July 7, 2006
New Post Office to Offer Unique Gateway into Museum Place Development
Fort Worth, Texas – The Museum Place Development Group (MPDG) announced today the location of a new, 6,000 square-foot post office that will serve as the gateway into the highly anticipated Museum Place development in Fort Worth’s world-renowned cultural district. Groundbreaking on the new post office is expected within the next several months, with construction scheduled for six-to-eight months.
The post office, a full retail service center, will be located at the corner of Bailey Avenue and University Drive and will be accessible from 6th Street, off Bailey. MPDG worked in conjunction with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to determine the best location for a branch in the area and jointly decided on the Bailey/University location. Upon completion, the post office branch will move from its current location at Arch Adams and 7th Street.
Generous donations from local foundations funded the enhanced architectural elements of the building, done by the Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc., of Philadelphia. The design work will include a mural of the West Texas sky on the outside wall facing south and the north wall will be floor-to-ceiling glass. Just south of the building are steel billboards beams bent during the 2000 tornado that will serve as an art piece, set in a public plaza. Formal USPS approval of the building plans is expected soon. Hahnfield, Hoffer and Stanford, of Fort Worth, is the architect of record who will be completing the detailed construction drawings for the projects.
“This post office will serve as a unique gateway into our development, both in function and design,” said Richard Garvey, Museum Place Development Group co-developer and president. “We are very excited to have the opportunity to offer this post office to our neighbors and are thrilled to work with Venturi, Scott Brown on this project.”
Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates was founded by the husband and wife team of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. The company’s most recent projects include an addition to Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, the California Nanosystems Institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the Dumbarton Oaks Library in Washington, D.C.
“We have loved the problem of designing for a small but important public structure in a big Texan environment,” said Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. “The building must have civic scale, cultural relevance, local intimacy and visibility through the intersection at West 7th Street, Bailey Avenue and Camp Bowie Boulevard.”
When complete, Museum Place will be a pedestrian-friendly urban development, with public plazas, open spaces, abundant on-street parking and wide sidewalks lined with trees. Multiple restaurants, a boutique hotel and small cinema will help generate a lively street scene. Museum Place Development, Group, Ltd., developer of the project, is an affiliate of JaGee Holdings, LLP, a Fort Worth company that owns and manages more than one million square feet of retail and industrial real estate. Tony Landrum, president of TLCurban, a Fort Worth-based corporate and commercial real estate investment firm, is co-developer of the project.
For additional information about the United States Postal Service, please contact Stephen Seewoester, Public Information Officer, at (214) 819-8707 or .