Fort Worth's Sundance Square is literally and figuratively the heart of Forth Worth, billed as a bustling and vibrant business and entertainment district right in the middle of downtown.
The area is also at the center of the portfolio for an influential Fort Worth family 鈥� the Basses 鈥� who've made major investments in Sundance Square.
So why is it so hard to figure out what's going on there?
raises that very question. He sat down with 四虎影院's Bekah Morr to talk about his story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
So, the Basses own Sundance Square. Who are they and what's their interest been in this area?
The Bass family is a very influential and wealthy family that are responsible for some pretty large developments in Fort Worth. Those include Sundance Square, which is sort of the centerpiece of downtown Fort Worth. Down the street, Bass Performance Hall, where you can see live tours of Broadway shows, and also Dickies Arena. Sundance Square is owned by Ed and Sasha Bass.
They've obviously made their mark around Fort Worth, but it seems like Sundance Square is kind of the central part of their portfolio?
Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's an iconic tourist destination. Sundance Square is 37 blocks of downtown. At the square itself, they have a tree every Christmas that they say is larger than the one in Rockefeller Center in New York. There's salsa dance, there's music on any given weekend. It's a pretty iconic part of downtown.
And your story asks this central question: why is it so hard to find out what's going on in Sundance Square? It seems like the answer to that is a lack of transparency from the owners and operators, right?
Well, the central question is: what is happening in Sundance Square? And so I turned to experts 鈥� I contacted real estate research firms, I talked to brokers who are often involved in some of these leasing activities 鈥� and what they've all told me is that they don't have that much insight into the operations or leasing strategy or even what's available on the market in Sundance Square.
The experts you spoke to, what did they said about the lack of transparency?
One broker told me that, traditionally in commercial real estate, if you have vacant space and you want someone to occupy it, you would want it listed everywhere that you could possibly imagine. But Sundance Square management doesn't do this.
The broker also said that's kind of unique 鈥� that they have all this space, some of which is vacant, and there's not really any information about who is occupying the space, what is vacant, what's full. It's just a big question mark.
That being said, what has your reporting found as far as what the Bass' intentions are in the area? Do we have any inkling of what their plans for the future are?
There's hints and clues, but it's just speculation at this point.
After 2020, the Sundance website did They were looking for tenants in their retail spaces. They wanted to put new life into some of the spaces that had been empty after the pandemic.
And what we found is that some of those spaces are there, but they have different owners. Some don't exist anymore. So really, the only way to find out what's happening is to walk the blocks of Sundance Square and kind of parse out what's what's happening there.
And you spent a lot of time in Sundance as part of your reporting. Just from your own experience, what's your sense of the area right now?
I spent a lot of time walking the square while reporting this story, and the square itself is pretty active on the weekends. You might see live bands, you might see a big Christmas tree.
The retail side is kind of a question mark. I mean, some spaces are full but aren't open. Some are getting ready to open, but it's not really clear what they might be. I walked past a pottery shop that had plates and bowls lining the windows, but it wasn't open. I saw some pallets of paint on the side of a building, so they might give it a fresh coat of paint. So that's a lot of what I saw.
It seems like they're planning it very quietly and it's a big question on what's happening, but it does seem like there is something happening.
I'm curious, why talk about this now?
Well, if you think about it, Sundance Square is basically the centerpiece of Fort Worth's downtown, and downtowns have struggled since 2020 to recover. So this is kind of a critical part of understanding how well Fort Worth's downtown is doing.
And businesses have expressed concerns about the vitality of Sundance Square because of the vacancies there. So that spurred me to ask 鈥� what do these experts, people who collect data and people who are familiar in commercial real estate, actually know about Sundance Square and what are they not seeing?
Seth Bodine reports on commercial real estate for .
