Tax Credit Program Highlight: Hunter Plaza Apartments

Fort Worth, Tarrant County

1951

Designation	Listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places.
Historic Use	Apartments
Current Use	Mixed-income apartments
Total Rehabilitation Cost	$30,963,801
Qualified Rehabilitation Expenses	$20,400,839
Date Certified	July 14, 2017
	Certified for state and federal credits.

History

The Hunter Plaza Apartments were originally constructed as the Fortune Arms Apartments, the first multi-family residential building in downtown Fort Worth. The building is also significant as an early, post-World War II interpretation of the Modern Movement within the city. The Fortune Arms was notable not only for its design, but also its function—targeting singles or childless couples, with many conveniences provided in the ground floor retail spaces, where residents could even buy pre-cooked dinners. Unfortunately, the development was not successful in the long-term, and by 1967 the building had come into the ownership of the Fort Worth Housing Authority (FWHA), which converted it into senior housing.

Rehabilitation Project

The FWHA operated the building as low-income housing until health and safety concerns forced a closure in 2010. This created the opportunity to rehabilitate the entire building, after several years of planning. The new project was a whole-building rehabilitation, including masonry and structural repairs on the exterior, conversion of the first floor from FWHA offices back to leasable retail spaces, and reconfiguring and upgrading all apartments. Individual apartments were enlarged, reducing the overall number of units in the building, while retaining the historic corridors and elevator lobbies on each floor. A new parking garage was also constructed, placed sensitively behind the historic building.