Scott Nishimura
Foyer of Pier 1 headquarters
The City of Fort Worth showed off its newest piece of real estate, the former Pier 1 headquarters near downtown, Tuesday, hoisting the city’s flag outside the building that will become the new City Hall.
Mayor Betsy Price, who is relinquishing her seat in May, led City Council members in raising the flag. “It’s very bittersweet to have a chance to kick this off,” she said.
Scott Nishimura
City Council member Carlos Flores takes his turn in helping to hoist the city's flag outside the former Pier 1 headquarters Tuesday.
The city plans to send out requests for qualifications for a consultant who will hire an architect and construction manager at risk. Renovations are expected to go quickly; move-in into the 20-story tower will begin in 2022.
The city last week closed on the $69.5 million purchase of the 672,327-square-foot tower, which Pier 1 built in 2003 to replace its headquarters offices, then in downtown’s City Center. A Woodland Hills, Calif. partnership bought the property in 2018 and, following Pier 1’s bankruptcy, was looking to sell. The building is only about one-third leased, with lease agreements that run for several more years.
Dana Burghdoff, an assistant city manager, has been named to head a team that will lay out uses of the building, which was decked out by Pier 1 with finishes including Italian marble and imported eucalyptus.
The team’s job will include determining what city departments will move in, and when, and where the mayor and council chambers will be located. The city plans to consider consolidating functions from as many as 10 buildings into the new City Hall.
The mayor and council chambers will likely have a much different feel than the round pit in the current City Hall downtown. Possibilities include currently full unfinished floors like the building’s fifth floor, Burghdoff said.
The building also sports a grand, modern, high-ceilinged foyer, with floor-to-ceiling windows that splash the interior with light.
Price said she envisioned the foyer welcoming community events. In any case, it won’t be covered by offices and cubicles in the renovation plan. “No sir, not on my watch,” Burghdoff said during a brief interview Tuesday.
Including the purchase price and renovation costs, the city expects to pay a total $100 million for the new City Hall, City Manager David Cooke said. That’s a 50% savings from the $200 million previous plan the city had, which including razing another building and building a new City Hall in its place.
That plan would have taken six years to execute. “We were prepared to execute that plan,” Cooke said Tuesday. But luck intervened Nov. 6, when the city was “presented with the (Pier 1) building as an option.”
The city signed a letter of intent Nov. 18, obtained City Council authorization Dec. 15, secured lender approval Jan. 12, and closed Jan. 27.
The purchase is expected to help tighten the downtown office market. Asked Tuesday what the market might have been to a corporate user, Cooke said, "I think it came to us because there wasn't a lot of opportunity in the private market."
