Hap Bagget assembles a a group of partners bent on changing the face of southeast Fort Worth.

By: Paul K. Harral

Some boys never get over playing in the dirt. Happy Baggett is one. It’s just that the amount of dirt he’s playing with these days is measured in acres. Lots of acres. He’s the driving force behind Renaissance Square, a massive development at Berry Street and U.S. Highway 287 that is bringing shopping, health care and housing to one of the most undeserved and poorest areas of Fort Worth.

It started as a business deal, and while it is still that, it has morphed into a project bringing together many different interests in Fort Worth, in Texas and from across the country that is remaking the face and fabric of Southeast Fort Worth.

Investors  Mark  and  Shauna Trieb  were  vacationing  in  Italy in  2006  when  they  decided  to participate  in  the  deal  without ever seeing the land. They initially expected   to   hold   the   land   for perhaps three years and make a killing on the investment. “That’s what our intention was,” Mark Trieb said. “Our intention changed. Our intention now is to create a sort of a master planned community in the inner city of Southeast Fort Worth that  will  bring  together  families and kids in an environment that is supported by a number of diff rent healthy attributes, and cradle-to-college education.”