FORT WORTH, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
A few months after city incentives were approved for the $630 million expansion of the Fort Worth Stockyards, the developers behind the ambitious project are hard at work.
Fort Worth Heritage LLC — a collaboration between Majestic Realty Co. and Hickman Cos., along with partner M2G Ventures — plans to add about 300,000 square feet of commercial space to the Stockyards, which sees about 9 million visitors a year. Construction is expected to be completed by 2032.
Dallas Business Journal caught up with Craig Cavileer — executive vice president of Majestic, which is overseeing much of the development — during its Fort Worth Newsmakers event Sept. 4 to get the latest. Below are some highlights from the discussion, edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Fort Worth Heritage embarked on the first phase of Stockyards redevelopment in 2014. At the time, there was a lot of discussion about preserving the historic charm of the area. This time around, the reception seems different — with much less handwringing. What’s changed?
I took my tie off and stopped wearing a suit.
I'm a fourth-generation Texan, so I was sensitive to that in 2014. I had no intention of doing anything that was going to disrespect what had happened there the prior 100 years, but I can understand why people were afraid.
I think we had 120 people line up, and the city council meeting went until 2 in the morning, and people were showing up. I was sitting there in my suit and tie in the front row, and [former Mayor] Betsy [Price] had said, "Whatever you do, you keep your mouth shut during this meeting, I got this handled." And David Cooke, it was his first day on the job. And I'm watching people line up. Some had their spurs on from the ranch. They came in, and they waited until 10, 11, 12, 1 in the morning, to say, these California people — and there were a bunch of us over there in suits, and Brad Hickman was wearing a suit at the time too — we don't want this to happen. And Betsy said, I trust the process. I trust them. I'll make sure they don't screw it up.
OK, but really, why do the Stockyards need to be expanded?
We don't [need to expand]. I mean, we could stop today and rest on our laurels. My view is, wouldn't it be great if we can extend the experience, extend the time, extend the brand and enhance the overall experience?
The trip there takes about an hour. You spend two hours, and you leave, you go to some other place. You know, the number one exit point for the Fort Worth Stockyards, before we started, was Whataburger? When people would leave the Stockyards, they would go to Whataburger and head out.
So we wanted to extend time, give them a better experience. Give the locals a better experience. And ... add more restaurants, add more food and beverage, bring the animals forward too. We didn't get to do that in phase one, the Herd sits out behind the Livestock Exchange Building. Take those historic pens that we promised that we would never tear down, and we would activate, bring those to life, bring a rope and arena to the forefront. So we do that and show people about Western lifestyle, teach, educate, entertain, feed. And that's what we want to do. The city agreed with us.
We could fold up our tent right now, and I think life would go on, but you start running out of time. How many more times can you go? Ultimately, there will be a turn. We'll turn some of that retail around. Frankly, we've got a lot of retailers that want to expand to do more experiential stores in phase two, and then we'll replace them in phase one.
If Ariat wants to get bigger, or Lucchese wants to do something different, Stetson and others that are still dying to get here, that we have no room for. So I think we have a long ways to go.
How can other businesses be a part of the Stockyards expansion?
Just to get this thing planned and permitted, we think it's about a $20 million check just to do it. We've been working on it for year and a half.
We have Lake Flato as our master plan architect. We'll have five different architects — some local, some non-local — working on different aspects so the thing doesn't look like it was contrived and put together, but more that it was an organic design.
There's a lot of work to do in here in a $450 million construction. We have [minority/women business equity] requirements. There's a lot of opportunity there. We're also going to have some maker spaces. So that those that are crafting something over in the Near South Side today — and maybe there's a pottery lady over there that does some really cool stuff, bring her in and give her some pop-ups so that we're cultivating new business opportunities in there as well.
Long term, how do the Stockyards fit into the economic development of Fort Worth's Northside?
I've also said oftentimes we haven't made any money yet. Everything we've made, we've reinvested and reinvested and reinvested. If you've been to the [Cowtown] Coliseum, we just put $2 million into the coliseum. We don't even own the building. We spent $2 million investing in it. But we also have 350 events a year in there, the building's active multiple times a week. ... I think we have 1,154 event days in the Stockyards.
I really look at this as a it's a brand statement for the city of Fort Worth. I think that the economic development when you're touring, whether it's CEOs ... and they say, "Why would I come here?" Well, you can show them everything, when you get down there, and this is something you can do. This is a place you can engage in, and it's rich in history. It talks so much about the brand of cowboys and culture. And I think that helps attract people. It helps retain. It keeps people in Fort Worth. It draws new people to Fort Worth to see it for the first time.