By Brandon Chicotsky
I live in a condo, but I love it here in Clearfork’s Edwards Ranch.
The Edwards Ranch, with about 7,000 acres, was founded in 1848, a year before the city was founded. When I drive into the ranch every day, I think about its 178-year history. I think about how this land watched the city grow up and become a quiet corner. It’s right on the Trinity River and is part of the cattle heritage exactly where we’re situated.
To me, that’s meaningful because Fort Worth saved my family 100 years ago from intense prosecution from Russia and Poland. I look at Fort Worth a bit more sensitively than most. That’s part of why I love the history, I love the land and I love proprietorship rights. I love the chance to be part of a city like this.
Clearfork’s development is about 270 acres, and it’s classified as mixed use. So I get to live among awesome restaurants. I always like to make recommendations to visitors to the city. Clearfork also has about 2 million square feet of office space, so I’m able to hold a lot of meetings around here.Â
It’s a location of convenience, but the retail space always plays a kind of vibrancy.Â
No matter how much they build in Clearfork, the Trinity River remains a natural, charming historical vestige with a really nice ecosystem for anyone who wants to walk up and down that trail. I go on that trail and often contemplate some of the things I’m reading.
There’s not just energy from retail, restaurants and recreation, there’s intellectual energy, too.
TCU, where I work, is just so close, about seven minutes away by car. With construction, it can be 10 or 12 minutes.
When I meet with professors or I’m holding a symposium, I can bring our dignitaries to the city to my home environment in Clearfork. It’s logistically manageable and still separate from campus, so I get that really nice Fort Worth experience.Â
Then I can take them to campus in a very quick order. They can see the developing Berry Street corridor and then onto our beautiful campus.
I feel the history of Fort Worth often.Â
MJ Chicotsky, my great-granddaddy, was in forced conscription in the 1905 Japanese-Russo War. We’re actually named after Chicotsky village. We’re not named after the family line. We were the ones who got out, if that makes sense. We came from a Rabbinical line, which is why the village put their resources together.
When MJ Chicotsky came into the immigration port, he heard that some of the older men could get jobs in the slaughterhouses. In the meat packing cities like Kansas City, Chicago and Fort Worth, these older eastern European men, even if they were educated, would take the laborer jobs. It was a great way to begin a life, to start over and save the family. He then sent money and picture frames to his son — my granddaddy — which is how he was able to come over through Galveston.
When my great-granddad and granddad were together here in Fort Worth, they opened up Chicotsky’s Liquor Store and started investing in Carshon’s Deli, Ol’ South Pancake House and were merchants throughout the city. Today, we run a shopping center and have some properties throughout the city attributed to their work.
Even though we’ve had over 100 years here and three generations, I’m actually second generation because my granddaddy was the last to immigrate.Â
Dr. Brandon Chicotsky is associate professor of professional practice in marketing at TCU’s Neeley School of Business.
Clearfork
Total population: 1,048
Male: 62% | Female: 38%
Age
0-9: 0%
10-19: 10%
20-29: 31%
30-39: 10%
40-49: 10%
50-59: 31%
60-69: 7%
70-79: 1%
80 and older: 0%
Education
No degree: 0%
High school: 14%
Some college: 19%
Bachelor’s degree: 35%
Post-graduate: 33%
Race
White: 68% | Hispanic: 23% | Other: 0% | Black: 0% | Asian: 9% | Two or more: 0%
Click on the link to view the schools’ Texas Education Agency ratings:
Source: Census Reporter
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