FORT WORTH, Texas — Editor's Note | This article was originally published in the Dallas Business Journal here
The developer working to bring life back to the old Public Market building in Fort Worth said construction is more than a third finished.
Jess Green, senior vice president at Wilks Development LLC, said recently that work on the project at 1400 Henderson St. is about 38% completed. The company has had to overcome complex construction challenges to reach this point, moving redevelopment plans unveiled in 2022 for a senior living community and a refreshed market building closer to reality.
Ground was broken last year and Green recently estimated construction on the senior living building and accompanying retail and restaurant space should be finished by August 2025.
The Public Market building was originally constructed in 1930 and designed by Oklahoma City architect B. Gaylord Noftsger. It became a market for goods from produce to meat to baked goods but has sat vacant for nearly two decades.
Wilks Development purchased the building in 2015 from Bob Simpson and unveiled its redevelopment vision seven years later.
Next to the old market, the company is developing a 199-unit senior living community called The Harden with amenities such as a private garage and swimming pool.
About 15,000 square feet of the old public market can be renovated. The careful consideration going into the work highlights some of the challenges developers face as they seek to bring new life to historic sites. That's front of mind in Fort Worth, which has a storied past but is seeing tons of new construction as people and businesses flock to the city.
Green said the project hasn't been easy and that multiple concepts were considered before landing on a senior living and mixed-use development. Development team leaders knew what they were in for with renovating the public market itself, he said, but infrastructure was a different story.
Green and his team had to navigate what he called a "spiderweb" of outdated utilities and infrastructure, such as old pipes and storm drains. They also had to figure out what would make financial sense.
"We just went through a lot of concepts and it's just very difficult to figure out exactly what we wanted to do," he said. "We wanted that building open up to the public and not be just utilized as a private space."
The inside of the old market felt like a maze when first entering, Green said. Now, the space is much more open. The Wilks renovation team is determining whether the market's roof needs to be replaced after being damaged in a 2022 fire. The construction team is refurbishing the original skylights, adding new structural support and air conditioning to the building and cleaning and restoring the original windows.
Green said various parts of the structure will be on display when the building reopens to the public, such as metal doors to what used to be a freezer inside the market. While some windows are broken, Green said the original stained glass at the front of the building is untouched.
"Most everything else has been broken or vandalized in some form or fashion," he said.
Wilks recently tapped The Woodmont Co., a fellow Fort Worth-based commercial real estate firm, to handle leasing of the space. David Adams, senior vice president and managing director of Woodmont's brokerage department, said the rectangular shape of the building allows for many possibilities, including restaurants and retail. One restaurant wouldn't fill the entire space — restaurants usually require about 2,000 to 4,500 square feet, he said. That leaves plenty of room for other tenants.
"We want to have something there that's a destination," Adams said. "Now, I think restaurant is probably the obvious answer. I think, ideally, we would get a prominent chef to open up a destination restaurant."
