FORT WORTH, Texas — When the City of Fort Worth rings in the new year, city government will have a different look and feel: The city's offices will move into a new City Hall located inside the former Pier 1 Imports headquarters building located at 100 Energy Way.
"This is a Class A office space for a Class A city, and we’re really excited about the move coming up in January is when the council will move into the 20th floor," Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker told us on Inside Texas Politics.
Fort Worth has needed a new City Hall for a while now, and the enormous glass skyscraper will provide plenty of space for a city that Mayor Mattie Parker says is growing four times faster than Austin.
The city purchased the building in January 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, they’ve worked on new City Council Chambers, infrastructure upgrades and changing the building’s configuration enough that they can accommodate nearly double the number of occupants from the previous tenants.
Parker says that, best of all, the city is saving taxpayers money as constructing the same building somewhere downtown from scratch would have been much more expensive.
“I think all told, we probably saved taxpayers at least $150 million not having to go and build a new facility,” said Parker. “And yes, this is a beautiful building, but this building doesn’t belong to council or mayor or city managers, this building belongs to the people of Fort Worth.”
Parker also tells us Fort Worth will continue to improve the “basics” the city offers to its residents in 2024.
One area of focus is continuing to preserve open space for parks with a goal of converting 10,000 acres of open space over the next five years.
“I think that goal, honestly, is modest,” she said. “We lose 50 acres a week to development in the city of Fort Worth.”
Parker says while open space may not directly lead to an increase in tax revenue, she sees it as a strong economic development tool.
“As you know, people are voting with their feet across the United States," Parker explained. "They want to live in a place they can grow a family and have a high quality of life. I don’t want to live in (a) place that doesn’t have beautiful parks for my kids to play in.”
With $2 billion in development already underway in downtown Fort Worth, including new housing and new commercial space, the city’s 2024 is looking bright.
And city leaders will have an up-front view of it all from their shiny new City Hall.