Fort Worth’s new Carter Blood Care headquarters features excessive parking

by Kevin Buchanan of Fortworthology

FORT WORTH — The new Carter Blood Care headquarters on Rosedale in the Near Southside is coming along. This building dates from before the Near Southside zoning and design guidelines took effect, so it’s a rather unfortunate development in some ways but serves as a good example of the sort of differences brought about by the new form-based code. It’s set back too far (a bit suburban-office-park-ish, with the same sort of landscaping one might expect), it’s got too much and too visible parking, it’s oriented a little weirdly, etc.

Developments along Oleander aren’t allowed anymore to include parking near the street. Fortunately, Carter Blood Care did compromise and move their parking lot back away from Oleander and will be including a small park there instead. It’s still excessive parking and not a good example of orienting in the urban village, but as it pre-dates the new code and standards it’s one of the last of the “old generation” that we’ll see being built in the district.

Above, you can see a facade mock-up.