Fort Worth Drive-In

Has everybody talking. 

Durango does it again.  YOU don't want to miss it, or the comments.

Yes. That sounds like a good plan, lease land to a startup business starting up a new business they've not started up before. Sounds like a recipe for success. Sort of like building the world's premiere wakeboard park where it can get wiped out by a flood.

The TRV Boondoggle Drive-In propaganda promoters are saying they anticipate around 300,000 TRVBDIT (Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Drive-In Theater) movie goers a year.

That works out to about 822 paying customers a day.

That sounds believable. Sort of like how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and its propaganda co-horts claimed 7 to 8 million visitors a year to the Fort Worth Cabela's sporting goods store would make Cabela's the top tourist attraction in Texas. With apparently no one doing the math to see how unlikely was a daily average of around 22,000 visitors to a sporting goods store.

Three screens with up to 500 cars each? That'd be 1,500 cars running their A/Cs to keep cool on a HOT Texas summer night. That does not sound very eco-friendly to me.

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The Latest in Flood Control

A drive-in.  On a river full of feces.

So far the Trinity River Vision flood control pork project has produced a wakeboard park (which flooded), Rockin' on the River (where you float in said feces filled river), a risk free taxpayer funded restaurant in the flood path of said river (built specifically for celebrity chef Tim Love), and a newly created LLC named after said project, purchased the Fort Worth Cats bankrupt baseball team, and now a drive-in theater in Fort Worth.

What does any of that have to do with flood control??    

An article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram actually makes some interesting points.  Not necessarily about the billion dollar, completely taxpayer funded, without a vote, earmarked, eminent domain, nepotism-laden, "flood control" project known as the Trinity River Vision, but interesting, just the same. 

The Tarrant Regional Water District next week will consider entering into a lease with Dallas-based Coyote Theaters for a drive-in theater on vacant land near LaGrave Field.

The drive-in would be there for about 10 years, potentially drawing 300,000 patrons a year to Trinity Uptown. It would also net the water district about $1.7 million in rent, according to information filed with the district.

The drive-in would be called Coyote Theater in Trinity Uptown and would be on part of the 34 acres that the water district bought in 2010 from LaGrave Field owner Carl Bell. The site is near North Calhoun and Northeast Fifth streets, north of downtown Fort Worth.

J.D. Granger, Trinity River development director for the water district, could not be reached for comment Friday. The district is scheduled to consider the proposal Tuesday.

Not much is known about Coyote Theaters, but the Fort Worth site will apparently be its first location. The company does not have a listed phone number.

Coyote Theaters filed incorporation papers with the Texas secretary of state's office Aug. 2 and lists its management as Todd Minnis, Brady Wood, Scott Wilson and Glenn Solomon.

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When it rains, Haltom City floods

The article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram says "Fossil Creek" six times.  It never specifies WHICH Fossil Creek, but you get the hint.

About 6:30 a.m., Haltom City shut down one side of the crossing over Fossil Creek, where Fred Napp, deputy fire chief and fire marshal, said high-water problems are common.

Even before they were finished there, the rescuers were called to another Fossil Creek crossing, Napp said.

“While we were there, we were dispatched to a second incident on Minnis Drive just south of Airport Freeway,” he said. “It was where Fossil Creek got out of its banks again. There were three vehicles involved.”

Napp said that Fossil Creek looked more like a river Wednesday morning.

“The channel got to between 40 and 50 feet deep where they’ve done some flood-control work,” he said. “It was all the way up to the rim of the channel and above where we were.”

Glenview Drive over Fossil Creek is the No. 1 spot for flooding in Haltom City, Napp said.

Lots of stuff under water in Haltom City, including gas drilling equipment in the park next to the 820 construction.

Seems like it has flooded there before......

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Wanna Wakeboard?

The Cowtown Wakeboard park, part of the Trinity River Vision "flood" control project in Fort Worth, failed to save anyone from flooding today.  Apparently, it couldn't even save itself.

The Trinity River took back the wakeboard park.  And left a sign of just how clean the river is.  Remember that when they invite you to Tube the Trinity during the Rockin' the River events brought to you by the Trinity River Vision Authority and the Tarrant Regional Water District.

With all the flooding footage today, WHY did you not see any of the wakeboard park?  Ask.

While you're at it, ask what it cost YOU and what it's going to cost YOU to repair it.  After all, it's YOUR money.

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Front page "news"?

By the time the Fort Worth Star-Telegram article about the Trinity River Tim Love Woodshed restaurant appeared on the front page, it already had 50+ comments online.

So what are THE PEOPLE saying about YOUR elected officials allowing their unelected friends and family to gamble with YOUR money?

We received a couple of questions such as, How do you agree "in principle" to make a building smaller than it is?  And how much did Granger and Love drink that neither of them know WHO asked WHO?  WHY did it take the paper till now to start asking questions? 

Landslide left a comment here.

And the comments keep pouring in on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, when it rains it pours.

So I suppose we have to assume this is a sweetheart deal courtesy of Kay Granger by way of Granger Junior? Business as usual for those two and for Fort Worth insiders.

