Tarleton State Fort Worth officials unveiled a new master plan for the Chisholm Trail campus, outlining their blueprint for the next two decades.
The public university plans to grow its physical footprint, increase the number of students it enrolls and expand support services for those students, officials said during a Thursday event.
“The reason that this region, this city, is growing so fast, it’s because of opportunity,” Tarleton State University President James Hurley said at the event. “This Fort Worth campus represents opportunity.”
Here are the highlights:
The campus’s current two-building layout will expand to a 17-building footprint with additions including academic buildings, residence halls, a student center, a recreation center, and a building hosting welcome and alumni centers.
The residence halls will combine parking, mixed-use space and green space along an extended John Tarleton Way. Mixed-use development is expected to sprout up across that road from campus. Outward-facing retail on the ground floor of the residence halls will contribute to a “‘campus town’ feel,” according to the plan.
Planned features of the student center include a dining hall, library, performing arts space and places for students to gather and work together.
The campus plan also includes green space, including quads, multipurpose fields, rooftop terraces on residence halls, several greenways stretching between buildings, and green space around the periphery of the campus. The outdoor spaces also include an amphitheater outside the student center.
“This is a campus designed around students, around access and around the future of Tarrant County and the surrounding community,” said Rachael Capua, vice president of external operations and dean of Tarleton State Fort Worth, at the event.
The plan also includes ideas for landmarks with Tarleton State branding, including the potential for an entry gate and a tower.
A rendering shows a potential entry gate at Tarleton State Fort Worth’s Chisholm Trail campus. (Courtesy | Tarleton State Fort Worth)
Planned to open in 2028, the Chisholm Trail exit and overpass is crucial as it will connect the campus to a major roadway and improve access.
When Tarleton State Fort Worth enrolled first- and second-year students for the first time in fall 2024, it became the only public university in Fort Worth offering four years of undergraduate courses and graduate programs.
The campus enrolled 2,699 students last fall. It plans to reach 5,123 by 2030 and 16,001 by 2044.
“It’s a significant, significant value-add to our community, our city and our region, to be candid,” Capua said of the school to the Fort Worth Report. “We’re just really honored to be a part of that story.”
Expanding support and access
New student services are planned to support the larger student body. The campus will offer childcare through a child development center located near the entrance to campus within or nearby to the welcome and alumni center building.
“We serve, and will continue to serve, many parents that also are students, students that are also parents,” Capua said. “It’s been a topic that for quite some time, actually, we’ve been exploring and just wanting to dig deeper and learn more about.”
Students were surveyed during the spring 2026 semester, and the results were “overwhelmingly positive” in expressing that there was a need, Capua said.
The university is currently exploring how it can support students, faculty, staff and the local community with childcare. The Early Learning Alliance is conducting a feasibility study to determine what childcare currently looks like in the area that is expected to be completed by summer.
Tarleton State Fort Worth students. (Courtesy | Tarleton State Fort Worth)
Transportation, for the campus and the local area, is also a focus of work.
“We’re really trying to evaluate everything and anything we can to alleviate the transportation barrier, because we know it’s difficult,” Capua said.
Although the Chisholm Trail exit will tie the campus to a major roadway, it is a toll road that comes with a cost that can be “a pretty significant lift” for students, she said.
The university is working with Trinity Metro to discuss ways to expand transportation connections to the campus and surrounding region.
In the near term, Capua said the university is in the discovery phase of potentially operating shuttle services to bring students and others from the nearest Trinity Metro bus stop to campus.
Further out, leaders are exploring ways to connect TexRail between not just Tarleton and the rest of Fort Worth but the rest of the county’s higher education institutions and even DFW Airport.
The university is also talking with nonprofits that are involved in mitigating transportation barriers, such as Catholic Charities Fort Worth, about potential options.
What comes next
Capua said the planning process for another academic building directly across from the Interprofessional Education Building and adjacent to the Central Administration Building is nearly complete. It will be a STEM building that will surround one of the quads along with the two existing buildings.
Tarleton State Fort Worth will also have a presence in Texas A&M-Fort Worth’s first building that is set to open Aug. 5.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
The Report’s higher education coverage is supported in part by major higher education institutions in Tarrant County, including Tarleton State University, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M-Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT Health Science Center. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/05/04/tarleton-state-reveals-plan-for-expansion-of-chisholm-trail-campus/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=527741&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2026/05/04/tarleton-state-reveals-plan-for-expansion-of-chisholm-trail-campus/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>