In a vote that one member called “the single greatest disappointment of my entire time on City Council,” the Arlington council voted 8-1 on Oct. 14 to drop redevelopment plans for the Fielder Square neighborhood.
The proposed plan to buy an apartment complex for $33 million, tear it down and create affordable housing would have spent a total of nearly $37 million to accomplish its goals. In August, that proposed plan failed after the council-run Arlington Tomorrow Foundation did not reach a supermajority vote to fund the project.
Council dropped the plan this month because of a lack of funding that was available quickly.
“Fielder Square was removed from the tabled list, and we are no longer pursuing this,” District 5 council member Rebecca Boxall said. “There is no source of funding for purchasing the property within a short time frame. The owner wished to sell quickly.”
District 4 council member Andrew Piel strongly backed the plan and was the lone vote against dropping it.
The multifamily property at the heart of the plan, the Arlington Village Apartments, sits on a more than 500,000-square-foot plot that the city wanted to buy. Arlington Village has 278 multifamily units and was built in 1973, according to the city. The apartment complex is owned by Congressman Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth.
“There is no backup plan because there’s no money to fund a backup plan,” Piel said. “Unfortunately, Congressman Goldman can sell it now to the highest bidder, and since these places are cash cows — no matter if they’re not that nice — will probably continue on in its current state forever, and I’ll have to drive by it for the next 30 years thinking about what could have been, which is very disappointing to me.”
After the failure in August, the city looked for other avenues to fund the project.
According to the proposed sales contract, the city would have made an initial down payment of $10 million this year, to be followed by a payment of $23 million in March 2026, totaling an outlay of about $33 million for the property.
Piel said the plan would have tackled what he called a “crime-ridden location that’s pulled down the entire neighborhood along a major avenue that Realtors say people drive along when they’re trying to decide to buy a house in Arlington.”
He said the Fielder Square project meant a lot to him.
“It’s kind of a passion project, because it’s directly related to what my constituents have told me is Arlington’s biggest problem, which is old, rundown apartment complexes that drag down the neighborhoods around them,” Piel said. “This was the perfect test case with a willing seller.”
Piel added: “There was a sales price that our appraisal showed it was worth, and he was like, ‘OK, I’ll sell for that.’”
Piel called the vote an “extremely short-sighted decision by the council, in my opinion.”
Critics said that using city funds to buy neglected private property for redevelopment would set a bad precedent.
In 2020, an organization called Lone Star Project released a compilation of city code violations that occurred at the complex between 2014 and 2019. During those years, the complex was found to be in violation of the code 272 times.
Lance Murray is a freelance contributor covering business for the Arlington Report.
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