The new Eagle Mountain High School is ready to take in students. Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD leaders held a ribbon cutting Thursday for the $271 million school, taking NBC 5 inside for a first look.
The school will serve one of the fastest-growing parts of Fort Worth, and some people living there said they’re concerned the roads in the area can’t handle the increase in traffic on the way.
NBC 5 took those concerns to Tarrant County leaders, who laid out their plan to address the infrastructure issues.
It was a moment worth celebrating: Seven years after being funded through a 2017 bond program, Eagle Mountain High School was unveiled at a ribbon cutting.
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“You’ll actually see the student entrance down there,” Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD superintendent Jim Chadwell said while taking NBC 5 on a building tour. “When we talk about Fort Worth growing, this is where it’s growing.”
The school featured many of the amenities of a college campus, including lecture halls, computer labs and even a bistro.
It would start with 840 students, a population that is expected to triple over the next few years.
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“We’re a fast-growth community and this is in the far north part of our school district, and so we’re surrounded by empty land that very soon will be filled with houses,” Chadwell said.
The school is on Bonds Ranch Road, an area Tarrant County leaders expected to grow by up to 10,000 people in the next five years. For some people already living here, that projected growth was a concern.
“It’s a never-ending battle, and I don’t think it’s ever going to get caught up now,” said Ryan Smith, president of the Northwest Fort Worth Neighborhood Alliance.
Smith said the infrastructure in the area has already been struggling to handle the traffic caused by recent growth.
He said Bonds Ranch is a two-lane county road that was the only way into or out of several housing developments. It’s crossed by two sets of railroad tracks. If a stopped train blocked the road, drivers could be cut off from getting home indefinitely.
“It’s meant for just a few hundred cars, and you’ve got thousands and thousands each day now,” Smith said.
NBC 5 took those concerns to Tarrant County leaders, who said they were working on a solution.
“One thing that we’re really focused on is making sure that we can manage the explosive growth that we’re seeing,” said Manny Ramirez, Tarrant County Commissioner for Precinct 4.
Ramirez said the Bonds Ranch Road plan would bring $100 million in infrastructure improvements to the area, building a tunnel for cars to pass under the railroad tracks and upgrading the roads, water, and sewer systems.
The county has also worked with developers to reduce the number of homes in the housing developments they’re building, hoping to avoid overwhelming the roads while they were still being improved.
“It’s going to solve a challenge for anybody trying to get to their new neighborhood or new high school, to their doctor’s office, to appointments,” said Ramirez.
Residents hoped the changes could make life a little easier in their community.
“I think it’s certainly going to help,” Smith said. “Whether it fixes it completely, not sure, but it’s a step in the right direction that we’ve actually never seen before in this area.”
The Bonds Ranch Road upgrades were expected to be finished by 2027.
