A tower harkening to the city’s history will be a key feature in the second phase of expansion to Fort Worth’s convention center, officials said.
City leaders unveiled plans Tuesday for a $606 million four-story addition that will replace the convention center’s outdated circa-1968 arena, which will be demolished in early 2027.
It will add 359,174 square feet of rentable space, including a 40,000-square-foot ballroom, which will be 43% larger than the ballroom on the convention center’s south side. A tower on the addition’s transparent glass facade will face Main Street, toward the Tarrant County Courthouse and its tower.
“Fort Worth has a long history of tower elements,” Michael Bennett, a project architect, told council members, citing historic buildings such as the courthouse and Fort Worth Public Market. “We felt as a design team, it was important to think about that and maybe revisit that idea.”
The expansion project will mark the convention center’s first significant renovation since 2003. The city has cited studies that indicated Fort Worth could nearly double its meeting business with an expanded and modernized convention center.
Mayor Mattie Parker said the project will help in the ongoing transformation of downtown’s southeast quadrant, where Texas A&M University is constructing a new campus.
“The new center will anchor a hub of economic growth and higher-education partnerships,” she said.
“It’s so beautiful,” said council member Elizabeth Beck, whose District 9 includes downtown.
The center’s ballroom, like the tower, will look north up Main Street. An outdoor plaza on the north side of the building will provide opportunities for programming.
Already, city officials are in conversations with the Downtown Fort Worth Inc. economic development organization, Mike Crum, director of the city’s public events department, told council members.
The addition will add a 74,000-square-foot exhibit hall, 37,000 square feet of meeting rooms, and three loading docks to the 13 the center now has, city officials said.
The glass wall and interior lighting mean “the building at night will be a beacon for our visitors to the city,” Crum said.
The new space will make it easier to simultaneously hold two large meetings and more efficiently allow move-in and move-out, Crum said.
Naming rights may be up for sale, he added.
“If we’re going to build a great building, then we need to think about monetizing that,” Crum told council members.
A consultant estimated naming rights to the convention center could fetch $450,000-$500,000 per year, Crum told council members. “It’s not insignificant,” relative to the center’s 2025 $8.6 million revenue, he said.
Much of the project’s construction costs will be paid for by debt the city plans to sell in September, Crum said.
Construction completion is projected in late 2029.
“We have plenty of people who are very anxious about what’s going to be available in 2030,” Bob Jameson, the CEO of Visit Fort Worth, told council members.
The city is bringing back the design and construction team that collaborated on a first-phase expansion completed in December. That includes AECOM Hunt, Byrne Construction Services and EJ Smith Construction, which formed a construction manager at risk team to build the first-phase project.
After the council presentation, Crum told the Report city officials are confident the team will bring the project in on time and on or under budget.
“The team has delivered what we asked them to deliver, ahead of schedule and under budget,” he said.
Scott Nishimura is senior editor for local government accountability at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at scott.nishimura@fortworthreport.org.
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