243 replies to this topic

[McHand]

Where to begin.....

 

Honestly, I'd rather just see them put on some downtown concerts periodically like this one, than build a theme park.  Let the studio come if it needs to, but there is really nothing family friendly about sprawling out our region with an overpriced theme park.

[Dylan]

I gotta say, the more I read, the more this sounds like just a bunch of hype.

[mmmdan]

Yeah it was pretty weird downtown. I got stuck going thru there and you would have thought the Main Street Arts Festival was going on. They even had the Water Gardens closed with rent-a-cops at every entrance. Bizarre.

 

They had the Water Gardens blocked off because that is where they launched the fireworks.

[Volare]

Ahh, thanks for the update!

[cberen1]

Maybe it is just me but I get the impression that they seem like racist homophobes that want it to be 1960 again?

 

Apart from hiring African American entertainers for their launch party, what gives you the impression they're racists?

[Russ Graham]

So my lung collapsed and I have been in hospital. What announcements were made?

 

Sounds serious, hope you're doing okay!

[Austin55]

^ Yea thanks man, had a Spontaneous Pneumothorax, Mansfield Methodist has done a great job.

Really bummed I missed the event.

[John T Roberts]

Austin, I'm really sorry to hear that you have been hospitalized.  Please take care of yourself.

[dfwerdoc]

^ Yea thanks man, had a Spontaneous Pneumothorax, Mansfield Methodist has done a great job.

Really bummed I missed the event.

sounds like you're better and having a speedy recovery .... 

[renamerusk]

Maybe it is just me but I get the impression that they seem like racist homophobes that want it to be 1960 again?...

 

Racist, aka racism, is an extremely corrosive allegation which should never be leveled with ease, but rather with long and thoughtful consideration.  Many times it has the potential to ricochet.

 

My sense it that Dream Vision, as a concept, is rooted in a time period which is at least 60 years bygone and which will therefore find it difficult to be viable in what is now the second decade of the 21^st century and a more eclectic culture.

 

More telling to me was a reported statement that Dream Vision would hope to seek tax abatements.  Apparently, Fort Worth’s liberal record of providing corporate tax abatements has reached national proportions.  

 

 

"Austin55, do get well soon". -  Renamerusk

[RD Milhollin]

 

My sense it that Dream Vision, as a concept, is rooted in a time period which is at least 60 years bygone and which will therefore find it difficult to be viable in what is now the second decade of the 21^st century and a more eclectic culture.

 

More telling to me was a reported statement that Dream Vision would hope to seek tax abatements.  Apparently, Fort Worth’s liberal record of providing corporate tax abatements has reached national proportions.  

 

 

"Austin55, do get well soon". -  Renamerusk

 

 

I don't know about the dated nostalgia thing. I keep hearing several touch-words that are used by the far-right-religeous establishment as code for other things. Is there any relationship between this group and the "Focus on the Family" organization that borders on being a hate group? I don't see the racist aspect here, homophobes, anti-intellectuals and fascists came in all colors. I sincerely hope I am completely wrong in this suspicion, and that the Dream-Vision folks are just honestly interested in providing clean entertainment via mass-media and amusement parks; Nothing wrong with that. But if that is the case perhaps they should avoid using in their publicity pieces the sort of code-language phrases pioneered by the American Taliban. 

 

All in all, this thing appears to be thrown together at the last minute with a stitched-together business plan that doesn't seem to make much sense. Of course, I suppose Walt's original backers worried at times about what he was up to; and during his career he took some huge risks, some that paid off handsomely and became cultural icon, others that, well, win some and lose some. I keep hearing a little voice recalling saying "I knew Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a friend of mine. Sir, you are no Walt Disney".

 

I also smell a request for a tax incentive brewing. Funny though, that Motorola did not (yet) ask for one for their new plant at Alliance.

 

And get better quick Austin55.

[Fort Worthology]

This whole thing gives me the creeps.

