Crystal Wise
Kyle Wilks
This tour of the abandoned Fort Worth Public Market building is led by Kyle Wilks, who has taken on the role museum docent — docent with a hardhat, that is — as if he’s been playing it his entire life.
As he excitedly moves from place to place over this 16,000-square-foot bottom floor, it’s clear he has studied the history of the building and space and the importance of preservation as closely as he has design and space planning, materials, and construction.
“I knew nothing about the building before we bought it,” Wilks says. “I drove [Interstate] 30 most of my life. And I saw that building all the time, and I've always loved it. In the process of buying the building, we started learning about the history.”
There were stalls all throughout the building, he says, vendors selling their wares. Meat, tea, and fruit, among them. He points above us to a balcony and balustrade. Beyond that is what appears to be a bank teller’s cage. A set of bars, probably the same set of bars from yesteryear, separates the teller from the vendor.
“Once the merchants were done for the day, they would run their money up there,” says Wilks, 45, as I picture him telling me this as enthusiastically as the first time he told the story. “That’s where they did the money changing in that mezzanine.”
He pivots on a dime and points to a set of stairs descending into a basement. Here’s where vendors, he says, could store supplies in ice in a cooler environment.
“It seems kind of dark,” he says rhetorically of the lighting, “but when all these windows get redone, there will be a lot of natural light flowing in here.
“This is going to be a great space.”
Rather than a tour, our visit was more a pilgrimage and an unambiguous message that nothing would be done here that would trample or otherwise contaminate the sanctity of history or preservation.
As CEO of Wilks Development, a private company based in Benbrook, Wilks identifies and evaluates potential developments, conducts due diligence reviews, creates the financial models, designs sites, and oversees construction.
His reputation as a hands-on executive who likes to get his hands dirty in the work is manifestly evident even during our tour. He often makes personal visits to the site to get an update on progress on work on the Public Market building. I found him making the rounds as I arrived for our meeting.
Wilks and the company are behind the $54 million redevelopment of the historic landmark in what was once a lonely, desolate southwest corner of downtown Fort Worth at the confluence of Henderson Street, West Lancaster Avenue, and Interstate 30.
The building had suffered from an identity crisis for decades and neglect from sitting vacant for the better part of 20 years. All the signs of abandonment were present, including the work of vandals.
The company purchased the property from Bob Simpson in 2014. That was when the brainstorming began.
On the vacant lot behind the historic edifice will be The Harden at Public Market, an active senior living facility of 199 rooms in a five-story structure that will include a parking garage.
A coffee shop or restaurant or both from a to-be-determined vendor will be located in the building itself, probably in about the same place as a bakery that set up shop there long ago.
The Woodmont Company will be handling the leasing. The rectangular shape of the building allows possibilities, including retail, the firm believes.
Wilks Development
A rendering of the Public Market building.
Many around here had doubts anybody would ever follow through on redevelopment. But doubt no more. The proof is in the structure beginning to transform the once empty lot behind the Public Market building. The building is beginning to tan as it reaches closer to the summer sun.
The steady hum of machinery and the rhythmic clanging of hammers on the worksite create a symphony of beautiful music to the ears of any developer.
As well as the city.
This project is a welcome development in the city’s reimagining of the southern corridor in downtown as a vibrant center of mixed use which will connect seamlessly to the Near Southside.
“The Fort Worth Public Market sits along a major thoroughfare connecting the Near Southside to the southern end of Downtown Fort Worth, which will see more growth, activity, and investment as Texas A&M-Fort Worth and other projects come online,” a spokesperson for the city says. “So, we’re very glad to see a passionate development team seize this opportunity to create a plan for the site and get to work making it happen, which will help build on the area’s momentum.”
It's momentum that will really take off once — or if — development begins on the long-vacant Texas & Pacific Warehouse. But that’s another story.
The city has been closely involved in the redevelopment of the Public Market. Wilks has applied for a Historic Site Tax Exemption, which would freeze the assessed tax valuations on the land and any improvements at pre-renovation values for a period of 10 years. That application will be taken up for approval by the Historic & Cultural Landmarks Commission and ultimately the City Council once work on the project is complete.
The property was listed as a Texas historic landmark in 1980 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Those designations will allow Wilks historic tax credits available to developers who renovate historic properties.
