This story originally appeared on fortworthreport.org.
By: Dang Le
Texas A&M-Fort Worth’s downtown vision takes shape with $240M campus opening
Whether people are walking near the Fort Worth Water Gardens, riding a train downtown or driving on I-35W, Texas A&M-Fort Worth leader Bobby Ahdieh wants them to see his campus at work.
The new Law & Education Building on East 15th Street puts campus activity on display. Ground-floor windows reveal classrooms, laboratories and a working courtroom.
“What if we were able to create right here in downtown Fort Worth the Silicon Valley on the Trinity River — an academic-industry campus and district bringing together multiple disciplines, multiple universities, industry partners, as well as the entire community?” Ahdieh said.
Although the Texas A&M University System’s flagship campus sits nearly three hours to the south in College Station, the system showed off its expanded Fort Worth presence Wednesday. The eight-story, 228,000-square-foot urban campus of brick, stone, metal and glass opened as the first completed piece of a larger downtown vision.
The goal, Chancellor Glenn Hegar said, is to blur the lines between education, research and industry needs.
“It is a place where a student can meet a future employer, a researcher can sit across the table from a company facing a real problem and a good idea can become a product, a business or a job,” Hegar said.
That goal shaped the open staircases with seating areas and charging outlets, which encourage students studying different fields to linger and cross paths. Ground-floor laboratories and a courtroom for law classes and real proceedings, including the Texas Business Court hearings, offer passersby another view into campus life.
“You look inside and there’s a machine doing something,” Ahdieh said, “or there’s people doing something in the lab.”
The building also marks A&M’s growing investment in Fort Worth. Regents began with an $85 million planning estimate in 2022. This year, system construction records listed the project at $227.5 million. Ahdieh told the Fort Worth Report the total cost is $240 million.
‘A slam-dunk’
Texas A&M’s presence in Fort Worth predates the building.
The system acquired Texas Wesleyan University’s law school in 2013, and Tarleton State has offered health science programs in Fort Worth for decades. The new building gives those operations a shared home.
Ahdieh met with John Goff, chairman and CEO of Crescent Real Estate, in February 2020. A planned 20-minute conversation stretched to about 90.
About a month later, Ahdieh recalled, Goff crawled through a hole onto the law school’s roof to survey the surrounding downtown blocks. Goff then called the Fort Worth vision “a slam-dunk” and flew to College Station that fall to pitch it to then-Chancellor John Sharp.
“Great cities don’t just grow; they invest. They invest in education because education creates opportunity, and opportunity is what builds the future,” Goff said, referring to the partnership between A&M and local lawmakers.
Mayor Mattie Parker said the system worked with Fort Worth and other higher education institutions to consider programs that supplement — rather than duplicate — regional offerings. The focus turned toward sectors driving Fort Worth’s economy, including healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing and engineering.
The completed campus could support more than 25,000 direct and indirect jobs and generate more than $3 billion in annual economic activity, according to A&M estimates.
‘Silicon Valley on the Trinity River’
Immediately after the opening ceremony ended, leaders were ready to break ground on the next project.
The Research and Innovation Building-A, scheduled for completion in 2029, will anchor the Switchyard Innovation District across southeastern downtown. Research areas include aerospace, engineering, agriculture, health sciences, virtual production, medicine, food and nutrition science, biotechnology and transportation.
“We look at the opportunity with the industry here,” said Robert Albritton, A&M System Board of Regents chair. “It’s so broad, and yet it has so many unmet needs.”
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