NEWS RELEASES

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
June 24, 2005
By Sandra Baker

Developers start Trinity Bluff apartments

Developers of Trinity Bluff on the north end of downtown realized their dream of five years Thursday, when the first spade of dirt was turned to launch construction on a four-story apartment building.
In the first piece of a $350 million project, Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. will build 304 luxury apartments on Bluff Street, between Grove and Cummings streets, on a prime location in the 30-acre development high above the Trinity River.

Other phases of the project continue to evolve. Developers said Thursday that they are considering adding a 20-story condo tower, a high-end hotel and shops.

"We'll do whatever the market will say is the right thing to do," said Tom Struhs, who is developing the project with his wife, Elizabeth Falconer, and Rudy Renda.

More than 100 business and community leaders gathered at the site for a groundbreaking ceremony.

Lincoln at Trinity Bluff will consist of one building wrapped around a parking garage that lets residents park on the same floor as their apartments. The building, with a largely brick exterior, was designed with a "mercantile style" of architecture to blend with the many brick buildings downtown.

Seventy percent of the units will be studio or one-bedroom apartments, with an average size of about 880 square feet and priced at $1,100 a month.

Construction will start in earnest in early August, with the first units available for lease by fall of next year, said Jeff Courtwright, a senior vice president at Lincoln. The apartments are slated to be completed by the end of 2006.

"Any real good downtown project takes time to put together," Courtwright said. "We want to make it the place it should be."

Courtwright said Lincoln Property is in early talks with the developers on a second phase that will include apartments and condos. They would be farther north on Samuels Avenue, near Pioneers Rest cemetery, in an area now being referred to as UpTown.

City Homes of Fort Worth has also bought lots within the development and will build 40 town houses near Lincoln Property's project.

Preston Carter, a real estate broker with the exclusive listing on Trinity Bluff, said he is in talks with high-end hoteliers and anticipates the development being built out in about five years.

After scouting the market several years ago, Struhs and his partners quietly started buying land and run-down houses in the historic Samuels Avenue neighborhood, which dates to the late 1800s and where some of the city's early leaders once lived.

Years of neglect had taken its toll, and many of the century-old homes were in disrepair.

Now the area is highly sought-after again. Tarrant County College considered it before opting to build its $135 million downtown campus spanning the river, with part below Trinity Bluff.

It took the developers a couple of years to acquire the properties needed for Trinity Bluff, and a good deal of time was spent putting plans together and updating infrastructure before construction could begin.

The area now has new streets, sewers and water mains, and soon the electric and cable lines will be buried.

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief said Thursday that Trinity Bluff is setting a "strong, positive tone" for the city's growth, as well as providing "a new way to look at our downtown."

Fort Worth's population has increased 14 percent in five years, necessitating projects like Trinity Bluff, he said.