Vote on Approval of New $450 Million Will Rogers Arena in Fort Worth Will Take Place in November

The Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday voted to send a proposal for building a $450 million, 14,000-seat multipurpose arena in the Cultural District to the voters on November 4th.

The proposed new arena at the Will Rogers Memorial Center and related development would cost about $450 million, and a nonprofit that has long benefited the show complex has committed to raise half that.

Event Facilities Fort Worth, the nonprofit, would pick up any overrun beyond the city staff’s $450 million estimate, “thereby capping the public sector participation at $225 million,” Fort Worth investor Ed Bass, the Event Facilities chairman, said in a letter to Mayor Betsy Price and City Council members.

City and business leaders have long championed a new Will Rogers arena to capture business the city has lost due to its small or outmoded facilities or doesn’t get now. It would also become a new rodeo arena during the Fort Worth Stock Show.

The city staff on Aug. 5 put a $450 million preliminary estimate on the cost of the project, which would include a $197 million arena. The remainder of the project cost would be in surrounding development, including a parking structure, $29 million; livestock building, $20 million; plaza, $17 million; site work, $38 million; public art piece, $27 million; land acquisition, $27 million; professional services, $42 million; contingency and marketing, $37 million, and finance costs, $15 million.

The city’s share of the expense would come from three sources: more than $125 million in projected growth in hotel, sales, and mixed-use beverage taxes from a short radius around Will Rogers; $52 million-$82 million in user taxes; and $10 million in city and county expenditures that have already been made.

Incremental growth in state of Texas hotel, sales, and mixed beverage taxes in the area around Will Rogers are already being set aside to help pay for the arena, under a City Council vote last year and $762,000 is already in escrow.

The new arena would be built at the southeast corner of Harley Avenue and Gendy Street on the south side of the Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Established in Fort Worth in 1936 to house events near downtown and in the Cultural District, the Will Rogers Memorial Center attracts more than two million visitors a year. It is host to an extensive variety of cultural, educational, recreational and sporting events and has become a premier destination for national and international equestrian events. www.willrogersmemorialcenter.com.