It is where the west begins— where tough-as-nails cowboys and well-to-do ranchers built a city near the banks of the Trinity River and on the edge of the frontier. Fort Worth’s colorful past earned it the name “Cowtown,” but today, it has transformed into a modern city of museums and music and culture that rivals any town in America.

The historic stockyards on Fort Worth’s north side still bring in tourists and keep the cowboy legend alive, but among the concrete valleys and the chrome-and-glass mountains of downtown, a new breed of settlers has staked a claim.

Call it a culture shift, progress or just life in the 21st century, but downtown Fort Worth is quickly becoming home of the hippest lifestyle in the state. Here, Baby Boomers have teamed up with Generation X to create a community and a way of life a dozen miles and a world away from suburbia.

What’s Drawing People Downtown
When work, restaurants, public transportation, shopping, nightlife and a world-class concert hall are just steps out your door, convenience becomes the selling point for downtown dwellers like 26-year-old attorney Justin Sizemore. Sizemore, along with Bourbon, his Boston terrier, has had a downtown address for three years. “My commute to work is about two minutes,” Sizemore boasts. He never knew that would make him such a trend setter.  

“I have friends who are attorneys who have the big houses and the big lawns, and they are selling and moving down here because they have seen the convenience and the lifestyle,” Sizemore says, adding that just because Fort Worth is becoming urbanized doesn’t mean it’s losing its Texas charm. “I always call downtown Fort Worth a mini-Chicago. It’s a very personable city. The people here are very real.”

Fifty-one-year-old Kerri Hodge agrees. She moved to downtown Fort Worth from Keller and runs her small medical supply company from the fifth floor of what used to be a department store before it was converted to residential apartments. “I have found it really is a community. You get to know people. It feels like my neighborhood. I feel like I can walk down the street and just talk to anybody,” Hodge says, while standing near her floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking historic Sundance Square. Historic because, as legend has it, Butch Cassidy and side-kick The Sundance Kid frequented the local taverns of the area back when the west really was wild. Today the area bustles day and night.

How the Transformation Began
Although urban living is in full swing in Fort Worth, this way of life is still in its infancy here. Ten years ago, only a few downtown loft apartments existed. Aging and abandoned buildings were seen as eyesores. The central business district was strictly for business, and 5 o’clock signaled a daily mass exodus from downtown. Those who did hang around hit happy hour in a handful of restaurants and bars before heading home to the suburbs. It took a tornado to start the whirlwind of development that transformed downtown Cowtown.

It was May of 2000 when a dark fist of fury reached from the sky and dealt Fort Worth a near knock-out punch. The tornado raked across downtown leaving a path of broken glass, twisted steel and shattered businesses. The 37-story Bank One tower was seen as a total loss. People talked of it being unsalvageable and said the only thing to do was bring the building down. But real estate developers and investors saw the building as an opportunity, and downtown’s monolithic centerpiece, “The Tower,” became the first to welcome a new generation of urbanites.

When it comes to re-inventing a city, it takes more than people with vision. It takes people with a sense of timing, too. When the Tower became available as a residence in 2004, it quickly sold out and the race was on to meet a new demand for urban living.

The Tower’s success started a residential building and renovation boom still spreading like a range fire. With more than 3,000 units occupied and 800 new units currently under construction, Fort Worth seems immune to the woes of the mortgage and housing market. Real estate salesman and urban living specialist Shad Green says housing may be slumping in the rest of the country, but in downtown Fort Worth, it’s back to the boom days.

“Here in Texas we are not part of that housing market bubble. Our homes are still appreciating. Our homes are maintaining their value. Downtown they are appreciating. But that is not what the media tells you. So, I spend a lot of time educating our buyers on what’s actually taking place,” Green says.

The high-rise housing boom is not just confined to downtown. Renovated department stores, utility buildings and warehouses surrounding downtown are becoming fashionable as well. With up-and-coming areas like Near South, West 7th, The Cultural District, Oleander Walkway, Uptown and The Hospital District, Fort Worth has its own Monopoly board list of catchy neighborhood names.

Make no mistake, all of this new-found style and convenience comes at a price. On average, the cost of downtown property hovers around $236 a square foot. The average sale is $319,000. A top-floor penthouse can run $1.5 million.

Part of the funds fueling these sales comes from deep down in the Texas soil. Shad Green says the natural gas squeezed from recently discovered Barnett Shale gas field in north Texas is in large part making it all possible. “The natural gas industry is pouring not millions, but billions into the Fort Worth economy. It’s not unusual to have people come down here and pay cash for a $350,000 unit because they work in the oil and gas business.”

As downtown Fort Worth changes, the needs of the people change, too. Upscale residents require upscale service, and at least one enterprising entrepreneur has built a business taking care of life’s little tasks. She calls herself a personal assistant and lifestyle maintainer. That means Lareese Pike and her staff remain on call 24/7 for pretty much anything her clients require. “People give me their to-do list, and I get it done,” Pike says. “It can be as small as a prescription errand run, or I can help them coordinate a huge [special] event.”

Pike points out that urban living in Fort Worth still doesn’t quite compare to living in a true inner-city. It is one environment inside of another; an escape from the urban concrete lies at the edge of downtown. “Honestly, you can live downtown and have an urban lifestyle not a lot unlike living in Chicago or New York,” Pike says. “But when it comes down to it, you are still just a few minutes away from a big field of grass somewhere.”

Keeping Fort Worth Character
Even though sleepy Fort Worth is coming of age, Shad Green says there will always be a part of Cowtown hiding in the shadows of the high-rise condominiums.

“We like space, but we like convenience. Living down here is all about lifestyle,” Shad says. Yet Green insists that Fort Worth does not want to become the sprawling metropolis found in the county directly to the east. Yes, even when it comes to the style of downtown urban living, the Dallas/Fort Worth rivalry lives. “[Fort Worth] is much less pretentious,” Green says. “It’s much more genuine. The people are friendlier. It still has the charm of a small western town, but all the modern conveniences and culture of an urban lifestyle.”

There’s a joke that has gone around Fort Worth for years that goes something like this: Fort Worth has one thing Dallas will never have—a major metropolitan area thirty miles away! Little by little, that’s starting to change.