[cberen1]

I keep hearing several touch-words that are used by the far-right-religeous establishment as code for other things. Is there any relationship between this group and the "Focus on the Family" organization that borders on being a hate group? I don't see the racist aspect here, homophobes, anti-intellectuals and fascists came in all colors. I sincerely hope I am completely wrong in this suspicion, and that the Dream-Vision folks are just honestly interested in providing clean entertainment via mass-media and amusement parks; Nothing wrong with that. But if that is the case perhaps they should avoid using in their publicity pieces the sort of code-language phrases pioneered by the American Taliban. 

 

Wow.  I've never heard the phrase "American Taliban" before.  Seems like kind of an unprovoked attack in an architecture forum, but what the heck.  We all enjoy the benefits of our first ammendment rights.  Radio shows and honor killings are almost the same thing afterall.

 

My mom has been a "Focus on the Family" listener for many, many years.  She, like all of us, is multi-faceted and therefore difficult to define as any one thing.  But I don't see hateful as one of her characteristics.  Like a lot of people of her generation, I think she finds homosexuality perplexing (I'm guessing this is the part of Focus on the Family you find concerning).  She just can't wrap her head around it.  But she is an artist and has had many gay friends over the years and her conservatism has never been an impedement their friendships. 

 

Like all of us, if her friends were limited to only those people with whom she agreed 100% on all issues, she would be terribly lonely.  With FOTF there are good things and bad things they are trying to promote.  There is a lot about FOTF that I don't agree with.  They are clearly a conservative outlier relative to the general public, but categorizing them as a hate group is a little excessive.  Maybe it's just not personal enough to me.  They're not trying to limit my lifestyle.  Then again, I see Barrack Obama and Nancy Pelosi as trying to destroy my lifestyle, and I don't think of them as a hate group, just terribly mis-guided.

[prideftw]

Lol, this is so funny to me seeing that the majority of people in this city are judgmental and more conservative than they are willing to except. I can't go anywhere in the city and not find gays being gawked at in a rude way and its funny how it is 2013 and white women still clench their purses every time they walk past a black man. LOL, it is the minority to be purely open-minded in this city and that is sad because if people would just stop being this way the city would be alot better in so many ways. I mean every big city has a gay-friend neighborhood close to downtown, but not Fort Worth, and just because a man does not dress or look a certain way does not mean he is a "thug" or poor, or what ever it is that most of the people think about people, lol.

[Austin55]

I think this conversation deserves it's own topic. It's very broad and covers a lot more than just DreamVision plans. 

Thanks for the well wishing everyone. I'm home now and doing better.

[John T Roberts]

Well, I kind of think we were starting to go off topic here.  Let's keep the discussion to the project and the celebration. 

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

I hate racism

[McHand]

We are going to need a thread to discussion DreamVision in general, as news of their plans comes out.

[johnfwd]

I'm really pleased to see Fort Worth will be host to a little bit of the "Hollywood glitz" that DreamVision will bring with its film production facilities. I remember how Dallas created the aura of being a film capital in the center of the country when TV productions like "Dallas" and films like "Ruby" (to name a few) were produced there, and there were glitzy entertainment venues like "Planet Hollywood" along with visitations by various movie celebrities and quasi-celebrity Dallas Cowboy players. Nothing against the Stockyards, Billy Bob's, fat stock show rodeos, and cultural museums, but our city could stand some of this type of glitz.

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Fort worth needs to get rid of the cowboy cowtown image....

[prideftw]

Fort worth needs to get rid of the cowboy cowtown image....

I totally agree with this statement. Fort Worth is way much more than that. We have a lot of different personalities in this city and they all need to be seen. That in my opinion, is what makes a city great

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

It's the old farts in the city... They wana keep it a country town... Ex. Changed the name from southwest parkway to chism trail.....Smh How corny is that one for ya//?

[renamerusk]

Fort worth needs to get rid of the cowboy cowtown image....

 

 

 

Fort worth needs to get rid of the cowboy cowtown image....

I totally agree with this statement. Fort Worth is way much more than that. We have a lot of different personalities in this city and they all need to be seen. That in my opinion, is what makes a city great

 

 

What would you replace it with?

