Commercial and General Contractor in Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth passed one million residents in the Census Bureau’s 2024 estimates, and the Vintage 2025 numbers put it at 1,028,117. The city line reaches into Denton, Parker, Johnson, and Wise counties, but all except about 21,000 of those people live in Tarrant.

Size isn’t the hard part of building here. Range is. One Fort Worth week can take you from a 1910s foursquare in Fairmount, where new porch columns need a Certificate of Appropriateness, to a brick storefront on Magnolia Avenue under a form-based code, to an empty shell out by the Alliance airport. All three go through the same Development Services department. Each one plays by a different set of rules.

MASACO Construction is woman- and minority-owned, and our office sits on Legacy Drive in Plano, about an hour from downtown Fort Worth. Searching for a commercial contractor in Fort Worth? Here’s what we build: restaurant, retail, salon, clinic, and office build-outs first, and we remodel homes too, from single kitchens to whole houses. We haven’t finished a project inside Fort Worth’s city limits yet. Our closest is Pizza Twist in Irving, a 2,000 SF franchise restaurant we built out in 6 to 8 weeks while it kept serving customers, phasing the work around service hours.

Nearby work: MASACO’s Pizza Twist build-out in Irving, finished in 6 to 8 weeks while the restaurant stayed open.

So how do we run a job an hour away? The same way we’d run one down the street. A single project manager stays with your job from the first walkthrough to the close-out package, and every week you get photos and a written progress report. The drive is our problem to manage, not yours.

Downtown to Alliance: where Fort Worth tenants build

Fort Worth doesn’t have one commercial center. It has a string of districts, and several of them carry design rules on top of the building code.

Downtown and Sundance Square. Sundance Square covers more than 35 blocks of downtown, steps from the Tarrant County Courthouse, with restaurants, shops, Bass Performance Hall, and around 6,000 parking spaces. Downtown also sits inside the City’s Downtown Urban Design District, an overlay with four character zones run by the Downtown Design Review Board. A new storefront, sign, or awning there gets design review before it gets built.

Sundance Square Plaza, the center of a district that spans more than 35 downtown blocks.

Near Southside and Magnolia Avenue. Directly south of downtown, the Near Southside mixes medical institutions, small retail and restaurant businesses, creative studios, and urban housing under its own form-based code, with zoning that starts with “NS-”. Visit Fort Worth counts five major hospitals in its Medical Innovation District. Magnolia Avenue is lined with restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, many of them inside decades-old buildings. The City encourages applicants to take projects to Near Southside, Inc.’s design review committee early. We do.

The Cultural District and West 7th. The Cultural District holds five museums, the 120-acre Will Rogers Memorial Center, and the 14,000-seat Dickies Arena. Across the Trinity River from downtown, West 7th is an urban village anchored by Crockett Row and historic Montgomery Plaza, packed with restaurants, bars, and shops.

Camp Bowie and the TCU area. Camp Bowie Boulevard has its own revitalization code, administered with Camp Bowie District, Inc. Next to TCU, the Berry/University district runs on a form-based code written to encourage mixed-use, walkable development around the campus.

Clearfork. Clearfork is a 270-acre development on the Edwards family’s ranch land, named for the Clear Fork of the Trinity, where that ranch began in 1848.

Alliance. In far north Fort Worth, Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport opened on December 14, 1989, as the first airport in the world designated specifically for industrial use. It’s the cornerstone of AllianceTexas, a 27,000-acre development, and Hillwood now markets new home neighborhoods and eight apartment communities in north Fort Worth around it. More rooftops mean more need for restaurants, clinics, salons, and offices, which is our core work.

Put those districts side by side and they split in two. In Clearfork and around Alliance you’ll often tour first-generation space, meaning a bare slab, a storefront, and utilities stubbed to the suite. Downtown, on Magnolia, along Camp Bowie, and in the Stockyards, you’re more likely to take over second-generation space a previous tenant built, often in an older brick building.

Before you sign a Fort Worth lease, find out whether the address sits in a historic district, a form-based code district, or the downtown overlay. That one answer can move your opening date.

We handle both through our tenant improvement service. Restaurant construction adds a health plan review and a grease trap permit, and clinics get medical and wellness planning before the drawings go in.

Fort Worth’s building stock, from Fairmount porches to new shells

Fort Worth’s oldest neighborhoods sit just south of downtown, and the City has documented them in detail. The Fairmount/Southside Historic District covers about 375 acres roughly two miles south of downtown. It was developed between 1890 and 1938, with most of its houses built from 1905 to 1920. Wood-frame bungalows are the most common house, Four Square variations are scattered through, and the National Register nomination counted 1,016 contributing buildings.

Foursquares and a bungalow in the Fairmount/Southside Historic District, the most common house forms there.

