Trinity River Vision: July 29, 2010

We met with Shanna Cate of the Fort Worth Trinity River Vision.

There are a couple different aspects to this project and the first one is the development of trinity uptown. This will be where all the private development takes place. They are looking to develop a channel through uptown so can develop right up on the waterfront. The city rezoned about 1000 acres where they want development to take place. The type of zoning is form based code. This is where there is no particular use a building has to comply to, but the building just has to be built to certain specifications and then can have whatever use is feasible. If any public dollars are used for development of multi family must comply to affordable housing laws.

There are four main components to this taking place and making a hip urban environment while being safe at the same time. They are flood protection, urban revitalization, ecosystem improvement, and recreation. The plan for the project is to have the East Bank for development and the West Bank for recreation (trails, etc.). City wide citizens have wanted better amenities along the water and trails.

For the recreation part of the project they want to redevelop Gateway Park and make it one of the biggest and nicest urban programmed park in the country. One of the coolest things about the recreation is the wake park that could happen. They would like to use one of the levies for people to go wakeboard and participate in water sports equipped with ramps and all.

The project has a 12 year construction plan. The order of the construction phases is bridges, bypass channel, storm water management, isolation gates, dam and channel lock, interior water feature, trinity uptown. When the project is completed it is supposed to increase property tax revenues to $1.3 billion, 16,000 permanent jobs, and 10,000 mixed income residential units.