Fort Worth Stories
One Last Gathering Under the Dome: Fort Worth Says Goodbye to Its Convention Center
For 58 years, the Fort Worth Convention Center Arena gave people a place to gather beneath a roof that looked like nothing else in the city. On Sunday, September 20th, 2026, the gathering was for the building itself.
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I brought my camera to the Fort Worth Convention Center for “It’s Goin’ Down,” the farewell celebration for its familiar flying saucer arena. Inside, visitors moved between historical displays and the stage. Overhead, the steelwork and circular catwalks still gave the room its unmistakable shape.
This was not the demolition. It was a chance to see the arena, walk its floor, and place its long history beside the changes coming next. The distinction matters: the arena is closing, but the convention center is not disappearing. It is being expanded and modernized around a different idea of what downtown needs.
Fort Worth Convention Center Arena: when the future looked like a flying saucer
The complex opened in 1968 as the Tarrant County Convention Center. According to the Tarrant County Archives, the $20 million project replaced 14 downtown blocks in the area known as Hell’s Half Acre. Its local architectural team included Preston Geren, Herman Cox, Hueppelhueser & White, Morris Parker, and Wilson, Patterson, Sowden, Dunlap & Epperly.
The original center combined 100,000 square feet of exhibit space, an arena with a portable stage and ice rink, 25 meeting rooms, and the 3,000 seat JFK Theatre. It was designed for many kinds of gatherings, not just one audience.
The City of Fort Worth purchased the complex in 1997 and gave it the name it carries today. The JFK Theatre was demolished in 2000 for another expansion, a reminder that this campus has already lost a major piece of its original design. The county’s archival history preserves that sequence of construction and change.
There is a difficult symmetry here. A building created through the removal of an older part of downtown became a landmark that people now want to remember before another transformation. The word progress does not erase what came before it. Each generation inherits both the possibilities and the losses of the last.
A room shared by generations
The arena’s identity was never limited to its silhouette. It changed with whoever occupied the floor. The county’s photographic collection documents concerts by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin, and Queen, alongside hockey, wrestling, conventions, and other gatherings.
Sunday’s exhibition made those overlapping histories visible. Tall panels brought dates, photographs, and performers back into the room where their audiences had once assembled. Instead of treating the building as an empty object, the displays filled it with the reasons people had cared about it.
One display paired two very different musical moments. On May 3rd, 1976, Paul McCartney and Wings opened the American leg of Wings Over America here. Decades later, BTS performed on September 15th and 16th, 2018. The exhibition placed them across the same corner: different generations, different music, the same dome.
That is what an arena can hold that a list of square footage cannot. For one visitor, its history might begin with a concert. For another, it might be a sporting event or a family occasion. No single performer or decade can stand in for all of those experiences.
“It’s Goin’ Down”: a farewell, not a demolition
The city advertised Sunday’s celebration as the arena’s final public event. Admission was free, and the program brought together historical exhibits, music, concessions, and commemorative merchandise. The city’s announcement described it as a way to recognize the arena’s 58 years while introducing the next stage of the convention center project.
My photographs show that idea taking physical form. People stood around the history panels, crossed the arena floor, and gathered in front of the Emerald City Band stage. The stage frontage carried a thank you to Fort Worth and the years 1968 to 2026. Behind the temporary displays, the seating and structure remained part of the scene.
It would be easy to photograph only the roof and call that the story. But the people on the floor belong in the record too. They show the building doing what it was made to do, even at its farewell: bringing a crowd into one shared space.
According to the city’s September announcement, the arena closes before remediation and demolition planned for early 2027. Those are future construction steps, not something that happened during Sunday’s gathering. Schedules can change as the project moves forward.
What replaces the dome
The arena’s removal belongs to a larger $701 million convention center program. Visit Fort Worth identifies a $95 million first phase and a $606 million second phase, with overall completion planned for early 2030. It also states that the convention center will remain open during construction.
In its February 3rd, 2026, design announcement, the city described a new four story convention building in place of the 1968 arena. Plans include a tower at Main and Ninth streets, outdoor terraces, and a plaza with native prairie landscaping connecting toward General Worth Square.
The planned completed facility includes 257,268 square feet of exhibit halls, 60,917 square feet of meeting rooms, 74,033 square feet of ballroom space, and 16 loading docks. These are projected totals for the expanded facility, not amounts being added on top of every existing space. The city says the flexible layout will support larger conventions or two large events at the same time.
The first phase has already introduced new food and beverage facilities, a southeast entrance, additional loading capacity, and the realignment of Commerce Street. The official expansion overview explains how the two phases fit together.
There is a practical argument behind the project. Meeting organizers need flexible rooms, usable loading areas, and facilities that match the events they want to bring here. Still, a useful replacement and a meaningful loss can exist at the same time. A new building does not have to be dismissed for the old one to deserve a careful record.
What a photograph can keep
The exterior photograph puts the arena back into the city around it. The round roof, neighboring buildings, trees, and patterned plaza are not separate pieces of the story. Together, they show a place that people have learned to recognize.
Inside, the camera records a different scale: the catwalk overhead, the curve of the room, the stage, and the temporary exhibition built to explain why any of it mattered. These details will become harder to describe once the physical reference is gone.
Sunday gave Fort Worth a final public occasion to look at the arena while it was still a gathering place. The plans tell us what is supposed to come next. The photographs help keep track of what was here.
What do you remember most about the arena? Share the concert, event, or moment that brings this place back for you in the comments.
Nearby, another familiar public space is preparing for changes of its own. Read Fort Worth’s Water Gardens: The $6.5 Million Renewal Ahead.
Sources and further reading
- Tarrant County Archives: Convention Center collection and historical note
- City of Fort Worth: “It’s Goin’ Down” final event announcement, September 1st, 2026
- NBC 5 and the City of Fort Worth: September 20th arena farewell
- City of Fort Worth: Phase 2 design announcement, February 3rd, 2026
- Visit Fort Worth: Expansion updates and planned completion
- Historical exhibition panels photographed by Jonny Goodday at the September 20th, 2026, farewell celebration.
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