackle them almost immediately. The plan calls for results in a five-year period beginning in 2018. That’s next month.
Really? Other cities may have put lipstick on their shortcomings with a typical plan which gathers dust on a shelf? Is this what shrinks call projection or transference? Why does the Star-Telegram persist with this type verbiage? What are these other towns which share Fort Worth's dire straits which put their plans to fix their woes on a shelf? While, notably Fort Worth identifies challenges and adopts strategies to fix them immediately?
Again, really? Immediately?
And fix those problems in a five year period, you know, unlike those other towns which get a plan and then put it on a shelf.
Does this five year plan have a plan to finally fix the downtown embarrassing homage to Fort Worth's storied history called Heritage Park?
I'm guessing having a boarded up, cyclone fence surrounded eyesore in a town's downtown, celebrating a town's heritage, is not a big selling point to a business thinking of locating to such a town.
And then there is this last paragraph in the Identity Crisis article...
Brandom Gengelbach, executive director of economic development with the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, said Fort Worth is a popular place and it will grow, but the city needs to become aggressive in its marketing.
Fort Worth is a popular place? Didn't we just read that most of America knows nothing about Fort Worth? What is going to be aggressively marketed? Also in the Identity Crisis article we learn that incentives to bring about the fix to this Identity Crisis will be ready in early 2018.
Once again. Uh huh.
Last week we blogged about Fort Worth's bizarre "incentive" fixation and its sad history of failure in Fort Worth Needs An Incentive To Fix Its Downtown Embarrassments.
Speaking of falling behind. How do you fall behind when you are already behind? Would it not be more accurate to use the phrase "fallen further behind"?
As for an example of being delusional, the Star-Telegram in its two articles provides visual metaphors for the delusional tendency. At the top we have a Star-Telegram photo of downtown Fort Worth. This photo is rendered in what locally is known as the Luenser Effect. Digitally altered photo reality to create a hyper-reality view of reality. And then we have the other photo from the Star-Telegram, it being a totally realistic, non-Luenser Effect look at what the downtown Fort Worth skyline actually looks like.
Looks like a place about to become a boomtown doesn't it? Like a downtown oodles of corporations would want to move to.
The blurb under the Star-Telegram photo of downtown Fort Worth is bizarre. "Fort Worth should become hub for corporate headquarters, a new consultant's study says"?
"Should" is likely the operative word here. Change "should" to "could" and one can say something which actually is reality based and makes sense.
As in Fort Worth "could" attract corporate headquarters if it fixed what is wrong with the town. For one thing, Fort Worth is not just downtown Fort Worth. The impression the town makes is made by more than just its sleepy downtown.
More streets without sidewalks than any other major city in America leaves a bad impression.
The majority of city parks without running water and modern restrooms leaves a bad impression.
A bus system inferior to that in many third world cities leaves a bad impression.
The lack of modern public transit leaves a bad impression.
Molly the Trolley leaves a bad impression.
Being the host to America's Biggest Boondoggle leaves a bad impression.
Taking years to build three simple little bridges over dry land to connect to an imaginary island leaves a bad impression.
A downtown with zero department stores or grocery stores leaves a bad impression.
Un-landscaped, littered, weed covered freeway exits to your town's only actual tourist attraction, the Fort Worth Stockyards, leaves a bad impression.
Thinking it a good idea to have Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tubes Floats in a polluted river at the north end of your downtown leaves a bad impression.
A town with a population over 800,000 with zero public pools leaves a bad impression.
Ridiculously mislabeling a large area of your downtown as Sundance Square leaves a bad impression, because it makes no sense. Knock that off and rename the parking lots which eventually became an actual square as Sundance Square, not Sundance Square Plaza. And drop the embarrassing Nissan sponsorship of the little square. Such leaves a bad impression.
And lastly, one more paragraph from the Fort Worth Falling Behind article...
Proud Cowtown officials understandably don’t like the part of the report that states a lack of recognition on the national and international scene as one reason “Fort Worth has fallen behind its competition.”
Who is Fort Worth's competition? What does that even mean? Recently the Star-Telegram's Bud Kennedy, in a post about Nashville's public transit development, said something like Nashville is often seen as a competitor to Fort Worth, which had multiple people asking who it was who sees such a thing, and why would they?
This is the type thing I refer to when I mention delusion. Why is this type ridiculous propaganda spewed? At least one person opined that maybe Austin might be seen as some sort of competitor of Nashville, what with both being known for their music, among other attributes. But Fort Worth?
This type delusion does not serve Fort Worth well. What do you think people think when they see Fort Worth for the first time. The downtown appears fairly tidy, some landscaping, clean, but there is that Heritage Park debacle. But what do they see when they head east on Lancaster? Or Rosedale? Or go north on Main Street? Or visit the neighborhoods around the Stockyards?
I can tell you what they see. If they come from prosperous parts of America they see rundown urban decay the likes of which they do not see at their home location. I was talking about this very subject a couple days ago with a fellow west coast transplant, how shocking it is when you first see this type thing, when you did not realize such existed in America.
And it's not just Fort Worth, though the slums of Fort Worth are bad, real bad. Recently a United Nations agency checked out parts of Alabama and declared they were seeing things which did not exist in other of the world's developed nations. I suspect they would be equally appalled at areas of Fort Worth. And Dallas, and my current location in Wichita Falls.
It would seem such is the type thing Fort Worth might focus on fixing in what will likely still be a futile effort to attract companies to locate their corporate headquarters in downtown Fort Worth.
And one more thing, really, what is it these "proud" Cowtown officials are proud of? Really, what? I draw a total blank...
2 comments:
You missed one last paragraph at the end of the editorial:
Mayor Price says she’s already taken one small step in tackling that annoying announcement you often hear when arriving at DFW Airport. She says she’s been talking with American Airlines, which has corporate headquarters in Fort Worth.
So maybe, in the near future, when you touch down at the airport, you’ll hear flight attendants say, “Welcome to Dallas- Fort Worth.”
Or if Amon Carter Sr. were alive and had his way: “Welcome to the home of American Airlines with headquarters in Fort Worth. Dallas is just down the road."
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Yeah, Dallas is just down the road and the American Airlines Headquarters is closer to Dallas City Hall than it is to Fort Worth City Hall. AA headquarters is also closer to Dallas Love Field than it is to Fort Worth's Meacham Airport.
The Fort Worth Way!
I had copied the mayor's words and was going to comment on them as one more example of not addressing what actually causes Fort Worth's identity crisis. I'd also copied the photo of the mayor and the quote/caption under the photo and was going to add that too. Along with commenting that one of the problems may be caused by Fort Worth's rather dumb leadership, as best personified by the type people the town elects to be mayor. I've had more than one person comment to me that Betsy Price is a nice elderly lady, but is dumb as a post. That sort of comes through via her various comments over the years. But that blog post had already gone way too long, and I really was not all that comfortable with including the Betsy Price is dumb as a post opinion as being part of Fort Worth's problems, so I left out Betsy's quotes....
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