Will Panther Island's Encore Include Sinking Bridges?

Years ago, during one of his many embarrassing propaganda pronouncements, Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Executive Director, J.D. Granger, told the gullible that that year, whatever the year was, 2015? 2016?, that that year construction would begin on the first of many building projects to be built on Fort Worth's imaginary island, with this initial project a residential complex called "Encore Panther Island".

One of those propaganda pronouncements from years past said "Proposed 300 unit apartment community scheduled to begin construction in the summer of 2017 with completion 12 months later."

But, nothing happened. And then in an online discussion about this stalled Fort Worth embarrassment the photo you see above was posted on April 25, 2018, with accompanying text saying "Signs and fence are up, at a very minimum."

Earlier this year I asked a pair of observers who are located in a location overlooking the mess which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle if they were seeing any construction of this Encore building which Granger long ago indicated would be a done deal by now. That pair of observers, known as Deep Moat III, reported back that they have seen some ground work at the location, but little of what one might called vertical progress.

And then today I got a Facebook message from the entity known as Captain Andy pointing me to a Fort Worth Architecture Forum discussion about the Encore Panther Island project.

You need to read the entire two page multi-comment discussion to get the full effect. Suffice to say I have seldom seen so much optimistic delusion so earnestly on display, well for the first couple years of discussing the Encore Panther Island project, then, of late, reality seems to have set in.

Before reality set in reading this reminded me of a Rockford Files episode where Rockford uncovers a scam where senior citizens were being sold imaginary waterfront lots on an imaginary lake next to an imaginary clubhouse. Whilst being very excited about what they were imagining, even though all they could see was desert wasteland.

So, this Encore Panther Island forum discussion begins in 2016 with a poster breathless posting that "It's on". Meaning the project, after who knows how long since J.D. Granger announced it.

This is followed with artist renderings of the building, along with more breathless excitement about the design. (Have none of these people visited modern America, I read this stuff and wonder? How about a field trip to Scottsdale and Chandler Arizona? They would see multiple instances of residential design, with water features, far more impressive than these cartoon drawings they drooled over).

So, moving ahead to 2019 in this forum and the stark Boondoggle reality filters in, with forum members asking about the lack of progress, and then excitement over seeing some progress take place, with workers working on it for a few hours in the morning.

The comments begin to get a bit snarky at that point, with one suggesting that maybe they work on Encore in the morning and the bridges in the afternoon.

Multiple photos of the "progress" show up. With a lot of puzzlement regarding the engineering of this project, with some saying they'd never seen a project progress in such a way.

Some comments wondering about the canal which is supposed to be part of this project. As in if they are digging the canal now, what will it connect to, what with there being no promised lake, as yet.

And then comments about seeing a multi-level garage go up, just recently, as in the past couple months.

And now in July complete befuddlement upon seeing workers tearing down the garage they had just built. With one person confirming the tear down news saying "Evidently so, and probably to start over. Must have been a structural defect."

With had another saying, "Yikes. I guess this is a taste of what's to come with the Panther Island bridges."

And then we learned what apparently has actually happened, with Austin55 telling us "Evidently the garage was sinking. Curious how they will handle this. Any forum engineer types weigh in?"

Which had another saying "I am not an engineer, but I believe the first step is to have all the women and children board the lifeboats."

Another person, in the quest to find out what has happened, posted he has alerted Luke Ranker at the Star-Telegram, because Ranker has been covering Panther Island and related topics.

Uh, looking for answers via investigative journalism practiced by Fort Worth's only newspaper is futile, a fact long established by the years of delusional propaganda that newspaper has spewed about that which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle.

Has the Star-Telegram told you in detail, yet, what has been the design problem with the simple little bridges being built over dry land?  Do you think the Star-Telegram will find out why the Encore garage was sinking? And how big a setback this is? And what a sinking garage portends for any other construction on the imaginary island.

Methinks this sinking garage is what is known as a metaphor.

That being a metaphor for the entire sinking project...