The name of the building is an homage to the original developer, John J. Harden, an Oklahoma native who began developing real estate in Fort Worth in 1928. His first two projects were the Rose Hill Burial Park, the final resting place of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald 35 years later, and the Bluebonnet Hills neighborhood near TCU.
Harden had previously developed public market buildings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Fort Worth’s Public Market building was designed by B. Gaylord Noftsger, another Oklahoman. It was constructed in six months, the total cost $200,000.
It opened on June 20, 1930.
“This is a very significant site to the architectural fabric of Fort Worth,” says Mark Dabney, who leads the Fort Worth office of BOKA Powell architects, which did the designs on the redevelopment. “When this building opened in 1930, this was a vibrant neighborhood. There were homes just right over there on Rio Grande Avenue, all the way down Henderson to Seventh Street and back up to Summit Avenue.”
The Public Market building was used by local farmers and vendors, as well as other businesses. It was built to give farmers a central marketing place and to clear streets of parked produce wagons.
Under terms of Harden’s agreement with the city, the city passed an ordinance regulating huckstering on streets and agreed not to permit construction of a similar market within a 2-mile radius for a period of 10 years. The city also permitted the market to charge a maximum rent of 65 cents daily per stall. Thirty-five cents would be charged the first year, according to reports published at the time.
It closed in 1941, a victim of circumstances of the terrible turndown of the Great Depression. The building was sold to a lumber company and subsequently other owners.
It fell into disrepair in the decades since but has been a source of intrigue among developers and the general populace for years because of its distinctive identity and location.
Wilks says the company explored a number of options for redevelopment, including multifamily and a hotel.
“We looked at a lot of different concepts,” Wilks says. “And to us, a senior living tower in the back, just location-wise, made a lot of sense because we're kind of in the triangle of the Medical District, the Seventh Street area and Cultural District, and then downtown.
“We knew whatever we settled on had to do a couple of things. One, it had to be very respectful of the history and the community, and then whatever we put in the Public Market building would need to resonate with the community and be something that was public facing. We are proud to be a part of the restoration of this iconic building and to preserve its legacy for the generations to come.”
Wilks goes on to explain that active senior living here means 62 years and older.
Whew, I joke (terribly). I’m not eligible yet.
“When you are,” Wilks interjects with a glimmer in his eye and wry smile, “you come see us.”
* * * * *
Cisco, Texas, is about a 1½-hour drive southwest from Fort Worth. Out past Weatherford and across U.S. 281. Santo, Gordon, Strawn, and Ranger dot the map along the way. (Don’t forget to visit Mary’s in Strawn.)
A short trip up U.S. 183 off Interstate 20 and you’re in Cisco, a town of just under 4,000 people in Eastland County. At its height, some 10 years after the Ranger oilfield was discovered in 1917, Cisco boasted a population of 15,000.
Believe it or not, the first hotel Conrad Hilton acquired, the Mobley Hotel, was in Cisco. Conrad Hilton Boulevard marks the history. I find this hard to believe, but Lawrence Welk is said to have had his first paying jam session, or something, in Cisco.
The most famous — or infamous — event in Cisco was the Santa Claus Bank Robbery in 1927.
Four men, one in a Santa Claus mask to disguise his identity in a town where everyone knew him, entered the First National Bank two days before Christmas and almost got off in taking $12,000 in cash.
Just about everybody in town, literally, came out to confront them. Naturally, the vigilantes were all armed.
Over 15 minutes of chaos, according to one report, more than 200 shots were fired. The police chief, an officer, and one of the bandits were killed. Of the three remaining perps, who were caught after a dayslong manhunt, one was sentenced to life in prison, another met his demise sitting in the electric chair, and the last, the brainchild of the operation, was lynched in Eastland. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth.
The Wilks family wasn’t yet in Cisco in the late 1920s.
Voy Wilks would come to Eastland County in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and finally Cisco shortly after.
Voy’s story is the start of perhaps the dreamiest of American dreams, right up there with all the others whose beginnings were marked by the hardscrabble and resilience that showcase an indomitable spirit of faith and will.
At his death at age 89 in 2010, Voy left behind five adult children, 42 grandchildren, and 46 great-grandchildren. He was also instrumental in the founding and growth of the Assembly of Yahweh.
He was born in Burnett County to a family who, at least for a time, lived in a goat shed.