Fairmount has company. Elizabeth Boulevard, named for the wife of developer John Ryan, was the City’s first historic district. Ryan also developed Ryan Place and Morningside, and in Morningside the three primary styles are Tudor Revival, Arts and Crafts, and Minimal Traditional. Mistletoe Heights, designated in 2002, is an early 20th century neighborhood built for a middle and upper class market. In all, the City lists 14 local historic districts, from Historic Carver Heights to the Stockyards.

What does a house that age mean for your project? We open those walls expecting a century of layered repairs: wiring from several eras, drain lines in mixed materials, framing changed by past remodels. So we price the investigation before we price the tile. And in a historic district, the exterior answers to design guidelines adopted for that neighborhood, or to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards where a district has none.

The commercial stock follows the same arc. Central Handley is a commercial historic district built between 1910 and 1930. Magnolia Avenue’s restaurants work inside decades-old buildings, and the Stockyards’ saloons line brick streets. Converting one of those older buildings to a restaurant often means new drains, new power, a code-compliant restroom, and a hood that has to find a path through an old roof.

Illustrative: an older brick storefront partway through a restaurant conversion, typical of Fort Worth’s older commercial streets.

Then there’s the other Fort Worth. Newer buildings, like those at Clearfork and around Alliance, are where you’ll most often see shell space, and there the surprises come from the lease exhibit and the permit order, not from inside the walls.

Permits, plan review, and the CO at 100 Fort Worth Trail

Fort Worth’s Development Services department handles building permits, plan review, and inspections from the new City Hall at 100 Fort Worth Trail. Applications go through Accela Citizen Access, and the City’s Permit Assist tool estimates which permits a scope needs before you apply.

The codes are worth checking first. Fort Worth currently enforces the 2021 International Building, Residential, Mechanical, Plumbing, Fuel Gas, Fire, and Existing Building Codes with local amendments, the 2015 energy code, and the 2026 National Electrical Code, effective September 1, 2026. The City typically adopts new codes every other cycle, so a drawing set prepared to newer code editions somewhere else may need a review against Fort Worth’s amendments.

For commercial permits, a few rules shape every schedule:

• Building permit first. New construction, additions, and remodels need building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing permits, and the trade permits can’t be applied for until the building permit is issued. Cosmetic work like flooring, wall covering, cabinets, and countertops doesn’t need one.
• TDLR at $50,000. Projects with construction costs of $50,000 or more must register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for architectural barriers, and the registration number goes on the application.
• Review time. The City’s published standard is 7 business days for first comments on a complete building permit. Fire sprinkler, alarm, and kitchen hood suppression permits are reviewed in 3 to 5 business days.
• Faster paths. The X Team returns full plan review comments in 5 business days, then meets with your design team to clear corrections on the spot, for a $500 application fee per permit plus $1,125 per hour of review. For remodels and moves into existing spaces under 6,000 SF, the free Walk-In Permit Team on City Hall’s fifth floor can process qualifying permits the same day.

Then the certificate of occupancy. Any building used or occupied in Fort Worth needs one, and the City’s CO guide sorts a business into three paths. Same type of business as the last tenant and no remodel: an “Occupancy Existing Ordinance” permit. A different type of business: an “Occupancy Change of Use” permit, with a plan review that recalculates occupancy. Remodeling: a commercial remodel permit first, then the new CO. Houses don’t get COs at all; one- and two-family dwellings fall under the residential code.

Restaurants add a second reviewer. Consumer Health requires plans for a new or extensively remodeled food establishment to be approved before construction starts, including when an existing building is converted to food service. Its plan review guide asks for details we draw from the first sketch: hand sinks within 15 feet of every food prep and dishwashing area, a three-compartment stainless sink, and light-colored, cleanable walls in prep areas. Grease traps get their own permit through the Water Department.

In Fort Worth the CO comes before the health permit, and the pre-operational health inspection has to be requested at least seven days before construction finishes. Schedule backward from both.

Exterior work has its own gate. On a designated landmark or in a local historic district, any exterior change needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before permits are issued. Staff approve most requests. The Historic and Cultural Landmarks Commission, which meets the second Monday of each month, hears new construction, demolition, and requests for waivers. Urban design districts work the same way for signs, awnings, canopies, and lighting. The City’s target is under 5 days for staff review and 21 calendar days or more when a commission has to hear it.

Home remodeling in Fort Worth, TX, house by house

Fort Worth’s residential permit rules are specific, and they catch remodels that owners assume are cosmetic:

• Changing, moving, or repairing walls or floors, or replacing 16 square feet or more of drywall in any wall or ceiling, takes a building permit.
• Replacing exterior doors or windows takes a building permit.
• A new water heater or shower pan takes a plumbing permit.
• Every foundation repair needs a building permit and engineered plans.
• Enclosing a garage for another use needs a permit, and possibly a Zoning Board of Adjustment variance for the lost parking.

Only a registered building contractor can pull those permits, unless you qualify for a homestead permit on the house you own and live in.

