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Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth's New Convention Ballroom and Exhibit Hall Filed at $288.6 million

A $288.6 million permit application filed Oct. 11 covers the four-story addition at the heart of the Fort Worth Convention Center's $606 million second phase, which replaces the domed 1968 arena in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

By Morningline Research · October 22, 2026

The building that will replace the Fort Worth Convention Center's round arena now has a permit application on file with the city, at a reported value of $288.6 million. Filed Oct. 11, it covers a four-story addition at 1201 Houston St. with a 74,000-square-foot expansion of the exhibit hall, 37,000 square feet of new meeting rooms and a new 40,000-square-foot ballroom.

It's the largest permit application we've seen yet for the city's $606 million second phase. And it landed three weeks after the arena hosted its last public event.

Three applications since January

Timeline of the permit applications and milestones for the Fort Worth Convention Center
Graphic: Morningline Research, from City of Fort Worth permit records and the reporting linked in this story.

Fort Worth's records are dated by filing, so these are applications as filed with the city. Three big ones sit at the convention center's address this year.

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The first, filed Jan. 4, was an $11.2 million permit to redo restrooms across the exhibit hall, mezzanine, meeting and ballroom levels.

The second came Oct. 7 at $63.9 million. It covers the existing building: exhibit hall, meeting rooms, prefunction space, offices and the public concourse. The permit lists new finishes and fixtures, changes to the escalators, a new roof membrane on both the main building and the central utility plant, replacement of older rooftop units and upgrades to the plant's mechanical equipment. It says there's no exterior, on-grade work.

Four days later came the big one. The Oct. 11 application describes "the 4 story addition of Phase 2" plus a three-story renovation of the existing exhibit hall, meeting rooms, ballrooms, administration and concourse. Site work is scheduled south of 9th Street, next to Commerce and Houston streets.

Permit values are estimates filed with the city, not contract amounts.

The dome comes down

The Fort Worth Convention Center's domed arena, seen from the street
The Fort Worth Convention Center's domed arena in June 2016. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

The arena opened in 1968 as the Tarrant County Convention Center and cost $5.5 million to build, TCU 360 reported. The city bought it in 1997. Elvis Presley sold out three shows there in 1974, and Paul McCartney and Wings opened their first U.S. tour there on May 3, 1976.

On Sept. 20 the city threw a free farewell called "It's Goin' Down." Mayor Mattie Parker said Fort Worth would say farewell "to our storied arena with a finale," the Fort Worth Business Press reported. "We're excited about what's coming up," said Cynthia Sanchez Serrano, who runs the convention center. The arena closes for remediation and demolition in early 2027.

What goes up in its place

The city showed the City Council the Phase 2 design on Feb. 3, REBusinessOnline reported. It calls for a four-story building with terraces and a plaza tied to General Worth Square, plus a modernized version of the existing hall, which hasn't had a major renovation since its 2003 expansion. When it's done, the center will have 257,268 square feet of exhibit space, 74,033 square feet of ballroom space and 16 loading docks. Completion is set for early 2030, and the center stays open through construction.

The design puts a tower at Main and 9th streets. Estimates cited by CultureMap Fort Worth say the bigger center could nearly double the city's convention business.

Phase 1, a $95 million project, wrapped up with a ribbon cutting in December 2025. It added 76,794 square feet, according to TCU 360. The Business Press puts the two phases together at $701 million.

The project has grown since it was first sketched. When the first contract was awarded in late 2022, Construction Dive reported the whole thing at $400 million to $500 million, with Phase 2 still unfunded. That early plan also called for 97,000 square feet of new exhibit space, 48,000 of meeting rooms and a 50,000-square-foot ballroom. Those figures are bigger than the new space listed on the Oct. 11 application, and we couldn't find a source that explains the change.

Paying for it, and Texas' convention building run

Fort Worth sold $64.12 million in revenue bonds last year for Phase 2 design and preconstruction, and planned about $541 million more in special tax revenue bonds for August, The Bond Buyer reported in March. We couldn't confirm the outcome of that sale.

Fort Worth isn't building alone. The same Bond Buyer story counted a run of Texas convention center projects: a $1.14 billion first phase at Houston's George R. Brown, a $3.34 billion Kay Bailey Hutchison project in Dallas, a $1.6 billion replacement center in Austin and a $750 million expansion in San Antonio.

In Fort Worth, demolition of the arena is next, in early 2027.

See all of Fort Worth's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.

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