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Anything but, cowtown...or boots or cattle or cowboy hats or steer or wranglers....that's so lame

[prideftw]

Something fun and hip that represents the city today and not the city of the past. I mean when you go west today you run into cities like Vegas and L.A, so Fort Worth should embrace this as well. I mean we have a lot in this city that no-one outside of Texas knows about and we should put it out there. Lets grow and have fun open up some clubs and major arenas for the masses, I mean when major western stars come to Texas they go to Dallas and that to me is not cool. plus we have major pop stars right from Tarrant County as well as major r&b stars and when they interview they never talk about Fort Worth. I bet if Fort Worth updated it's image Kelly Clarkson, Kirk Franklin( who grew up in Fort Worth), Jessica Simpson and others wouldn't be so fast to claim the big D all the time

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Fort worth spends all its money on law inforcement ... You need sports, singers,and rappers to get city known....fort worth is kind of a racist.republican city...Dallas is more like anything goes!!!

[prideftw]

Fort worth spends all its money on law inforcement ... You need sports, singers,and rappers to get city known....fort worth is kind of a racist.republican city...Dallas is more like anything goes!!!

I do agree with that. Fort Worth does still have a lot of racism, but that can change. I wouldn't say it is totally republican though. We need to get a group of young       ( 25-40) people together to invest and promote certain areas to make our own. Like i have said before most large cities have a neighborhood close to downtown that is very gay friendly. All big cities seem to have a large hiphop and pop area as well

[Jeriat]

 

Fort worth needs to get rid of the cowboy cowtown image....

I totally agree with this statement. Fort Worth is way much more than that. We have a lot of different personalities in this city and they all need to be seen. That in my opinion, is what makes a city great

 

I wouldn't say we need to TOTALLY get rid of it, since we seem to be the only major city in Texas that actually celebrates being in Texas.

But it should be toned down some and the other aspects of our city should be presented as well.

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Just saying..everytime there is an even in fort worth its either stock show, or some silly western museum....fort worth tries to only build up the nicest areas first..we just need more things to do here that's all I'm saying

[Volare]

Pretty sure the new Kimbell expansion will not have spurs on it, and it will be world class event when it opens later this year.

[RD Milhollin]

Probably have a longhorn grazing on the roof.

 

 

 

JUST KIDDIN!

[johnfwd]

Two points about this planned DreamVision amusement park in Fort Worth. One is that it will be the first permanent one for our city (the closest thing weve got is that annual midway during fat stock show week). The other point is that it may help break the regional stereotype of Arlington being the amusement center between Dallas and Fort Worth. Now if we could only have a major sports franchise

[hannerhan]

 

Fort worth spends all its money on law inforcement ... You need sports, singers,and rappers to get city known....fort worth is kind of a racist.republican city...Dallas is more like anything goes!!!

I do agree with that. Fort Worth does still have a lot of racism, but that can change. I wouldn't say it is totally republican though. We need to get a group of young       ( 25-40) people together to invest and promote certain areas to make our own. Like i have said before most large cities have a neighborhood close to downtown that is very gay friendly. All big cities seem to have a large hiphop and pop area as well

 

 

My guess is that if a bunch of gay people decide to move to a particular neighborhood in Fort Worth, you will get what you seek.  Fort Worth wasn't nicknamed Cowtown in order to encourage people to bring their cows here. 

[prideftw]

The older people will noT allow that. Every church in the city would protest, lol

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

That's the problem... All the old folks want the city to stay like it is... Chistmas lights on downtown buildings, Molly the trolly, changing the name from southwest parkway to chism trail....yikes! The city leaders don't like the cool new stuff....they prefer old... When you drive in Dallas on 75,635,or 35 north you feel like this makes fort worth feel tiny......

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

I lived in Dallas and I ran across plenty people who said they never been to fort worth..same on Arlington....allmost everyone on fort worth been to Dallas at least once......smh

[prideftw]

That's what I'm saying

[Jeriat]

Well... BE the change. 

