XTO parking garage, Houston Street Duplex plans move forward

Life-size statue of Butch Cassidy’s “Wild Bunch.”

Two new developments are on their way to downtown Fort Worth — an XTO Energy-owned parking garage and a duplex featuring a life-size statue of Butch Cassidy’s “Wild Bunch.”

Both developments received approval from the Downtown Design Review Board (DDRB), a committee that reviews incoming structures to make sure the projects align with the overall design of downtown.

The parking garage, located between Throckmorton Street, Sixth Street, Houston Street and Seventh Street, will have 833 parking spaces used only for XTO employees. The structure will be nine stories tall, with eight levels of parking and one level of retail space at the bottom. Construction will begin in January and finish around the end of 2016.

Designers of the parking garage worked with city staff to make changes to the original design. The new design has a more vertical orientation than its previous concept, incorporates awnings above the storefronts on the retail level and has glass on the towers standing at the corners of the structure.

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The DDRB was pleased with the design changes and agreed that the changes better reflect the character of the retail found on Houston Street, said Sevanne Steiner, senior planner at the City of Fort Worth.

The second development, a residential duplex located at 1002 Houston Street, will stand between the Flatiron Building and Park Central Hotel. The bottom level facing Houston Street will feature a life-size bronze statue of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, the famed western outlaws of the early 1900s. Italian artist Franco Alessandrini designed the statue, which has already been built.

The conceptual design of the duplex had already received approval from the DDRB in September, but the DDRB asked to see the materials that would be used to build the structure before moving forward. At the board’s Dec. 10 meeting, Raymond O’Connor, principal at O’Connor Architecture and Interior Design, presented the DDRB with the glass that will be used for the structure, as well as part of the bronze used for the statue.

O’Connor said back in September that the duplex will be between 3,500 and 3,800 square feet with a garage that can fit two cars.