A development group would demolish two small structures on Carroll Street on Fort Worth's Near West Side, and build two buildings with up to five attached row houses apiece.
More development continues to move onto Fort Worth’s Carroll Street, a strip with a hodgepodge of uses bordered by Montgomery Plaza and West Seventh to the south and the rapidly gentrifying Linwood to the west.
Another new development on the drawing board: the planned redevelopment of a one-third-acre site on the east side of Carroll between Whitmore and Weisenberger streets into 10 row houses.
A development group, representing the TownSite Co. development consulting firm of Fort Worth, has the small site under contract to purchase and plans two buildings up to five attached row houses per building. The Fort Worth Zoning Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved the rezoning of the site.
“We feel it’s an effective way to use a piece of land that literally is very severely challenged,” Phillip Poole, a TownSite partner, said.
The row houses, which will be as many as four stories tall, each with garages, will face Carroll and have front stoops on the street. The site, which buts up agains an adjacent warehouse to the east, is just deep enough to allow rear-entry garages, and an access street off of Weisenberger and Whitmore will feed into them. The fourth floors may have indoor and outdoor living, with views of downtown, Poole said. The second and third floors also will overlook downtown.
“Standing on the second floor, you begin to see views of downtown; the third floor will have very good views,” he said.
The zoning commission approved a rezoning to planned development/urban residential, with a maximum four stories, from “J” medium industrial. The City Council will consider the case in May.
The development group, which Poole said isn’t identifying itself at this point, will demolish the two buildings on the site: a small 1946-era house, and a small, incomplete commercial building.
The houses will be for sale, with pricing not yet determined, Poole said. The floor plans will tend toward the larger, 2,400-2,500 square feet apiece, but it’s not been determined what the final size range will be, he said.
“We had to get the zoning so they could go buy the land,” he said.
The development group also hasn’t determined what the buildings will look like, Poole said.
Assuming the City Council approves the project, design work will begin immediately, with permitting possible in four to six months, he said. Closing on the property could occur late this Spring or in the summer, he said.
Poole said development groups in the adjacent Linwood neighborhood have built 28 new homes in Linwood over the last two years, leasing on the new Elan West 7th on Carroll is strong, shopping and entertainment amenities at Montgomery Plaza and West Seventh are appealing to new, prospective younger residents, and oncoming access over White Settlement Road to the major planned Panther Island infill redevelopment will make Carroll an appealing place to live.
“The whole area is going to shift,” he said.