By Scott Nishimura snishimura@bizpress.net
The makeover of Fairmount’s former College Avenue Baptist Church Sunday School & Athletic Building can now proceed, with a rezoning granted Tuesday by the Fort Worth City Council.
Council members voted 9-0 to approved the rezoning to planned development/mixed-use, excluding restaurants.
Kris Fagala, the Grapevine businessman who bought the building in January, plans light commercial such as professional offices and a small parking garage on the first floor and two floors of residential lofts on top of that.
The historic three-story brick building – a former church gym built in 1925 – has stood vacant and for sale on the north end of Fort Worth’s Fairmount neighborhood for years.
The 28,000-square-foot building – the former College Avenue Baptist Church gym at 1329 College Ave., one block south of West Magnolia Avenue’s new restaurants and bars – has long been a curiosity in Fairmount, as the neighborhood gentrified around it.
Fagala plans to cut a garage door into the south side of the building to allow access to parking inside, where an old swimming pool now sits.
The rezoning from community facility allows the commercial and residential.
The mixed-use-1 zoning prohibits bars, said. Fagala agreed to have the restaurant exclusion written into the site plan that gies with planned development zoning.