Fort Worth has abandoned its plan to tear down the century-old grain silos looming over the Worth Heights neighborhood, after city officials determined the project would cost far more than they had budgeted. The 12-story Alice Street complex will remain standing for now, and the $850,000 set aside for its demolition is being funneled into other neighborhood upgrades instead.
The decision comes down to money. A full demolition of the roughly 90-silo structure was estimated to cost $1.4 million, leaving a $600,000 gap beyond the funds Fort Worth had already allocated, according to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. That $850,000 had come out of the Worth Heights Neighborhood Improvement Program in 2024, according to Texas News Today, and city officials have now redirected that money back into the same program rather than let it sit frozen while they searched for the rest.
A Century of Grain Storage Turned Decades of Trouble
The Alice Street complex dates back to March 1923, when Fort Worth Elevator & Warehouse began construction on what would become a 12-story, roughly 90-silo industrial facility reflecting the city's rise as a major rail and milling hub, according to 6AM City. Operations at the site ceased around 2000, leaving behind a hulking concrete shell that has sat empty for roughly a quarter century.
In the years since, the property has become a persistent source of danger and frustration for the surrounding community. Fort Worth police responded to at least 367 emergency calls at the site between 2006 and 2024, while the city logged 59 formal citizen complaints over vagrancy, trespassing and illegal dumping, per KERA News. The station also reported that public safety hazards at the silos contributed to the death of a 17-year-old girl who fell down a grain chute in 2016, an injury to a police officer during a foot pursuit, and repeated fires that Fort Worth firefighters could only battle from outside the structure.
Hoodline previously covered a stubborn rescue at the abandoned complex, underscoring how trespassers have continued entering the site despite the danger. Fort Worth code enforcement crews had already tried to seal it off by removing interior stairwells and welding metal planks over ground-level entrances, according to WFAA, but those measures failed to stop unauthorized access.
An Absent Owner and a Legal Deadline
The property owner of record, listed as 3500 Alice Street Trust, has been non-responsive to Fort Worth code compliance officers for more than eight years and owes over $200,000 in back taxes on the 2.9-acre site, WFAA reported. That absence left the city with little choice but to act unilaterally if it wanted the hazard addressed at all.
Fort Worth's Building Standards Commission unanimously voted in March 2024 to declare the grain elevator facility substandard and hazardous, giving the owner until April 25, 2024 to present a plan before the city could authorize demolition on its own. The owner never did. City officials had voted years earlier, in 2016, to demolish the silos if the property owner failed to address the structures, according to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, a threat that ultimately went unfulfilled as costs outpaced available funds.
The site had already drawn federal attention before any of this. Fort Worth received a $300,000 EPA Brownfields Assessment Coalition Grant in May 2020 that designated the Alice Street property a priority site for environmental inventory and redevelopment planning, according to CultureMap Dallas.
Worth Heights Residents Get to Decide Where the Money Goes
Rather than leave the $850,000 tied up while the city searched for the extra $600,000, officials chose to send the money back into the Worth Heights Neighborhood Improvement Program for other community-chosen projects. A public meeting is set for today, August 8, at the Victory Forest Community Center, where residents will weigh in on alternatives such as streetlights, sidewalks and park improvements, per Texas News Today. Only $9,800 of the original funding is being retained, earmarked for a minor site pipe removal.
Worth Heights was selected for the Neighborhood Improvement Program in December 2023, targeting a community where 90% to 95% of residents are Hispanic and the median household income is $40,625, compared with a citywide median of $72,726, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Hoodline has also reported on the program's broader reach, including $4.4 million for New Mitchell, part of a citywide effort to steer targeted capital into underserved neighborhoods.
What remains unresolved is the fate of the silos themselves. With full demolition shelved and only the pipe removal funded, the hazardous, abandoned structure will continue standing over Worth Heights, and it is unclear how the city plans to secure a site that code compliance officers and police have struggled to seal off for years.
