A new 26-story medium-rise mixed development building is set to go up in the next two years in downtown Fort Worth.
On Monday morning, members of the Fort Worth Downtown Design Review board got to see the first images of what would be the city's newest medium-high rise building in more than five years.
Anthracite Realty Partners plans to build the tower at 640 Taylor Street, between 5th and 6th
Streets and Lamar Street in downtown. Construction on digging four-subterranean levels of parking could begin by early summer, with the entire project completed in 22 months.
"We're very excited about this project," said Melissa Konur, of Downtown Fort Worth Inc. at the board meeting.
The building site is currently home to street level parking for the public and the Fort Worth Club. It will add 900-plus parking spots, two retail store locations, two floors of condos and 230,000 square feet of office space.
The first 11 floors will be parking, with the sky lobby on the 13th floor and a small public restaurant and bar located on the 12th floor.
"With views back toward downtown and back toward Burnett Park as well," said Michael Bennett of Bennett-Benner Partners architects.
The top two floors will be six to eight condo units, but plans are still being finalized.
Once complete, the 26-story unnamed building will become the seventh-tallest in Fort Worth. It will be nine stories shorter than its neighbor, The Tower, and will be the first building over 200-feet high built since the Omni Hotel was finished in 2009.
"We're excited. Fort Worth has been our home for many years," said Greg Bird, owner of Jetta Operating Company which will be a tenant and is behind the building.
The private oil and gas company is currently headquartered across the street at the Fort Worth Club.
The club and MorningStar buildings will each have access to the parking garages once finished. The building is a sign that the economy continues to grow and that downtown Fort Worth is a destination for construction.
"We really believe in this city, where it's going, the changes that have occurred over the past decade," Bird said. "And, so, we're just glad to add a part of that and look to the future."
On Monday, the review board unanimously granted three waivers to get that future going, by allowing exceptions to rules on the spacing and selection of trees, pedestrian lights to be installed at ground level and the use of frosted glass at ground level on Lamar Street.
"We’d like to be able to start digging a hole because we have to dig a pretty big hole first," Bennett said. "We'd like to be able to do that starting in the early summer."
Bennett says there are some significant challenges building around a portion of the MorningStar building, which will remain on the city block. The MorningStar building use to be the Star-Telegram building and where the new building will go up use to house the Star-Telegram annex building.
