Rumors

As they usually do in Fort Worth, the rumors concerning parking at Montgomery Plaza this weekend turned out to be true.  Yes, the same Plaza with foreclosed units and money problems.

Customers were being towed left and right. If you visited an establishment and your car was towed, would you return?

The Fort Worth Weekly has the scoop.  It ain't pretty.  And it ain't the first time for parking troubles on West 7th.  WHAT company was doing the towing?  WHO initiated the "spotter" and the towing?  How did the "spotter" know WHO was visiting WHAT establishment?  Inquiring minds want to know. 

On Friday and Saturday nights, sources say, more than 100 cars were towed from Montgomery Plaza’s parking lot for illegal parking.

Keely witnessed most of the action on Friday and nearly all of the action on Saturday. A “spotter,” Keely said, was patrolling the plaza’s parking lot, stealthily watching for violators and photographing their vehicles’ license plate numbers. A fleet of about a half-dozen tow-trucks, Keely estimated, was at the spotter’s call. The wreckers, said Eric Tschetter, owner of The Pour House on West 7th Street, “would pull [illegally parked] cars two wheels up, drive a block away, and then put them up on the truck. I mean, people had their parking breaks on. Cars were screeching all the way down the street. It was not a pretty sight.”

At one point, Keely confronted a wrecker. “I told him, ‘You’re raping people for three-hundred bucks,’ ” Keely said. “He said, ‘No, it’s actually $293.30.’ ”

Jimmy Moore, owner of the 7th Haven on West 7th Street, witnessed a tow-truck driver employing a “Slim Jim” to break into a car to release the parking break. “I called him out, and he said it was perfectly legal,” Moore recalled. “The car turned out to belong to the mom of Girl Scouts selling cookies on my back deck.”

Even Montgomery Plaza customers weren’t safe. Keely said that a couple of his customers who had visited establishments located in the plaza earlier in the evening were victimized by the tow-trucks later.

UPDATES :  Thanks to THE PEOPLE, the Fort Worth Weekly now has pictures of the wrecker drivers on their site.
And Facebook now has a boycott Montgomery Plaza page. 

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Free parking

Yeah, right.  This is Fort Worth.

Those being affected by the parking fees have come up with alternate plans.  We love when the citizens work together.

Now, if the City will listen.

Read about it in the Fort Worth Business Press.

Some Fort Worth merchants have proposed their own parking strategy as city officials contemplate raising rates in one of Cowtown’s busiest tourist districts.

“What we’ve noticed is our patronage has dropped considerably,” said Carlo Capua, general manager of Z’s Cafe, one of several tenants at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center who are alarmed by declining numbers of customers and determined to do something about it.

And that could mean maximum parking rates as high as $8, a prospect that several businesses say would scare away customers who are already reluctant to park in the vicinity due to parking fees. Parking was free in and around the Will Rogers complex until the Western Center parking garage opened. Parking fees were implemented to help pay its debt service.

But at least one private exhibitor remains skeptical.

“The city will see an even further drop in cars dropping into the district for $8, so the plan to pay for the garage will never work,” said Jan Orr-Harter, show director with the Dolly Johnson Antique & Art Show.

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Councils say the darndest things...

Critics have said for years, if it looks likes a tax, it's a tax.  Regardless if you call it a fee.

Now, some council members have caught up to saying the same thing. 

Some council members are asking how we got here.  We have been asking them the same thing for years, remember they have been driving the bus.

Critics have long said our infrastructure needs are being ignored.  Is the Fort Worth council finally waking up as it continues to crumble around them?

Critics have also said we shouldn't build things we couldn't pay for.  Sounds simple, right?  Council members have now pushed the Cultural District parking garage hike off till next year. 

Read about all of it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  YOU can't afford not to.

Council members said officials clearly need to find a way to fund all of the city's growing infrastructure needs, but they can't consider any new fees until the city delivers on road projects that are years behind schedule.

Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks said the transportation fee, which would have added $5.90 to a single-family residence's monthly water bill, would be another form of taxation. "We're not calling it a tax, but it is," Hicks said.

Almost all the council members agreed on setting aside the fee, but Sal Espino said the council must have "a frank discussion on how we got here." He said the city cannot continue to ignore its projected 10-year transportation funding gap of $1 billion.

"We are in an infrastructure crisis in our city," Espino said.

Mayor Betsy Price said the fee can be shelved for now and reconsidered again if the city gets its expenses under control and finishes the delayed road projects that have been promised for years.

"It is time to stop the excuses and build the road," Councilman Jungus Jordan said.

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New 7th Street Gang?

The Fort Worth Weekly does a good job shining the light on some of the issues 7th street and the surrounding neighborhoods face.  

We've had the same parking problems there.  If you want to visit those businesses in the area that are growing without the help of the NCTCOG or tax abatement's, you'll have to find somewhere to park.  Those garages on Morton Street aren't for the Morton Street customers...

By the way, where does the COG get all this grant money?  WHO approves what it is spent on?

Afterward, the group spent about 45 minutes at Capital Bar, listening to music and having a few drinks. When they went back to the garage, the car was gone.

“When we asked where our car was, the security guard said he saw us going into Capital Bar right after we parked,” Turner said. “But then we told him we were at Delaney’s. He said ‘You didn’t go there.’ We showed him the receipt from Delaney’s, and he still said we had violated their policy. He was extremely rude.”

Turner and her husband saw a Fort Worth Police patrol car on the street and asked for help. The officers intervened and convinced the security guard that he’d had the car towed illegally and should get it back for the Turners. The security guard agreed, and the towing charges were dropped. But the Turners had to pick up the car at a lot in east Fort Worth. The whole ordeal took about two hours, she said.

“I was seven months pregnant at the time, and here I am traipsing through a tow yard in the dark to get my car,” Sarah Turner said. “My husband and I have decided we won’t go to any restaurant or bar in the development because of what happened.”

State and federal public funding comes from “sustainability grants” through the North Central Texas Council of Governments. To qualify, projects must include higher-density housing and mixed-use retail, which in turn is expected to improve pedestrian mobility and get cars off the road.

So7 received $4.3 million from NCTCOG for construction of Museum Way for better access from West 7th, plus sidewalk improvements. Of that, $1.7 million is paying for a pedestrian bridge now being built over the Trinity River just to the east.

Museum Place received $2.4 million from NCTCOG for the reconstruction of West 7th Street in front of its property, along with streetscape improvements. The development also earned $192,000 in city tax abatements for 2011 on its completed first phase, the eight-story office/condo tower and the new 7-Eleven store with five housing units above it. The next phase, involving the apartment complex, must be finished by the end of 2012 to meet the abatement agreement terms, and Pettigrew said he expects to make that deadline. However, phases three and four — which will include another apartment mixed-use development and a hotel — must be completed by the end of 2013, and that is unlikely.

“We will probably ask the city for an extension for those phases,” he said.

Fort Worth is providing help through two other programs, one involving grants to bridge funding gaps and ensure that projects get completed and the other involving enhanced infrastructure. In both, developers negotiate terms with the city, involving the number of jobs to be created, the percentage of work that will go to local firms, the amount of private money to be raised, and completion dates on various parts of the project.

Montgomery Plaza has a 21-year tax-abatement agreement covering all property and sales taxes. This year, those benefits will total $835,000. In addition, the development got $172,000 for the infrastructure improvements.

Cypress Equities negotiated a 15-year tax abatement on 75 percent of its property taxes but won’t realize any of those savings until the whole project is finished, by the end of the year.

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