Back on the Boulevard

New residential developments have sparked re-emergence of Camp Bowie as retail hub

By Sandra Baker
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH -- For more than four decades, customers wanting to chow down on a juicy Kincaid's hamburger had to do so before the Camp Bowie grill closed at 6 p.m.

That was until a month ago, when Kincaid's owners decided to stay open two hours later.

"The customers were the reason we did it," said Morris Gardner, Kincaid's general manager.

The change in Kincaid's hours points to changes along the 9-mile stretch of Camp Bowie Boulevard from University Drive, near downtown, to Loop 820.

Camp Bowie Boulevard, once the city's premier shopping corridor, is beginning to re-emerge as a retail hub for the city. Shopping centers are being refurbished and leased quickly at higher rents. New developers are buying in.

The sprucing up of Camp Bowie comes as new developments are moving the edge of downtown closer to the street's beginning at the six- point intersection with University Drive, West Seventh Street and Bailey Avenue in the cultural district.

Pier 1's new headquarters, the redevelopment of the former Montgomery Ward, and several apartment and commercial developments along Seventh make it more possible for Camp Bowie to play the role of the uptown shopping area that Fort Worth has lacked.

Farther southwest, three residential developments are under construction in the Ridglea neighborhood, showing the heightened interest in turning sections of Camp Bowie into urban villages.

"People don't realize there is so much development going on," said Brandy O'Quinn, president of Historic Camp Bowie, a nonprofit group established four years ago to oversee the corridor's development direction.

The three residential developments are on Westridge Avenue, on an infill lot that was once planned as the site for a high-rise office tower. Instead, the land was sold to three developers to help boost the number of people living close to Camp Bowie.

Boulevard Builders in Dallas is in the midst of building Ridglea Place, a condominium development that plans 55 brownstones for the area. Sixteen residences are completed, and seven have sold. The two- and three-story condos start at $190,000.

Kyle Lovelady, a partner in Boulevard Builders, said the property was a prime location for a residential project. To spur sales, a five-year tax abatement that the project received is being passed along, saving home buyers between $100 and $140 a month.

"We try to position our properties near entertainment and employment centers," Lovelady said. "We also look for niches where other new construction is limited."

Garland-based North America Partners Development Co. has started construction on a 244-unit luxury apartment community called Ridglea View that should be ready by July, and the 253-unit Alta Ridglea, a recently completed apartment community, is 84 percent leased.

John Hilz, a partner in North America Partners, said that when the land went on the market, his group acted fast. The group would have liked to build a community with more than 350 units because demand is so strong, he said. "The depth of the market is superb," Hilz said.

This residential push is exactly what Camp Bowie retailers want to see, real estate experts say.

Rodger Chieffalo, with Chieffalo Realty, who has negotiated several land sales and continues to be a top leasing broker along Camp Bowie, said the activity along the boulevard is part of a larger, national trend of retailers and residents wanting to move back into urban areas.

The west side of Fort Worth has some of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods and has been a solid residential market for existing homes, drawing on the generations of families that founded the neighborhoods and continue to live there.

But national retailers have long wondered whether they would be able to make it on Camp Bowie, Chieffalo said.

To accommodate some of those retailers, University Park Village was built. And seeing the success of that center, the Chapel Hill Shopping Center was built, Chieffalo said.

Now, it's time for Camp Bowie to get back in the mix. Fortunately, many of the older, quaint buildings along the boulevard have survived and are being redeveloped, he said.

As those stores were closing, shopping centers and malls sprang up in the suburban communities nearer Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, in Grapevine, Southlake, Hurst and Arlington.

But that tide has also turned.

"An odd thing has happened," Chieffalo said. "All through the '70s and all through the '80s, even in the '90s, Fort Worth was the last place retailers would come.

"Fort Worth is now a market for high-end retailers. Camp Bowie is going to get their share of those tenants."

The opportunity for many of those retailers is coming with the redevelopment of the former Ridglea Center shopping area at 6323 and 6333 Camp Bowie into The Village at Camp Bowie. The center was developed between the 1940s and 1960s.

O'Quinn said the sale of that property and its redevelopment mean a great deal for future development to the west of the center. Camp Bowie is anchored on the east by world-class museums, and there's no reason museum visitors shouldn't travel a little farther west to shop and eat, she said.

"It's a huge injection," O'Quinn said of The Village at Camp Bowie. "If that property hadn't turned, it would not change this area so dramatically."

Trophy Investments in Dallas is completely redeveloping 282,125 square feet of retail space, giving it a different look and feel, including adding an outdoor plaza where shoppers can sit, relax and grab a bite to eat. Construction is scheduled to be finished in January.

Lynn Dowdle, vice president with Staubach Co.'s retail division, who is handling leasing at the center, declined to say what retailers are going into the center, but he said the project is being done at "the perfect time" and will be "absolutely unique."

"West Fort Worth has needed a really exciting and vital center for retail and restaurants," Dowdle said. "The market is calling for that kind of project. Leasing has been going great since the renovations started."

If lease rates are any indication, Camp Bowie has grown in demand.

Four years ago, lease rates ranged from $7 to $9 a square foot, and landlords paid for such items as taxes and insurance. Today, tenants are paying those expenses and about $14 a square foot in rent.

While that represents a healthy increase, it is still a good deal compared with other retail hubs. Prime shopping centers in Arlington and Southlake start at $20 a square foot, for example. Downtown Fort Worth averages $15 to $20 a square foot.

"Camp Bowie is still a great bargain, even though rents have gone up," Chieffalo said. "It's still way below counterparts in other parts of the country. No one is being run off because of the rents."

Historic Camp Bowie, too, has been spearheading a makeover for Camp Bowie the past few years, planting more than 80 trees, paying attention to other landscaping needs and bringing back the red brick road that is Camp Bowie's hallmark. Reconstruction of the red brick street will be completed a year from now, O'Quinn said.

"We believe Camp Bowie has the potential to become one of those great streets of the U.S. that people travel to and talk about how they visited Camp Bowie Boulevard," O'Quinn said.

Historic Camp Bowie, which hired McCormick Co. advertising agency in Fort Worth, is prepared to launch a marketing and advertising campaign next month with the tagline, "It's All on the Boulevard."

O'Quinn said the idea behind the campaign is to focus on the myriad merchants and businesses along Camp Bowie.

Historic Camp Bowie has also received a grant from the North Central Texas Council of Governments to create a pedestrian-oriented development in Ridglea.

O'Quinn said the $380,000 grant will be used to build sidewalks and crosswalks to make walking from the new residential developments and the Ridglea neighborhood easier along the retail stretch that includes The Village at Camp Bowie.

"We're hoping to create connectivity of the people to the retail so they don't have to get in their cars and drive," she said.

Although there are many projects on the drawing board and still more work to do to improve the appearance of Camp Bowie, all involved are confident that the street will re-emerge as a premier area of Fort Worth.

"By and large, this entire shopping market is on an upward trend, and Camp Bowie is changing for the better, more in the last three years than in the prior 15 years," Chieffalo said. "The best is yet to come in the tenants, in the rents and the quality of the developments."

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