Around 1947, several members of the Ramsey Church of Christ, located a few miles north of De Leon had a disagreement with their fellow congregants on a doctrinal issue concerning the millennium. This disagreement led to their expulsion. Among the group was Charlie Fenter, his daughter Myrtle, and Voy, Myrtle’s husband.
When Charlie passed away in May 1952, Voy took on the responsibility of leading weekly worship services. Leading the weekly services is really not a fair accounting. Voy was a leading thinker in the Assembly philosophy.
The Assembly of Yahweh essential tenants are that Yahweh is the “heavenly Father alone,” the only creator. Yahshua is the son, “our King, Messiah, Mediator, and High Priest. Our perfect Mediator between Yahweh and man.” The faith tradition does not believe in the concept of the holy trinity.
The Assembly of Yahweh remains a central focus of the Wilks family.
“That's big for us,” Wilks says. “Always has been, always will be. I keep the Sabbath. So, sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, I'm at church, we rest, focus on family stuff, like playing with the kiddos, and just doing something that's not work. We don’t buy, we don’t sell on those days.”
It was Voy who also introduced the family business, masonry.
He was working for a glove manufacturer in Cisco. Voy asked for a raise, but management declined. He got mad.
“I wouldn’t say ‘mad,’” Wilks says. “My grandpa didn’t get mad. He would just get, I don’t know what the word is, maybe upset. He might get a little upset, but that was the extent of it. But, yeah, they wouldn’t give him a raise at the glove factory.
So, Voy walked away from the job to become a bricklayer, answering the call of a company looking for bricklayers. He had never laid a brick in his life.
“He told them he was a bricklayer,” Wilks says. “I guess technically he was right. Who couldn’t lay a brick? He got in and just figured it out. He was pretty sharp on the uptake.
“It was a good decision. In looking back, I’m glad he did it. But that started the bricklaying dynasty.”
Wilks laughs at the phrase he just used, “bricklaying dynasty.” I laugh. The whole group of us sitting there laugh.
* * * * *
The most famous of the now more famous Wilks family are Voy’s sons, Ferris and Dan.
The “Wilks Brothers,” as they are collectively known, derisively in some circles because of the principles they live by and the money they use to support them. Kyle Wilks is the son of Ferris Wilks, who is a pastor at the Assembly of Yahweh, the site about 10 miles south of Cisco.
The brothers followed their father into the bricklaying business. After years of working in the business and as entrepreneurs in the industry, the brothers came together to form Wilks Masonry in 1995.
They found work all over the southwest, picking up projects east and west, north and south. Universities, sports stadiums, medial facilities, county courthouses, and other government buildings. Business has been good, and they are still in it.
The Wilks brothers also dabbled in the oil and gas business. They had drilled a well just west of Cisco. I’m not sure where. Most of the wells out there are shallow, 2,000 or 3,000 feet.
The Wilks needed the well completed. In my layman’s attempt, completing a well is the phase in the extraction process that prepares the drilled well for production. This involves a series of technical operations designed to ensure the well can efficiently and safely extract oil or gas from the underground reservoir to the surface.
Fracking was en vogue, particularly with its use in the Barnett Shale.
“They picked up the phone and they called the four majors at that time, and told them what they had,” Wilks says. “‘We’ve got this well that is close to completion … .’ Three of them didn’t call them back. And one of them said, ‘Here's our price, and we'll see you in a year. And if you don't like the price, don't call us.’
So, they're like, ‘If you can treat your customers like that and charge those kinds of prices, we got to figure this out.’”
The brothers put together this “little ragtag” team of pumps and went up and did the completion themselves.
“Probably not the best frack ever done,” Wilks says laughing.
But the experience started a new oil field services company in 2002: Frac Tech.
“From that, they just started noodling away,” Wilks says. “It was kind of the mindset they've always had: ‘Where there's a will, there's a way, and we'll kind of figure it out.’ That's what they did. They just started figuring it out.”
At first, they catered to customers like them — those who couldn’t get or afford the big guys to complete the wells.
In 2011, the brothers sold their part of the company for a combined $3.5 billion to a group led by Singapore-based firm Temasek.
According to Forbes, Farris Wilks, 72, is worth $2 billion. His brother Dan, 68, is worth $2.1 billion, according to Forbes. Together, they have become the 12th-largest landowners in the U.S., acquiring 672,000 acres of land in six states across the West.
