WESTERN AVE. HOME DEMOLISHED BY CITY
The City of Fort Worth’s Stormwater Department received a FEMA grant to buy and tear down two homes in the 2200 block of Western Ave. due to their repetitive flooding claims. One of those homes was razed this week and one more will soon follow. Habitat for Humanity removed whatever was salvageable before the demolition. Both FEMA lots will be fenced, sodded and irrigation installed. The FEMA grant funding mandates both lots must be left as green space in perpetuity. However, the lots can be incorporated into adjacent properties in the future, as long as no permanent structures are built on them.
The City owns an additional four homes on Western Ave. and five on Carleton Ave. The homes will soon be listed for sale with the caveat they are sold together as a single transaction to a single purchaser who will either elevate all the homes two feet above flood level (an average of 3.75 feet taller than they currently are), or tear them down and build new homes that are two feet above flood level, or a combination of the two. If the Notice of Sale produces no viable bids, the City plans to demolish all nine homes to build a 10-12 foot deep stormwater basin that’s about four times larger than the one next to Walgreen’s on Bryce Ave. near Camp Bowie Blvd.
The majority of the impacted neighbors on Carleton and Western have repeatedly expressed strong preference for keeping the area residential as opposed to a new large detention basin. Stormwater engineering studies show that the proposed basin does not come even close to fixing the drainage challenges in this area. It would take removing sixty homes and replacing them with 15 foot deep basins to solve the problem.
_________________________________________________