Fernando Costa: Architect of Change
September 30,2024
See full Fort Worth Magazine article by John Henry here.
Sitting in a common area on the 20th floor of Fort Worth’s new high-rise City Hall, Fernando Costa ponders his forthcoming retirement. He is asked if he and his wife plan to stay in Fort Worth.
Oh, yes, he says. Affirmed by a second yes, and a third for good measure.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” Costa says. “Fort Worth is an exceptional community. We are very fond of it. This is home now. I know a lot of folks like to retire to remote locations, but Fort Worth has so much going for it that I don’t see any reason that folks wouldn’t want to stay.
“I don’t know where we would go that would be better.”
Costa has been a steady hand of integrity, calm, and wisdom in Fort Worth’s city manager’s office the past 26 years. His fingerprints are all over many of the city’s biggest projects and advancements in the past quarter-century.
He is a big reason why Fort Worth is a great place to live. He is a big reason why tens of thousands every year are choosing Fort Worth to live, work, and play.
He is, jokes Mayor Mattie Parker, the professor emeritus of the city.
Costa’s last day with the city as an assistant city manager was Sept. 30. He won’t soon be forgotten.
“Fernando’s dedication and leadership have left an indelible mark on our city,” says City Manager David Cooke, who is retiring, too, though not until February. “His legacy will continue to positively influence Fort Worth’s future.”
In his role as director of planning, Costa has been instrumental in shaping the city’s development policies and practices, setting a foundation for sustainable urban growth. His expertise in comprehensive planning and historic preservation has been pivotal in maintaining the city’s unique character while fostering this city of the modern West.
“Fernando Costa has been so much more than a city employee, department head, or assistant city manager in our organization,” Parker says. “Fernando is a true leader in Fort Worth, and he should be extremely proud of his countless accomplishments and the way he has shaped our city.
“We could always count on Fernando to provide a steady presence of wisdom and leadership when we need it most. I am continually thankful for his friendship and guidance over the years. There is no doubt Fernando will be missed.”
Costa joined the city as director of planning in 1998. He became an assistant city manager in 2008. At the time of his retirement, he oversaw three departments — Diversity & Inclusion, Neighborhood Services, and the Water Department.
He has played a crucial role in a number of high-profile projects, including the Trinity River Vision, which will transform the waterfront into a vibrant area for residents and visitors.
“I think the overall revitalization of our central city has been a source of satisfaction,” Costa says. “And it started before my time. There are so many places that are on the verge of transforming.”
He points out the window, looking down at Panther Island. Right now, all you see is vacant underdeveloped land and bridges that, he readily agrees, don’t make much sense with no water to bridge. But, in time, water will span the viaducts, and mixed-use development will emerge from the ground.
“We’ll all benefit from that development,” he assures his listeners on this day.
Construction workers in the southeast of downtown are steadily working on the construction of the groundbreaking Texas A&M-Fort Worth. Farther southeast, the much-anticipated Evans and Rosedale project has new life with the naming of a new developer.
Farther north is the revitalized Stockyards, which is now killing it as a source of tax revenue. Today, upwards of nine million visitors a year go down there to shop and play hard.
It wasn’t without hardship getting there. The Fort Worth Heritage Development Co. initially rolled out conceptual designs that gave the impression of recreating Disney World in Fort Worth. “We wanted nothing to do with that,” he says. Costa credits local architect Michael Bennett’s work on Mule Alley for getting what was needed in the Stockyard redevelopment.
“They pulled off something that is very difficult to do. That is to turn a historic place into something but still essentially unchanged in respect to its character. It’s a totally new place, but it looks like it belongs there.”
Costa was born in Cuba in 1953. The family moved to the U.S. in 1961 after the revolution and Castro’s seizing power. He was raised in North Miami, Florida.
“We were able to take one of the last commercial airline flights out of island in 1961,” he says.
He went to school in Atlanta at Georgia Tech to study civil engineering and city planning.
“I’ve always enjoyed cities,” Costa says.
