Trinity Terrace rendering.
By Scott Nishimura snishimura@bizpress.net
Trinity Terrace, the Fort Worth retirement community that overlooks the Trinity River downtown, plans to launch construction in November on a 23-story River Tower, Trinity Terrace said Friday.
It will be Trinity Terrace’s second major expansion since 2009, when it built the City Tower to go with the Terrace Tower, which opened 31 years ago. Construction will take about two years, Rene Beauchamp, Trinity Terrace’s residential services director, said in an interview.
The new tower, which will front 10th Street on the north side of the property, will have independent living apartments and penthouses, assisted living apartments, a memory care wing, and a 14th floor restaurant with an a la carte menu. The new tower will include extensions of the Terrace Tower’s hospital and assisted living floors.
The tower will have 79 independent living apartments ranging in size between 1,450 square feet and 3,300 square feet, 12 penthouses on three levels, 17 assisted living apartments, and four “brownstones” at street level on Fournier Street facing west. The 79 independent living apartments are “70 percent full,” Beauchamp said.
“We’re way ahead of schedule,” Beauchamp said. Trinity Terrace needed 30 percent pre-leasing to secure loans, and its goal was 50 percent before groundbreaking, she said.
Space, Trinity Terrace’s hotel-like amenities, and continuum of care are strong appeals, Beauchamp said. Couples, for example, don’t have to worry about travelling to see an ill spouse, she said.
“If you need those services, they are there,” she said.
Manhattan Construction, which built the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Park in Arlington, the Pier 1 headquarters in downtown Fort Worth, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Student Housing, will be the contractor, Trinity Terrace said.
The current Terrace Tower hospital floor has 46 beds. The expanded floor will feature all-private rooms and 17 more beds.
Trinity Terrace is converting all of its current hospital floor beds from semi-private rooms to private.
Trinity Terrace has one main dining room that is served largely by a buffet, and a game room that is being converted to a bistro. It also offers a private dining room on its assisted living floor, and food service to the hospital wing.
The complex’s Terrace and City towers have 280 apartments and 330-340 residents. Entrance fees and monthly charges vary by apartment size, lease flexibility and the number of people living in the unit.
Trinity Terrace declined to disclose what it’s paying to build the new tower.