2:15 AM 3/15/1997
By EVAN MOORE
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle
FORT WORTH -- The smart set has moved to Fort Worth.
Mensa, that elite collection of intellectuals that requires an IQ within the top 2 percentile of the nation to join, has moved its national headquarters from The Big Apple to Cowtown.
Fifteen years ago they wouldn't have, and you wouldn't have to be a genius to figure out why. Fort Worth's downtown was as dank and dreary as any in the state.
But Fort Worth got a facelift. Shoppers now crowd streets that were all but deserted a few years ago. Buildings that collected dust gleam with brass and chrome.
It was enough last year to make great minds think twice about Mensa's leaky cellar office in New York.
"Fort Worth, particularly downtown Fort Worth, just offered everything we wanted -- office space, parking, restaurants, apartments ... ," said Mark Witter, the organization's marketing director.
"We narrowed it down to two or three cities and Fort Worth was simply the best."
Until recently, it was one of the best-kept secrets in the state. The city, which began as a somewhat neglected military outpost on the banks of the Trinity River, was described as a place where a panther could sleep undisturbed on its streets.
For years, Fort Worth, with its population of just under a half-million, has rested in the shadow of Dallas' 1 million-plus.
Dallas had the banks, the commerce and the cosmopolitan image.
Fort Worth had color and cowboys.
As a primary railhead in the 1870s, it was the end of the Chisholm trail for cattle drives, which gave it the Cowtown nickname. It had vast stockyards and "Hell's Half Acre," a collection of brothels, bars and hotels where Butch Cassidy and his gang of bank robbers made their home.
The "Cowtown" name stuck, but the real money in Fort Worth came from oil, after a major oil field opened in East Texas in 1929. Eventually, every major oil company had an office here. Later, Bell Helicopter fueled the economy as did Convair, which churned out B-52s on the city's west side.
The cultural district grew, particularly with the renowned Kimbell Art Museum, which acquired world-class works of art.
Oil fields run dry, however. By the 1970s the oil companies had all moved to Houston and its port. With the end of the Vietnam War, aircraft production had slowed. The old money remained, but, without an influx of new wealth, the city began to decline.
In 1979, downtown was drab, dirty and largely empty. The last theater had closed its doors and the last department store had moved to the suburbs. Nothing short of a few bars remained open in the city center after 5 p.m. The two remaining hotels were near the Water Gardens and the Tarrant County Convention Center at the far southern end of the central business district.
Trash accumulated in the gutters, and grass poked through cracks in the sidewalks because few walked on them. Those who did were mostly office workers who had to be there and a few unkempt fellows with paper sacks of cheap wine who didn't have to be anywhere.
On the North Side of downtown, the first efforts at rebuilding began in the '70s, focusing on the Stockyards. The area quickly filled up with cowboy bars, shops and tourists.
But while tourists might wander a few streets near the stockyards, they were loathe to go downtown. The sun would dawn on the sidewalk along Belknap Street near the courthouse, and a line of shaky patrons waited for the White House Bar to open and begin serving beer at 9 a.m.
Today all that is changed.
On these mornings, dark-suited lawyers crowd the Belknap sidewalk in front of a refurbished building. Atop the old Knights of Pythias building on Main Street, where a dilapidated suit of armor once threatened pedestrians with its falling parts, an exact and shiny replica now stands.
Multitudes of businesses, shops, apartments, hotels and restaurants cover the area, including a 22,000-square-foot eating and entertainment center that opens next week. In the past three years, office space in downtown Fort Worth has doubled from 4 million square feet to 8 million.
The grass that grows downtown is now landscaped and manicured and none pokes through the red-brick walkways. The once unsightly mounds of trash are conspicuously absent, and all is patrolled by a force of 204 polite, efficient and muscular security guards.
The derelicts and the smell of cheap wine have been replaced by a crowd that is young, well-groomed and well-heeled. Above them rises the scent of profit.
Downtown experts credit planning, savvy tax strategies and far-sighted business leaders for the dramatic changes. Perhaps most significant is the transfusion of money from the Bass family.
