Transform 1012 wraps up community input on conversion of former KKK site into cultural hub
Transform 1012 N. Main Street — a Fort Worth nonprofit coalition that aims to convert a former Northside Ku Klux Klan headquarters into a cultural hub — continues to move toward construction, the organization said.
The nonprofit, which was established by eight local entities, previewed design concepts, shared stories and put on entertainment Saturday in its third and final community listening session for the center.
“In a time when so many people say we need to change names of streets and buildings and take down monuments, if you erase it, then it doesn’t exist,” Kelly Allen Gray, the organization’s interim executive director, told the Fort Worth Report. “And we want to make sure that there is a remembrance of the past, but the future is not dark. It’s not full of hurt and anger and bitterness and hate, it’s bright.”
Transform 1012 held Saturday’s listening session at Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center for the Arts. The nonprofit will convert the former klan building and auditorium, built in 1924, into the Transform 1012 Center located at 1012 N. Main St.
Gray took the nonprofit’s helm this month after the departure of Carlos Gonzalez-Jaime, executive director since 2022.
The center has been in transition in recent months.
The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing was to be the center’s name until late July when the Fred Rouse Foundation pulled its name from the coalition when both sides could not come to an agreement on the terms. Rouse was lynched by a white mob on Dec. 11, 1921, in Fort Worth.
Saturday’s event had a performance by Sol Ballet Folklorico before presentations of the renderings and landscape architecture.
The center will keep the building’s existing frame and introduce a new interior.
The 35,000-square-foot building will be organized into three levels. The building will include a 250-seat theater, two dance rehearsal rooms, classrooms, galleries and an outdoor reflection space. There will be a gallery on the history of race relations in North Texas, with a permanent exhibition, interpretive exhibitions and educational programming.
The architecture team consists of Studio Barnes, ch_studio, GFFdesign and JIMA Studio.
The center is in preconstruction, which started in August. Construction will start in early 2028 with a projected opening for 2029.
Transform 1012 has secured more than $13 million toward its $70 million capital campaign. The coalition needs $55 million to start construction.
North Texas Histories / Historias de North Texas, a team of consultants, used Saturday’s listening session to collect community members’ memories about the building and shape the building’s history, programs and role in racial healing.
They plan to augment Saturday’s collection of oral histories with a community survey and panel discussions as well as more listening sessions, story circles and individual interviews. What’s gathered will be a catalyst for a permanent exhibit at the Transform 1012 Center.
Questions asked included:
- Do you remember the building at 1012 N. Main Street?
- What do people today not understand about that time?
- Picture the Transform 1012 Center open. What do you hope visitors will feel or learn?
Cultural institutions sometimes build their structures and forget about the community in the process, but these listening sessions are intended to include community members in decisions about the building and gather input for long-term support, said Lance Wheeler, facilitator and exhibit lead of the North Texas Histories / Historias de North Texas.
“Racial healing has to take place with everybody in the community,” Wheeler said. “And so they wanted to ensure that everybody had a seat at the table, and not figuratively, but really had a seat at the table, asking communities what do they remember of the building, how do they feel about racial healing, and what direction should this building go into?”
The historias team will gather the information, create a report and help Transform 1012 recognize repeated themes, what people are asking for and what is missing for the center.
Román Ramírez, who grew up in the Northside neighborhood and is co-chair of Transform 1012, used to call the klan building ugly, as its roof deteriorated and the place seemed forgotten, he told the Saturday morning crowd.
It was not until he became a part of Transform 1012, and learned its history, that he understood the significance and the responsibility the community has in deciding its future.
“The building I once saw as forgotten now holds the possibility of becoming a place for creativity, belonging, opportunity and healing,” Ramírez said. “Preserving it gives us a chance to tell the truth about its past while creating a future shaped by the people it once felt to exclude.”
Kamal Morgan is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at kamal@fortworthreport.org.
Disclosure: Fort Worth Report director of membership Ayesha Ganguly is co-founder and board chair of Transform 1012 N. Main Street. At the 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 Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.