In collaboration with Landscape Architect,
Studio Outside, the La Pulga Master Plan reimagines 22 acres along the Fort Worth Riverfront as a contemporary district deeply rooted in the life of the existing Pequeño Mexico Market and Event Center. Rather than erase what is there, the design extends the character of the traditional open-air mercado into a broader cultural destination. At its heart, a Tequila, Sotol, and Mezcal Tasting Room for Fort Worth’s
La Pulga Spirits, anchors a series of event spaces unfolding from a hacienda-style courtyard. The sequence extends southward through sotol fields and culminates in the adaptive reuse of an open-air pavilion, reborn as an event hall that recalls the atmosphere of Texas’s historic dance halls. The structure is retrofitted from an existing steel frame and expressed through a new hybrid mass timber system, merging durability with warmth while amplifying the social character of the space.
Around this civic and cultural spine, new layers of program emerge: multi-family housing, creative storefronts, and a boutique hotel, each oriented to capture views of the revitalized riverfront, Panther Island, and the skyline beyond. The result is not a wholesale reinvention, but an expansion of the market’s legacy, an architecture that respects the community that gathers there while opening new possibilities for commerce, culture, and celebration along Fort Worth’s riverfront.