STRAIGHT FROM B.C., IDEAS AS BIG AS ALL TEXAS

A spirit of optimism runs through Fort Worth, Texas, where one of North America's largest infrastructure projects is being built according by Vancouver architect Bing Thom.

LISA ROCHON Saturday, November 28, 2008

FORT WORTH, TEX. — It's not all gloom and doom in the United States. A spirit of optimism runs through Fort Worth, Tex., where one of North America's largest infrastructure projects is being built according to a radical urban-renewal design by Vancouver architect Bing Thom. What began as a simple sketch has morphed into a massive project, currently under construction and deeply funded by all levels of government, that will reclaim about 325 hectares of derelict and dangerous downtown land.

Though acclaimed as a hybridized city of cowboys and serious culture, Fort Worth has suffered for decades from a flood-prevention system that separates the downtown from its waterfront. The Trinity River draws a big, crazy oxbow through the city centre, but you'd have to guess at its splendour. Grassy berms that rise some nine metres high prevent people from travelling, on foot or by car, along the edge of the water. What's more, the towering mounds have long isolated the city's industrial zone, cutting it off from the relative safety of the rest of Fort Worth – and paralyzing dreams for redeveloping it to attract families away from the suburbs and into the downtown.

In 2001, when Thom travelled to Texas to participate in a design charette, he decided to meet with local artists rather than shutting himself in a room to draw for two days. A recurring theme he heard: a desire to reconnect to the river. When Thom presented his plans to Fort Worth's civic leaders, he spoke about Vancouver's relatively easy connection to its ocean waterfront. He spoke of how Fort Worth could repair the void in its downtown, envisioning a bypass channel that would handle flood waters and effectively eliminate the barrier of the berms.

It seemed, at the time, a wild piece of hydraulic engineering, but it enchanted the design-selection committee, whose members had grown weary of the generic developments (impersonal behemoths that might have suited Dallas) typically proposed by dozens of other architects. Thom's idea was to dig a five-kilometre-long channel to reroute a fork of the Trinity, while allowing water to spread over some of the derelict land, creating five new islands, water canals and a small recreational lake in the heart of the downtown.

On all fronts, work to reinvent the near-north side of Fort Worth is moving ahead. Besides almost 20 kilometres of newly animated waterfront, the city promises to gain a new belief in living life downtown.

You may know Fort Worth as a cowboy's gateway to the West renowned for its Stockyards National Historic District, and as a Republican stronghold. Cattle ranches surround the city. But within the downtown – part of which sits over a natural-gas and oil patch – there is a genteel, generous network of arts patrons, and they've given rise to a stunning cultural district.

Architects travel there to pay their respects to the Kimbell Art Museum, a landmark of modernism by American genius Louis Kahn; and to experience the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth by the Japanese star of meditative design, Tadao Ando. Two weeks ago, Italian architect Renzo Piano unveiled his conceptual design for the much-anticipated addition to the Kimbell: a work of subtle, low-slung moves partly buried in the museum's adjoining park. Piano worked with Kahn during the 1960s, and it is with grace and a degree of humility that he returns to Fort Worth to expand his mentor's exquisite work of vaulted gallery spaces bathed in natural light.

Much of America may be struck down by a tanking economy, but the quiet conservatism of the people living in and around Fort Worth has meant less debt, low unemployment and fewer people falling victim to the subprime mortgage crisis. “Our economy is significantly better than the national economy,” says Kay Granger, long-time U.S. congresswoman for the 12th District of Texas who is also a former mayor of Fort Worth. “There's a real renaissance in Fort Worth.”

Granger never understood why her hometown city had accepted isolation from the river. She long imagined a riverside animated by people. She and other civic leaders travelled often to Vancouver to understand how a city could be fully enlivened by its waterfront.

From her office in Washington, Granger communicates virtual sparks of joy at what she discovered: “In Vancouver, the waterfront wasn't just a place where tourists were attracted. It was built for the people of Vancouver. We loved the open spaces. There were pocket parks and smaller neighbourhoods. The scale was right, and there was as much waterfront activity as possible. I think I took six trips to Vancouver – and we literally measured the width of the sidewalks, the difference between sidewalks for walkers and skateboarders, how everybody could be accommodated.”

And, now, according to the recommendations of Bing Thom Architects, the bypass channel is being dug. To test Thom's initial design impulse, Congress funded a major study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A model the size of a football field was built in Vancouver, and engineers tested the flow of the river and the viability of shoreline trees by pouring water into the model. Modifications were made to the design, but its radical essence – a bypass channel combined with a new hydraulic dam and control gates – and kilometres of new waterfront development have been fully endorsed.

Citizens are on board, the result of some 200 public consultations held over the last several years. Private developers have already invested about $1-billion (U.S.) into new corporate headquarters and residential build-outs in the area. Two concrete bridges, designed by Thom as organic structures that span the river, have been funded. The first phase of a new campus of Tarrant College, expected to attract about 8,000 students, is under construction. A century-old power plant, decommissioned long ago, could become a cultural centrepiece for the campus.

What's astounding about the scheme is the direct, delightful connection to the newly created waterfront. Inspiration has been taken from Vancouver's Granville Island but also the poetic condition of Venice. An estimated 10,000 families are expected to move into the city's near-north-side area, now known as the Trinity Uptown development, and which will include housing on stilts and seven-storey condominiums designed to front onto newly created canals. Houseboats that can be leased for affordable monthly rates are also part of the new, livable program.

The Trinity River infrastructure project, estimated to cost $600-million, is being half-funded by the federal government, with other matching money coming from state and local governments, as well as the Tarrant Regional Water District. Funding mechanisms particular to the United States, such as locally agreed-upon tax-increment financing (TIF) – which uses projected gains in taxes to finance the project that will generate those taxes – has produced a pledge of $90-million from within Fort Worth itself.

Thom is a tireless defender of the way architecture can invigorate a community. Besides his work in Fort Worth, he has just been signed this week to redesign the Epcor Centre in downtown Calgary, which will expand to become an eight-venue performing-arts facility, signalling a rare endorsement of the arts in Alberta. “You provide more public amenities, and allow people to trade some of their private space for public space. That's the role of the civil society – to bring people back from their isolated worlds, away from their homes, their computers and television, and back into interacting with fellow citizens in public space.”

The curious and wondrous thing about Fort Worth is the way people there seem to hold on to big ideas for their city. And, though stuff happens, and the economy can buck and protest, those people hang on as if they were riding a bull.

And when they ride, they ride in style.