I think the celebrity title may have been added by the S-T writers as window dressing- designed to put lip stick on a pig and sell it to us as a great idea.

It kind of shows who really pull the strings at the S-T.

Kay Granger decries crony capitalism and the evil and dangers of the government helping citizens with anything including healthcare for children (She has voted against it everytime). But then she appoints her son to a 6 figure job for which he has no qualifications and then her son decides to appropriate $1 million dollars of taxpayer dollars to a very wealthy businessman just because. If that isn't corporate welfare for the very rich and crony capitalism than somebody tell me what it is. Who elected Kay Granger's son JD to hand out my tax dollars to his buddies. (other than his mother)

This is just the beginning of the Trinity River flood control project turned private development boondoggle.  After the by-pass channel is cut and the people of Fort Worth are all assured of being flood-free, the leeves along the river are scheduled to be leveled.  What's the Tarrant Regional Water District going to do with all that nice new river edge real estate they own or control?!  Figure it out.

This is an outrage to every person that pays taxes. It is bad enough that Granger was given this job by his mother despite the fact that he had absolutely no experience. He makes a huge 6 figure salary, (your taxes) to transfer your hard earned tax payer money to his mothers political cronies. This whole "Vision" is nothing more than very rich people appropriating the working mans tax dollars for their own gain. They support corrupt politicians like Kay Granger that will do anything to keep her job and get one for her unqualified son. We have the highest taxes in Texas right here in Fort Worth and as long as every "chosen" one can dip their hand in for a scoop of tax payer money it is going to stay that way.

This is the first of many shady transactions involving the Trinity boondoogle.

Citizens have already seen that this sweetheart deal short changes the tax system that was supposed to help the city.

I, like an earlier commenter, smell a rat in the kitchen

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Rumor has it....

Since May, we've been posting about the long rumored Tim Love Woodshed restaurant on the banks of the Trinity River.  As we told you recently, nine times out of ten, rumors in Cowtown usually turn out to be true.  Lots of people have been asking questions about the Woodshed for awhile now, seems our "news" finally decided to play too.

Read the article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, don't miss the comments from THE PEOPLE.  Seems we aren't the only ones who suspect WHO's next. 

I suspect one day we'll turn on the news and see the video of the FBI raid on their offices, carting out box after box after box of documents not unlike what has been happening in Dallas with their crooked South Dallas politicians.

If the head of the Trinity River Vision Authority was hired without a proper job search, and the contractors and PR firms are too, what makes local restaurant owners think the River Shack would be any different?  Wake up, people.  No wonder Love didn't know how much it costs now to open a restaurant.  And don't forget, the former Gideon Toal who received many no bid TRV and Tarrant County contracts gave the Woodshed an award.  How cozy. 

Remember, this is the same water district that can't figure out how to supply us water for the future.  But they serve one hell of a barbeque, with a side of BS at no charge.

Without open bidding, the Trinity River Vision Authority signed a 10-year lease with Tim Love and spent $970,000 building a restaurant structure at the most popular riverbank trailhead, hoping that the celebrity chef's Woodshed Smokehouse will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in a profit-sharing rent arrangement.

Unlike municipal lease deals, those offered by water districts do not require competitive bidding under Texas law, said Anthony Magee, a Dallas attorney with Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail Shank who is familiar with such issues.

"Gosh, I wish we had an opportunity to bid on this," said Shannon Wynne, CEO of Dallas-based 8.0 Management, which operates three Fort Worth restaurants, Flying Saucer, Flying Fish and the downtown open-air 8.0. "I had been looking up and down the river for a location like that for 18 months.

"I don't know how Tim got the call, but he's a lucky guy to get it," Wynne said. "We weren't asked and so I was upset. I asked J.D., 'Who did you all ask?'"

"I think there would be other people interested if they had known about it," said Shaw, who is on the board of the state restaurant owners association. "I just can't believe Tim was the only one interested. Who did [Granger] approach? Did he send out letters? Did he just sit in a bar and talk about that?"

Neither Love nor Granger recalls who approached whom first about the site.

Because of its location, on the bank of a narrow section of the Trinity River's Clear Fork, the site was extremely difficult to develop, and the Army Corps of Engineers made clear that it could only be rented, not sold, Granger said.

In the end, Granger said, he reviewed two proposals and selected Love's. One thing that the high-profile chef -- who owns Lonesome Dove, White Elephant Saloon and Love Shack -- could bring to the table is an ability to generate interest in North Texas and beyond, he said, noting that Love had mentioned the Woodshed on national television.

Last week, Love agreed in principle to cut back slightly on interior space so that the structure is small enough not to require ceiling sprinklers, said David Hall, the city's assistant director of planning and development. Originally, the leased premises measured 10,295 square feet of enclosed and unenclosed areas.

The lease agreement, made available to the Star-Telegram after a Texas Public Information Act request, has the Woodshed paying 6 percent on the first $500,000 of sales, 5 percent on the next $500,000, and then 4 percent on sales over $1,000,001.

"If it goes south, the tenant is in a better situation than the water district," he added. "It was stupid on the water district's part not to bid it out because I think they could have gotten a lot more favorable lease.

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