The ultimate compliment Carl Anderson hopes to receive about his $1.7 billion Westside Village development is that no one remembers he built it.
Not because it failed, but because it succeeded so completely that, one ordinary Tuesday afternoon a generation from now, Fort Worth residents will simply meet for lunch, walk along the Trinity River, or grab a beer without giving a second thought to the people who transformed an industrial corridor into a neighborhood.
That’s the paradox driving one of the city’s most ambitious developments: The builder hoping history forgets the building.
“Nobody stands in a great neighborhood and says, ‘What a well-executed mixed-use project.’ They say, ‘Let’s meet on that block.’ We’d like people to bring their kids to the river, go on first dates here, walk to work, and have no idea that any of it was once a debate about parking ratios and utility lines…