The Basses -- Sid, Bob, Ed and Lee -- collectively own 38 square blocks of Fort Worth, more than any other group or individual. Their holdings spoke out from Sundance Square, in the center of downtown, and spread in all directions. The buildings are theirs, the murals are theirs and those polished security guards, the fourth-largest police force in Tarrant County, all work for them.
The family fortune came originally from the Bass brothers' great uncle, Sid Richardson, a legendary oilman who, periodically in the 1950s and '60s, jostled back and forth with H.L. Hunt of Dallas in the position of richest man in the United States.
Richardson never married. He spent most of his nights in a suite of rooms in the Fort Worth Club and many of his days making deals on the 11th floor of that building.
When he died, he left a large portion of his estate to his great-nephews. The Basses diversified and for more than two decades have been building a multimillion-dollar legacy into a multibillion-dollar fortune.
Fort Worth became the beneficiary of that fortune in the early 1980s, when the Basses began buying downtown.
But Bill Boecker, director of the Bass enterprises, points out it was really the late Charles Tandy --founder of Radio Shack, Tandy Corp., and Pier 1 -- who was the first to begin rebuilding downtown.
"He built the Tandy Center (a glass-walled, mixed-use office center) before any of this started. Later, he and Sid Bass put together a project for what is now the Worthington Hotel," Boecker said.
"But it may be fair to say the Basses are primary and their commitment to Fort Worth is obvious."
The Basses are an intensely private group who rarely give interviews.
However, Ed Bass, offered a written response to questions about his involvement in the downtown project. The youngest of the brothers, he is possibly best known for funding the Biosphere, the controlled-living environment in Arizona, and for the Caravan of Dreams nightclub in Fort Worth.
"Both my great uncle, Sid Richardson, and my grandmother (his sister) lived downtown," wrote Bass. "When we were growing up, we looked forward to going there to visit them and have dinner once or twice a week.
"My own particular love of cities grew out of that experience and it certainly influenced my appreciation of downtowns and what they have to offer to people. Back then, all of the major department stores were downtown, all movies came first to downtown and the newspapers were still sold on the street by newsboys.
"Downtowns were the focus of the whole city; they were both extremely functional and extremely lively."
The Basses began with a lot at Main and Fourth streets in 1983 and spread their development in all directions. In 1983 Ed Bass bought a half-block at Third and Houston and built the Caravan of Dreams, an eclectic nightclub that featured live jazz and blues. He added an apartment for himself on top of the building and set up residence.
He wanted to expand his development further, but was stymied by the fact that the remainder of the block was owned and occupied by retailers who did not want to sell.
Precipitous events sometimes mask themselves, however. Competition between two neighboring sandwich shops to the west of the Caravan of Dreams had reached a peak in December 1987, and one shop owner apparently decided to blow up his competitor.
The restaurateur intentionally left the gas jets open late one evening and the ensuing explosion occurred about 3 a.m. It leveled half the block behind the Caravan of Dreams, blew out 56 windows in nearby buildings and did $2.5 million in damage.
It reportedly blew Ed Bass out of his bed and suddenly made the rest of the block available.
Bass bought the damaged property, leveled part of it and built Sundance West, a development similar to his brother's. Ed Bass has since begun building a block-sized performance hall at the southeast corner of Sundance Square, and it is due to open this spring.
Ken Devero, director of Downtown Fort Worth Inc., a consortium that works on development in the downtown area, credits the Basses, Tandy and others. But he also cites a downtown strategic action plan that was drawn in 1983, revised 10 years later, and a tax increment financing district and tax abatement plan for downtown housing.
"We had the first public improvement district for a downtown in the state in 1986," said Devero. "Now there are others in Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi.
"We have a special assessment tax for downtown at 12 cents per $100 evaluation and about half that money goes toward keeping the city clean. One problem we had in the early 1980s was that people didn't want to come downtown because it looked dirty and dangerous.
"It really wasn't as dangerous as other parts of the city, but it gave that impression and it doesn't now."
What remains for the future are more residential developments, a landscaped plaza that Ed Bass plans for the center of Sundance Square and an open-air market.
"We don't know where we're going to put it yet, but we're going to have one," said Devero. "We'd like to make it similar to Pike Place in Seattle."