Texas A&M Fort Worth Set to Transform Downtown

Until two years ago, Fort Worth was the largest city in Texas without a public research university. However, that all changed when Texas A&M decided to base its new research campus in Fort Worth’s downtown after an invitation from Fort Worth and Tarrant County officials.

The high-rise campus of three buildings, now officially named Texas A&M Fort Worth, will be located near the Fort Worth Water Gardens and the Fort Worth Convention Center on the same site as the existing Texas A&M School of Law. (As an interesting historical aside, this is the heart of Fort Worth’s infamous Hell’s Half Acre, Texas’ most, er, rambunctious red-light district.) The first building to start construction will be the Law & Education building and is expected to be completed by 2025. Once the Law & Education building is complete, the existing Law School building will be pulled down.

The other two buildings will be the Research & Innovation building and the Gateway conference center. The complex will include classrooms, labs, and flexible spaces for collaborative research in engineering, agriculture, and health sciences, among others. The date for construction of these two buildings hasn’t been announced yet.

Rendering courtesy of Texas A&M University

The campus will offer programs from Texas A&M University and Tarleton State University, which is a founding member of the Texas A&M University System, as well as several Texas A&M System agencies.

John Sharp, Chancellor of Texas A&M, is enthusiastic about the new campus. “A top-10 public research institution ensures Fort Worth’s future is rooted in the next economy driven by an educated workforce, whether it be lawyers, engineers, health care professionals or technology workers whose jobs don’t even exist today,” Sharp said at a press conference in Fort Worth in January. “Thanks to our partners, the city of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, the Texas A&M System is investing in a unique public-private sector endeavor that will be a magnet for economic growth for the North Texas region.”

The Texas A&M School of Law is already a presence in downtown Fort Worth. Originally founded in 1989 as the Dallas/Fort Worth School of Law, it became the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in 1992, relocating from Irving to Fort Worth. Texas A&M acquired the school in 2013.

In a conversation with Madeworthy, the Dean of the School of Law, Robert B. Ahdieh, was enthusiastic about the new campus. “Texas A&M Law – building on the values it developed as part of Texas Wesleyan – sees as central to its mission the advancement of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, and North Texas as a whole,” Ahdieh said, “That is reflected in the caliber of students and professionals we bring to the community, in our clinics serving the needs of veterans, entrepreneurs, patients at Cook Children’s, and others, and in the fast-growing educational programs we have developed for engineers, healthcare professional, bankers, and other non-lawyer professionals who need specialized training in relevant law, regulation, compliance, and the like.  As academic anchor of the new campus, we will be positioned not only to build on that, but to do even more!”

Rendering courtesy of Texas A&M University

The funding for the new campus comes from a unique partnership between the City of Fort Worth and the university. The university owns the land and will enter into a ground lease with the City, which will then develop the land, along with a third-party developer. The Research & Innovation building and the Gateway conference center will contain non-academic units which will be controlled by the third-party developer.

The architect of record is Stantec, while the design architect is Pelli Clarke & Partners. At the January press conference, William Butler, Design Partner at Pelli Clarke & Partners, said, “Aside from providing a state-of-the-art space for education, collaboration, and innovation, the Texas A&M Fort Worth Law and Education building will serve as a catalyst for Downtown Fort Worth’s next chapter.”

The property’s third-party developer had not been chosen by the time this issue went to press.

Mayor Mattie Parker, although an alumna of the University of Texas, is enthusiastic about how Texas A&M Fort Worth will impact our city. “Texas A&M is a premiere university system, and this expansion in downtown Fort Worth will be home to incredible opportunities for life-changing workforce development and world-changing research. I am excited to be continuing to partner with Tarrant County to usher in this exciting new wave of development and accelerate the path toward opening the doors of ‘Aggieland North.’”