Cities evolve. Fort Worth is no different. 

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Ijs something gets proposed and then poof!!! It's gone

[prideftw]

Cities do evolve, but it seems in my 27 years on earth Fort Worth has not changed much. I mean it took a tornado hitting down town to see any work done. I also know that the owners of some the gay bars in Fort Worth tried to get a gay friendly area developed near the southside and cities officials made it really hard to do and those plans stoped. Fort Worth is my home and I love it with all my heart, but please give me a reason NOT to go to Dallas.

[prideftw]

I am still pro Fort Worth though

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Closing in on 800k....get it together fort worth

[Dylan]

What's wrong with the western theme / image that Fort Worth has? That's part of what makes our city unique and interesting IMO. If y'all really don't like the western theme we have, why not move somewhere that has a theme / image y'all like?

 

That said, I would like our image to expand a little to represent how we are a major city and be known for other things besides just being a cow town.

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

Nobody wants to move.... Fort worth needs to be more modern in some areas....and ur response proves my point...when challenged the response is well if u don't like it move to another city....smh. everywhere I go people make fun of the stockyards and cowboy b.s. its lame..

[RD Milhollin]

I got tired of the Cowboy theme as the mainstay of "official" FW marketing efforts years ago, but that said, the roots of the city lay in that era, trail drives to oil boom. Luckily some of the physical relics from those times remain, including architecture, and not just individual buildings but whole districts in the case of the Stockyards. There is still a lot of restoration work to do there, but it would likely all be gone by now if creative minds had not found a way to make it a destination and not just a junky old part of town. So, KUDOS to those historical preservation folks and to the events, etc. that keep it alive and kickin'. BUT... there are already a lot of things outside the cowboys and cowtown box happening in Fort Worth. I would venture a guess  that if you mentioned the city in the company of intellectuals around the world the first association would be the Cliburn Competition, or perhaps the public art collections in our magnificent museums. The horsie shows are sort of elitist but they bring people to FW who might just as easily go to Vegas, OKC, or several other prominent show-and working horse -friendly cities, and they bring a LOT of money with them. FW is and has been an aviation center, although it is just beginning to celebrate that heritage with the slowly improving (and probably severely underfunded) aviation museum at Meacham Airport, the Helium plant featured on another thread was a spectacular centerpiece of technology once upon a time between the wars, and was a center for the oil drilling business in the 20's and now the gas boom of the 2000's. There is a tremendous musical legacy here that is not fully celebrated, encompassing many and varied forms that travelled from here to the cultural centers of the country and the world, from T-Bone Walker, Pappy O'Daniel, Cornell DuPree, Ray Sharpe, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, Delbert, Cliburn, Roger Miller, John Denver, The other T-Bone (Burnett), Betty Buckley, Townes Van Zandt, Kirk Franklin, Pat Green, Kelly Clarkson, and Big Lurch, among many others. Willie even states he first toked up in Fort Worth, so there is an undercurrent of hip that has been going on for some time. So, I hope the culture thing is covered, and that said... Can Fort Worth improve? Absolutely. Does Fort Worth need to bask in the past? Absolutely not. If a city is not moving forward it is sliding backward, there is no standing still. Some of the points raised in this thread (even if it has strayed A LOT from the original) are poignant and need answers. There SHOULD be a district where art and music and culture for the now and the future should be allowed to incubate, and it will need to be very inclusive of any and all people who want to live and work there. To attempt to bring things back around to topic; My immediate guess is once that area is delineated the the Dream Vision HQ will most likely not be located there, but that is OK, Fort Worth is a big city no matter what any PR guy downtown may want you to think, and there is room for all kinds of diversity, as long as your kind of diversity doesn't try to stamp out my kind of diversity. So my take is that Fort Worth can be modern, is being modern, and HAS TO BE MODERN. Times change, and the days of the radio preachers dictating public policy for the city at large from the pulpit has to be gone, along with racial prejudice, age discrimination, glass ceilings, and official art. How to be modern, though is a slippery slope that is open to interpretation and can get you a bloody nose in the wrong crowd, even today. If we are going to be welcoming to a gay-friendly district in the Southside we need to be welcoming to a "family-friendly" film studio and amusement park wherever they choose to settle in.

