Fort Worth residents are battling to preserve Berry Theater, a historic building in the Hemphill neighborhood of southern Fort Worth, which the current owners intend to raze to build a health clinic.
The building is owned by Mission Travis Mercy, or Mercy Clinic, a non-profit organization that provides free healthcare services to residents in the 76110 and 76104 ZIP codes. According to a previous report by The Dallas Express, the clinic applied for a demolition permit on June 27.
Aly Layman, executive director for Mercy Clinic, told NBC 5 DFW that the company acquired the building through a volunteer donation in 2021. The organization owns several lots surrounding the theater and had expansion plans. The theater was the most recent addition to the project.
“The original plans were drawn up back in 2018. We did not own the theater,” Layman said to NBC 5. “So, you can see in some of our renderings that the theater, just is like, right next to the clinic building. Right now, we have a plan to go from a three-clinic, three-room clinic to a ten-room clinic, and it would happen on that property.”
Layman said the restoration costs outweighed the cost of building a new clinic. The organization was open to entertain offers to purchase the building, but the deadline to submit a proposal was Friday. It is unclear if anyone has made a serious offer.
The Mercy Clinic’s board of directors will meet Saturday to discuss the theater’s fate, with Layman noting that “Mercy Clinic cannot expand without the support of the surrounding community.”
Hemphill resident Leslie Staap, who lives near the theater, said she would prefer to see it restored.
“The college isn’t far,” Staap told NBC 5. “They could come and see an old-fashioned movie or documentary.”
Berry Theater, which opened in April 1940, has 682 seats. It opened under the name White Theater but changed to Berry Theater in 1961, per Fort Worth Magazine.
The building has been abandoned for more than three decades. Fort Worth’s city council approved a tax incentive in 2019 when Berry Theater LLC planned to spend $1.8 million to renovate the building and use it as an event space. Instead, Mercy Clinic assumed ownership of the property in 2021.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the efficiency of building and demolition permitting in Fort Worth bumped up the city’s ranking in a development survey, putting it above Dallas, which reportedly maintains inefficient permitting services under City Manager T.C. Broadnax.