He served as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and worked for the Middle Georgia Area Planning and Development Commission for 11 years as director of planning before moving back to Atlanta to take the same position with the city of Atlanta.
While there he helped city leaders to use the 1996 Olympic Games and a federal empowerment zone designation as catalysts for revitalizing Atlanta’s central business district and surrounding lower-income neighborhoods.
“I had a front row seat on the kinds of decisions that could propel that kind of progress,” Costa says. “And I was most impressed by the leadership of two mayors whom I was blessed to serve: Andrew Young, who was a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and who, more than anybody else, was instrumental in bringing the Olympics to Atlanta.
“He had an undaunted belief that Atlanta could be better than it was, to revitalize the central city of Atlanta, particularly the neighbors around the Olympic Venues.”
The other was Maynard Jackson, the first African American mayor of a major southern city. “He had an extraordinary mind and a certain quality that would enable him to fill any room that he entered. He just had that kind of presence. Yet, at the same time, he was very human and down-to-earth.”
“I learned a lot from those two leaders in particular, and I wanted to bring some of those lessons to Fort Worth.”
As it concerns diversity and inclusion, Costa notes four events during his tenure that he terms “pivotal.” Costa played leadership roles in each of them, always offering a presence of wise counsel amid the turmoil.
The first was the closing of the Ripley Arnold public housing complex downtown in the earliest years of the 2000s. RadioShack bought the property for a new corporate headquarters. The transaction, though, would cause the displacement of the Ripley Arnold’s low-income and mostly Black residents.
That precipitated a placement plan for the residents into mixed-income multifamily developments, including Stonegate apartments in southwest Fort Worth.
“Once the word got out, there was an unbelievable level of antagonism unleashed,” Costa says, reminding us of the matter that turned ugly.
Overflow City Hall and townhall meetings followed, many there to state their emphatic opposition to moving Ripley Arnold residents into their neighborhood. The climatic event occurred, Costa remembers, at First United Methodist Church.
A young developer of affordable housing gave the game-changing remarks.
Says Costa: “He talked about how he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He always wanted to become a developer of housing that would be affordable to families like his so they wouldn’t be perceived to be different. He wanted to be part of the community like everybody else. He gave such a remarkable talk that afterward you could hear a pin drop. The moderator turned to the next speaker, who was leading the opposition for the Stonegate neighborhood, and he said, ‘I have nothing to say.’ That event led to the City Council passing, and the Housing Authority board adopting, resolutions in support of integrating affordable housing to neighborhoods, which has driven a lot of our work ever since then.”
The raid on the Rainbow Lounge in 2009 led to a task force and recommendations impacting the LGBTQ community, almost all of which were adopted by the City Council or by the city manager.
Lastly, the arrest of Jacqueline Craig and the fatal police shooting of Atatiana Jefferson three years later, in 2019, led to more progress. Out of both of those painful episodes came light.
“For most of the country and even parts of the world, people focus on the George Floyd incident as the start of serious talks around racial justice, but that started in Fort Worth earlier. The arrest of Jacqueline Craig in 2016 was really the spark.”
A task force on race and culture was assembled in 2017.
“I don’t think the council imagined it really being highly consequential. But the task force itself on its own initiative saw that the folks who were coming to these public meetings had so much to say about inequality in Fort Worth that they really needed to broaden their mission, not just have some meetings to hear from people, but actually to examine the aspects of life in Fort Worth on which there were significant disparities in how folks enjoyed our quality of life.”
Costa, 71, is stepping away after 50 years in city planning and development.
His family, which now includes a bunch of grandchildren, want his time.
“I’d say that’s the main reason,” he says. “They put up with lots of evenings with me not being around, even weekends and so forth. They’ve been after me for some time. So, I think this is a good time. If I’m going to turn the page, this is a good time.”
He says he plans to remain active in the community.
The city has no plans to hire a replacement.
Those shoes simply can’t be filled.
Location Mentioned: Texas A&M Fort Worth