Fort Worth - Sawyer Grocery Store redevelopment - Fort Worth South

[FortWorthology]

This is a project I've been looking forward to for some time. The old Sawyer Grocery Store on South Main, near the Axis club, is at last getting restored and redeveloped. Work is underway now on the two buildings to convert them to apartments over retail.

South Main Village was the hardest-hit neighborhood of Fort Worth South during suburban flight of the '60s and '70s. The neighborhood, which is the area along South Main immediately south of downtown, has been vacant and decaying for decades. Now, though, the city and developers are starting to come back. A trendy club called Axis has opened in one of the historic buildings, some others have been restored for office use, others are marked for redevelopment, and there are rumors of even bigger projects in the works.

Here is a recent photo of the Sawyer buildings - they actually look *better* in this photo than they have in a long time. You can see the work going on through the windows when you go by.

The buildings will feature four retail spaces and 14 apartments. They are being redeveloped by Eddie Vanston of the Carillon Group, the same fine folks who gave us the beautiful, high-quality restorations of three other Fort Worth South historic properties - the Leuda-May Apartments, the Markeen Apartments (now condos), and the LaSalle Apartments, located in the district's Leuda-May, Jennings/Daggett/near-South Main Village, and Fairmount neighborhoods, respectively.

This is what they'll look like when complete:

[krazeeboi]

It will look very traditional when finished, which is a good thing. Old school urbanity at its finest.

[FortWorthology]

It will look very traditional when finished, which is a good thing. Old school urbanity at its finest.

[krazeeboi]

Wow, that's an awesome job.

[FortWorthology]

The progress made on the Sawyer buildings is nothing short of remarkable:

The work's not even finished yet, and they already look like brand-new buildings. Amazing restoration work thus far. Eddie Vanston does it again.

Did a write-up about the Sawyer project on West and Clear:

http://westandclear.com/2008/02/19/south-m...-grocery-store/

[krazeeboi]

Wow, that's already impressive. Can't wait to see the finished product.