TCU to bid on local building
By Meghan Youker
Staff Reporter

A Fort Worth Stockyards businessman says he is confident his group will raise enough money to purchase a 101-year-old building in the Stockyards to be the new home of TCU’s Center for Texas Studies.

So far, Steve Murrin, president of the Fort Worth Stockyards Business Association, said the group has raised $500,000 in donations, but needs about $1 million more to buy the former Spaghetti Warehouse building, which will be auctioned Nov. 5.

If Murrin’s group succeeds, the building at 600 E. Exchange Ave. would house TCU’s research facility and archive the histories of cities across Texas, Murrin said.

“We’re still moderately optimistic,” Murrin said. “But in the absence of making a deal with the owners before Nov. 5, we’ll be at the auction, and we’ll do what we can.”

The owner of the building, U.S. Restaurant Properties, shifted the property to a subsidiary company Tuesday to make the transfer of ownership of the property less difficult, said Harry Davis, chief operating officer of U.S. Restaurant Properties. The property went up for sale in January for $1.4 million, he said. The Tarrant County Appraisal District lists the property at $1.19 million.

Davis said he has negotiated with both Murrin and TCU officials for about a year, but neither group gave a concrete offer about when they could buy the property.

“If someone came to me today with $1.4 million to buy the property, I would sell it today,” Davis said.

TCU officials have not recently been involved in trying to purchase the property, but they are constantly looking for donations, said Gene Smith, director of the Center for Texas Studies. The center needs about $20 million to secure, restore and endow a facility and to pay for its programming and staff, Smith said.

“I have put the auction out of my mind,” Smith said. “But we are hoping the building doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

U.S. Restaurant Properties put the property up for auction to reveal other potential buyers and create a sense of urgency for someone to act, Davis said.

Built in 1902 as the general offices of the former Swift and Co. meatpacker, the two-story, 28,000-square-foot building would be a perfect site for the center, Murrin said.

“There is already a great deal of traffic in the Stockyards,” Murrin said. “The center can take advantage of a setting that isn’t quite so academic.”

The size, type and history of the building would accommodate the center’s needs, Smith said.

The building would be an ideal location for the center, because it is intricately tied to Fort Worth, which evolved from the cattle and meatpacking industry, he said.

“We want to celebrate the history, culture and heritage of Texas, and to preserve and share it with the people of Texas,” Smith said.

The Nov. 5 auction will be at 1 p.m. at the former restaurant and will be conducted by Tranzon Hanley auction company of Fort Worth.