A new arts school for Fort Worth-but where?

November 24,2014

By Bud Kennedy bud@star-telegram.com

Fort Worth is building a Fame arts school, which is a very big deal for young performers and artists.

The question is where to build it, which is a very big deal for Fort Worth.

The school district owns prime land in and near the Cultural District, and also good sites with easy access off Loop 820.

As approved by voters, the new $43 million Visual and Performing Arts School would include two auditoriums, rehearsal space, classrooms and a permanent art gallery.

Trustees always penciled it in for a Cultural District corner at West Lancaster Avenue and Foch Street behind the historic Farrington Field stadium.

But the district also owns land on and near North University Drive: the central offices, an alternative school and a bus garage on a hillside overlooking the Trinity River.

Any of those locations, or a freeway site elsewhere, might also serve Fort Worth’s future musicians, artists and dancers.

And if not, why not sell some of those sites for taxable development and put the money toward the district’s growing needs?

In particular, the district’s land along University Drive could be better used for the daily enrichment of children, or sold.

An arts middle-high school would fit well behind the stadium, itself an architectural work of art. It would bring Fort Worth the same excitement that Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts brings that city’s downtown Arts District.

But the arts school might have more room and be closer to students 11 blocks north at the Manny Building administration site, or at the garage, a former Buick dealership.

The district also owns extra land and fields near the Wilkerson-Greines Activity Center on Southeast Loop 820 and near Dunbar High School on East Loop 820, both good locations for a school that might attract students and dollars from other cities.

If saving money is a concern, there are other facilities or church auditoriums that might be bought and converted.

But frankly, the district already owns a lot of land and facilities, some with no defined future purpose.

Acting Superintendent Patricia Linares hinted at that Monday in a meeting of the citizens’ advisory committee overseeing bond spending.

“I feel the need to say this,” she told both the committee and trustees in the audience.

“As a district, we need to do some long-range planning for facilities,” she said, speaking with the knowledge of her 14 years in the district.

“Every time something like this comes up, we are making short-term decisions that have a long-term impact. There are many buildings, including this administration building, that at some point we need to take a look at.”

School trustees just made another short-term decision, plugging a new academy for science, technology, engineering and math into a turnkey Benbrook Highway school building just to get it open by next fall.

Linares defended that decision, calling the former Wycliff Elementary and Leonard Sixth Grade a “wonderful facility” and the “best way to be good stewards” of money from a 1999 bond election.

But that isn’t the best permanent location that comes to mind for a science-math middle-high school.

The former I.M. Terrell High School campus near downtown, currently an elementary school and the district’s computer operations center, is worth consideration for a higher-profile role, as is land near Dunbar, now the smallest city high school.

At the committee meeting, Linares said a decision on the arts academy location should wait.

The site near Farrington Field might be limited by the 1937 deed’s reverter clause and a 2001 settlement contract with the city, she said.

Linares said it would be “ill-advised to move forward” without studying the district’s legal position.

This is not a timed test. Think about the answer.

Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538 Twitter: @BudKennedy

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