Historic homes add the COA. In Fairmount, Mistletoe Heights, Elizabeth Boulevard, and the other districts, it covers siding, windows, doors, fences, porches and porch columns, additions, and foundation work. The City even publishes a how-to series on keeping original wood windows, down to glazing a sash. Planning a serious rehabilitation? Look at the Historic Site Tax Exemption before work begins: spend at least 20% of the improvements’ assessed value on rehabilitation, and the City freezes the pre-renovation valuations for city taxes for 10 years. You have to apply before you start.

Here’s where home remodeling in Fort Worth usually lands for us:

• Kitchens. In an older house, we design the new layout inside the walls and window openings you already have, so the COA review stays simple and the house still reads as itself.
• Bathrooms. A new shower pan means a plumbing permit in Fort Worth, so we pull it with the rest and schedule the inspection before the tile goes in.
• Whole-home remodels. Open up a whole house and the drywall rule, the trade permits, and any COA all land at once. One contractor coordinating them is the point.

Illustrative: a kitchen remodel that keeps the original windows and trim of an early 1900s bungalow.

Around Alliance, Hillwood is still selling new construction, so remodels up there lean toward updating rather than repairing. If your neighborhood has an HOA, its architectural review sits in front of anything exterior, and we prepare that submittal alongside the City permit.

Three Fort Worth landmarks every local knows

The Tarrant County Courthouse

The courthouse at the north end of downtown stands on the site of the military post the Army established in 1849 on a bluff over the Trinity River. Construction started in 1893 and the building opened on July 3, 1895. The county’s self-guided tour notes Texas pink granite from the same quarry as the State Capitol, walls five feet thick at the base, and a clock tower that tops out at 193 feet.

The Tarrant County Courthouse, opened in 1895 and built of Texas pink granite.

The Stockyards on Exchange Avenue

The Fort Worth Stockyards were one of the largest livestock markets in the United States, peaking in 1944 at more than 5 million cattle processed. Today Visit Fort Worth calls the Stockyards National Historic District one of the most popular attractions in Texas, with a twice-daily cattle drive down the brick streets. The City adopted the Stockyards form-based code in May 2017 for almost 300 acres, including the old Swift and Armour meatpacking sites. The Landmarks Commission administers its Historic District, and the Urban Design Commission handles the Transition and Edge districts.

Exchange Avenue under the Fort Worth Stock Yards sign, inside the district’s form-based code area.

The Kimbell Art Museum

Louis I. Kahn’s building for the Kimbell Art Museum opened in 1972. Daylight comes in through narrow skylights along the top of cycloid concrete vaults and spreads off pierced aluminum reflectors, and the principal materials are concrete, travertine, and white oak. For anyone who builds interiors, it’s a lesson in restraint.

The Kimbell’s Louis I. Kahn building in the Cultural District, opened in 1972.

How a Fort Worth project runs from our Plano office

Our process is the same in Fort Worth as it is two blocks from our office, and the distance is exactly why the paperwork matters. Here’s the sequence in Fort Worth terms:

1. Understand. A site walk with you, plus a read of your lease, your district guidelines, or your HOA covenants, so we know which City reviews the job faces.
2. Visualize. 3D renderings come first. Pricing comes after you’ve seen the space.
3. Plan. A fixed-scope proposal, broken out trade by trade, with every allowance listed.
4. Execute. One project manager owns the schedule, books trades around site days, and sends you photos and a written progress report each week.
5. Deliver. At handover you receive as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO, and warranties in one close-out package.
6. Support. Call us after move-in. We still answer.

Sara Bannat (Founder and CEO) and Mahmoud Abu Saad (COO) lead MASACO, and the company is a Goldman Sachs Preferred Vendor. Need a general contractor in Fort Worth, TX, for commercial construction in a Clearfork shell, a Magnolia storefront, or a Fairmount bungalow that’s ready for real work? Book a consultation and send us the address first. We’ll tell you which reviews it faces, then show you a design and a written, fixed-scope price.

Building in Fort Worth: what to know.

Fort Worth passed one million residents in the Census Bureau's 2024 estimates, and its 352 square miles hold everything from the 1890s streetcar suburb of Fairmount to new shell space around AllianceTexas. Development Services at the new City Hall, 100 Fort Worth Trail, issues every building permit and certificate of occupancy, while historic districts, form-based code districts like the Near Southside and the Stockyards, and the Downtown design overlay add their own review for exterior work. Restaurants also clear Consumer Health plan review before construction starts.

Fort Worth neighborhoods and districts.

• Downtown and Sundance Square
• Near Southside
• Magnolia Avenue
• Fairmount
• Mistletoe Heights
• Ryan Place
• Morningside
• Cultural District
• West 7th
• Camp Bowie
• Berry/University (TCU area)
• Stockyards
• Clearfork
• AllianceTexas

Fort Worth on the map.

Open Fort Worth, TX in Google Maps