Ferris still lives on the property his grandfather purchased years ago.
From the goat shed to Gulf Streams.
They have attracted scrutiny and criticism for the causes they support, namely conservative, far-right politics. They have been accused of driving Texas rightward because candidates can’t afford to spurn them.
The Wilkses were big supporters of Ted Cruz’s presidential candidacy in 2016, and more recently Ferris and Tim Dunn, another oil billionaire, spearheaded Texans for a Conservative Majority, a Political Action Committee designed to take aim at moderate Texas House Republicans.
“They've been pretty active, even though the reality is, I haven't heard my dad actually talk about politics in probably four years,” Wilks says. “He just talks about ranching, Scripture stuff, he talks about family, sports. I haven't heard him talk about politics in a long time.
“Obviously, they have core beliefs and core principles that I would say are very traditional.”
Any controversy they might be involved in, though, hasn’t impacted business at Wilks Development.
“It's been our discovery that unless you build a bogeyman in your head when it comes to that kind of stuff, when we're dealing with municipalities and stuff, they treat you very fair,” Wilks says. “But what they expect is for you to deliver. I don't think [the politics] matters. If you don't do what you say in these municipalities, that's the No. 1 thing that will get you in trouble. I think we've been pretty successful so far, and we intend to continue that.”
* * * * *
Out of the sale of Frac Tech were born a number of new Wilks enterprises. One of those was Wilks Development.
Kyle Wilks had been a vice president at Wilks Masonry and executive vice president of Frac Tech during the company’s high growth phase.
Since its founding in 2012, Wilks Development has completed more than 30 projects, including Willow Park North, a master planned community that opened in 2018 with a roughly 60,000-square-feet mix of retail, restaurant, and office.
The Village at Crown Park in Willow Park was the company’s first project. It was a multifamily development, which the company sold to Olympus Property in 2018.
“We didn't know what we were doing, but we knew how to build stuff,” Wilks says of that first project. “So, we just kind of started. And we started with one project. And then we just continued to grow the business to now we're fairly large. And we’re still learning stuff every day, but that's how we got into it.”
Wilks says if he had a crystal ball, the company would’ve bought “everything we saw” in 2011.
“But who knew? Everything was coming out of the financial crisis. It's just high to the right on the real estate side since then.”
Like many of the Wilks businesses, the development firm is literally family run. Some of the Wilks’ businesses are portfolio companies run outside the family. Many, though, like Wilks Development are family operated.
In addition to Wilks, his older brother Josh is executive senior vice president and handles projects in West Texas. Their cousin, Jess Green, is the company senior vice president. He manages day-to-day operations in the Fort Worth office, along with spearheading most of the firm’s projects in Dallas-Fort Worth. Green is the lead on the Public Market.
Family is important to the Wilks culture. The work of masonry required the family to move quite a bit while Wilks was growing up because they moved from job to job. Generally, those jobs lasted 12 months, Wilks says. Waxahachie, Fort Worth, Lubbock, Borger, Greenville.
“You name it,” Wilks says. “My mom, bless her heart, she homeschooled us. She was a great teacher. I was a questionable student.”
Wilks comes from a brood of 11 brothers and sisters.
“So, you can imagine,” he says.
He drives into Fort Worth from Cisco once or twice a week generally. A stop at the Public Market is usually part of the trip.
The ambitious plan for the Public Market included a process of long discernment.
“When we purchased it, we didn't know what it would be exactly, but we knew it would be something significant,” Wilks says. “And we loved it. Our family background is in masonry. So, our family always loved this building. We've really had a lot of respect for it because the craftsmanship that it takes to build something like this.
“We knew whatever we settled on had to do a couple of things. One, it had to be very respectful of the history and the community, and then whatever we put in the Public Market building would need to resonate with the community and be something that was public facing. We are proud to be a part of the restoration and to preserve its legacy for the generations to come.”
The new property will be open next year. A fire in 2022, likely set by vagrants, was a temporary setback.
The vision of The Woodmont Co., the leasing firm, is a destination spot, such as a restaurant with a prominent chef. There is plenty of space for other tenants.
“We want people to feel when they come to the Public Market after we reopen it to have that same sense of awe and community and amazement as those people when they first opened it in 1930 must have felt when they walked in and they're like, ‘That's awesome,’” says Wilks. “That's our goal.”