[Dylan]

I'm not saying we shouldn't be more modern. What I'm saying is we shouldn't get rid of our western theme, because that's who we are and what makes us unique. There's no reason we can't have a mix of both modern AND old western.

[prideftw]

 

I got tired of the Cowboy theme as the mainstay of "official" FW marketing efforts years ago, but that said, the roots of the city lay in that era, trail drives to oil boom. Luckily some of the physical relics from those times remain, including architecture, and not just individual buildings but whole districts in the case of the Stockyards. There is still a lot of restoration work to do there, but it would likely all be gone by now if creative minds had not found a way to make it a destination and not just a junky old part of town. So, KUDOS to those historical preservation folks and to the events, etc. that keep it alive and kickin'.BUT... there are already a lot of things outside the cowboys and cowtown box happening in Fort Worth. I would guess a venture that if you mentioned the city in the company of intellectuals around the world the first association would be the Cliburn Competition, or perhaps the public art collections in our magnificent museums. The horsie shows are sort of elitist but they bring people to FW who might just as easily go to Vegas, OKC, or several other prominent show-and working horse -friendlt cities, and they bring a LOT of money with them. FW is and has been an aviation center, although it is just beginning to celebrate that heritage with the slowly improving (and probably severely underfunded) aviation museum at Meacham Airport, the Helium plant featured on another thread was a spectacular centerpiece of technology once upon a time between the wars, and was a center for the oil drilling business in the 20's and now the gas boom of the 2000's. There is a tremendous musical legacy here that is not fully celebrated, encompassing many and varied forms that travelled from here to the cultural centers of the country and the world, from T-Bone Walker, Pappy O'Daniel, Cornell DuPree, Ray Sharpe, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, Delbert, Cliburn, Roger Miller, John Denver, The other T-Bone (Burnett), Betty Buckley, Townes Van Zandt, Kirk Franklin, Pat Green, Kelly Clarkson, and Big Lurch, among many others. Willie even states he first toked up in Fort Worth, so there is an undercurrent of hip that has been going on for some time. So, I hope the culture thing is covered, and that said...Can Fort Worth improve? Absolutely. Does Fort Worth need to bask in the past? Absolutely not. If a city is not moving forward it is sliding backward, there is no standing still. Some of the points raised in this thread (even if it has strayed A LOT from the original) are poignant and need answers. There SHOULD be a district where art and music and culture for the now and the future should be allowed to incubate, and it will need to be very inclusive of any and all people who want to live and work there. To attempt to bring things back around to topic; My immediate guess is once that area is delineated the the Dream Vision HQ will most likely not be located there, but that is OK, Fort Worth is a big city no matter what any PR guy downtown may want you to think, and there is room for all kinds of diversity, as long as your diversity doesn't try to stamp out my kind of diversity. So my take is that Fort Worth can be modern, is being modern, and HAS TO BE MODERN. Times change, and the days of the radio preachers dictating public policy for the city at large from the pulpit has to be gone, along with racial prejudice, age discrimination, glass ceilings, and official art. How to be modern, though is a slippery slope that is open to interpretation and can get you a bloody nose in the wrong crowd, even today. If we are going to be welcoming to a gay-friendly district in the Southside we need to be welcoming to a "family-friendly" film studio and amusement park wherever they choose to settle in.

 

[prideftw]

i replied to that quote wrong, lol, but I do agree with it in many ways. I personally think that we should as people of Fort Worth be completely open minded, but I still feel that the majority don't

[Funkutown Retro Retro]

And fort worth really only caters to the white citizens.....check out the black or Hispanic areas

[renamerusk]

This thread is on the verge of being highjacked by issues that seem unrelated to this topic. Too much generalization and hyperbole. Perhaps the time has come to end this thread. Keep Fort Worth folksy