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The new City Hall is located at 100 Fort Worth Trail, Fort Worth. (Courtesy photo | Athenian Group)
” data-medium-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/DJI_0206-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/DJI_0206-scaled.jpg?fit=780%2C520&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button”>Construction on Fort Worth’s new City Hall is nearing completion, with a grand opening slated for early 2025.Athenian Group, which is managing the project on behalf of the city, has finished moving City Hall’s “core functions” into the new building, including offices for the mayor, City Council and city manager team as well as most departments and customer service-facing functions. Project manager Tanyan Farley said the successful transition of city leadership signifies that the former Pier 1 headquarters is now a “true City Hall.” “For all intents and purposes, ‘future City Hall’ is now ‘new City Hall,’ and we’ve been referring to it as such, which is great,” Farley said. Fort Worth purchased the Pier 1 tower in 2021 with an estimated price tag of $230.5 million. City officials initially planned to open the new City Hall for business in late 2023, but a delay in the permitting process stalled construction. Construction on the new City Hall is expected to be complete in early 2025. (Courtesy video | Athenian Group)Now, construction is back on track, and Farley expects renovations on the building’s exterior to be complete by the end of September or early October. By that point, he projects about 600 people will work in the building daily. In August, the city opened a one-stop customer service center, where residents can access services such as water bill payment. The center, located on the building’s fifth floor, is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Construction on the new council chambers, which will be in a new building adjacent to the Pier 1 tower, began in summer 2023 and is on track to be completed in early 2025. The chambers are connected to the tower on three floors, and Farley said construction on the connections should be finished by late September. At that point, most of the chamber’s exterior work will be complete, but fine-tuning the interior details will take several more months, Farley said. He projected that City Council members will host their first meeting in the new chambers in March 2025.“As you drive by that building, it’s going to look more and more done over the coming months, and it’s going to start to feel like, ‘why are we not moved in yet?’” Farley said. “But there’s a lot of work that happens on the inside … There’s a lot of audiovisual and technology and security work that needs to be put in that’s really hard to see from the outside.”Once complete, the new City Hall will offer free parking for employees and visitors, Farley said. Parking near the old downtown City Hall, located at 200 Texas St., is free only after 6 p.m., though Fort Worth officials eliminated visitor parking fees during morning council meetings in early 2023. Construction on the parking garage is nearly done, and Farley expects most levels to be open by the end of 2024. Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org or @bycecilialenzen. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.