Juneteenth museum switches locations, plans to acquire Southside Community Center

After being unable to acquire key plots of land, the National Juneteenth Museum is switching sites.

On Monday night, CEO Jarred Howard told Historic Southside residents that, if he had their blessing, the very site in which they were meeting — the Southside Community Center — could soon host the proposed 50,000-square-foot museum development.

“It’s less than ideal because the original vision was to build on the site that (Opal Lee’s) old museum was sitting on,” Howard told the Fort Worth Report. “But she’s just excited about moving forward, period, without regard to where we have to go.”

Howard said he has been in discussions with the city about potentially purchasing the community center for some time. If the city agrees to sell the property, he said, museum officials would demolish the existing building and build a new one on the land.

The new site is just down the street from the previously proposed location at Evans and Rosedale, an intersection that the city has also targeted for redevelopment efforts. Land initially included in blueprints for the proposed site belong to Dorian Villegas and his brother, who previously told the Fort Worth Report they were not interested in selling. Their stance did not change, prompting the museum to seek another location.

Howard didn’t have to wait long to hear residents’ response to the updated plan. During the same Sept. 9 meeting, members of the Historic Southside Neighborhood Association voted to formally support the National Juneteenth Museum’s request to acquire the Southside Community Center.

‘It’s in disrepair’

In March, the city of Fort Worth said the Southside Community Center wasn’t for sale — but acknowledged that the high cost of making necessary repairs could change that. At that time, city officials estimated the building needed about $9.9 million in repairs.

Money initially allocated toward those repairs — $370,500 from federal Community Development Block Grant funds — was recently reallocated to a veterans home repair program. A 2022 report from an architectural firm showed spending grant funds on renovations wouldn’t necessarily be the best use of the money, given the scope of repairs required.

“The unfortunate thing about the Southside Community Center is it’s a 60-year-old building, and it’s in disrepair,” Howard said. “It would cost about $45 million to remediate or to repair the building in the state it’s in right now and the city of Fort Worth is not interested in investing $45 million for the 60-year-old building.”

The community center location is one street over from the corner of Evans and Rosedale where a small house owned by Lee, “The Grandmother of Juneteenth,” once held a small collection of artifacts and hosted some community classes. The building was destroyed in a 2023 fire.

Remaining on Rosedale was a priority, Howard said, although some people said that raising money might be easier if the museum relocated to the Cultural District.

“Every time we’ve got one of those overtures,” he said, “we have rebuffed that because it is our commitment to be right here in the Historic Southside.”

Design changes, but programming vision remains

The Southside Community Center is a hub of activity for the neighborhood. It regularly acts as a polling place for local elections, hosts after-school programs and neighborhood meetings, and is home to the Best Years Club for senior citizens.

Resident Demetria Elisher, whose house sits across the road from the community center, asked Howard whether that kind of community programming would continue if the Juneteenth Museum acquired the property. Howard said museum plans include maintaining what he called a “black box” space, which would be adaptable enough to host a variety of resident activities.

“We’ve been promising certain services since the beginning … a promising business incubator, theater in black box space — in addition to the museum,” Howard said. “We don’t want to pivot away from any of that.”

The design has changed slightly. The community center lot dimensions differ from the property museum officials originally sought, so there will be two stories, but Howard said the new site will still be able to accommodate the programming that has long been part of the original vision. The first floor will host a food hall, business incubator and community space. A planned theater will have a balcony space, but otherwise the museum portion will occupy the second floor.

Howard acknowledged it could be some time before residents can reap the benefits of the Juneteenth Museum, but urged patience and promised the timeline would be worth the wait.

“We’re investing $70 million into the Historic Southside, and think about what you’re getting,” he said. “So I would ask that you cover your nose for the year and a half. … Think of it as a pregnancy.”

When asked when groundbreaking would get started, Howard had a simple answer: “As soon as the ink is dry from the city of Fort Worth.”

A long and winding path

While Lee has often spoken of watching the museum open its doors in 2025, the timeline for breaking ground has been pushed back multiple times.

When it was first announced, the museum received strong support from both community members and elected officials. The city of Fort Worth pledged $15 million in 2022, and Mayor Mattie Parker told the Fort Worth Report in 2023 that one of her main goals is to secure state funding for the museum. The Legislature made a $1 million commitment last year, much less than the $15 million that Parker and other museum boosters sought.

The museum has a goal of raising $70 million before opening its doors. About half of that funding would be dedicated to an endowment, so that the museum has a runway for operations after construction. Howard said that the museum is close to hitting the $40 million mark.

Bumps in the road, like the museum’s inability to buy the Villegas brothers’ property, have complicated matters. Howard said the longer they wait to break ground, the more expensive building the museum will become. Because of that, he’s eager to get started.

As plans have shifted, so have renderings for the building.

Over the summer, renderings on the museum’s website showed the building located at the corner of Rosedale Street and New York Avenue, the current site of the Southside Community Center.

When the Fort Worth Report asked the city if the property had been acquired by the museum, Valerie Colapret, a city spokesperson, wrote in an email that the National Juneteenth Museum had been presenting renderings showing the museum located at the community center site for some time.

“NJM has not, however, been pursuing the acquisition of that property,” she wrote in June.

The right fit

The Southside Community Center has an appraised value of $1,590,743, according to Tarrant Appraisal District property records. Howard said it’s not a matter of money when it comes to acquiring the property — it’s about convincing the city the museum is the right fit.

“So far, the city has been nothing but supportive of us being here,” he said.

Neighbors are excited to see the project moving forward — but that doesn’t mean they don’t have concerns. Elisher grew up in the Historic Southside neighborhood and moved back two years ago to the property across the street from the community center.

“I don’t mind it being here, but it’s going to cause some problems,” she said.

She cited a lack of parking, people blocking her driveway and the accumulation of trash as already being issues for her when events take place at the community center.

Howard reassured her that they were working with other nearby businesses on ways to improve parking options.

“I’m excited that they’re going to do this over here,” Elisher said, “but I’m curious about what the effects will be.”

Howard told residents that if they have any concerns, he’s an open book and they know how to reach him.

“The best option for us was this,” Howard said.

Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org. Emily Wolf is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at emily.wolf@fortworthreport.org or @_wolfemilyAt the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.