Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Fort Worth voters approved three new taxes by seventy-percent margins to build it, a billionaire led the private donors who covered the rest, and the result is the finest rodeo arena ever constructed. Dickies Arena at 1911 Montgomery Street, beside the Will Rogers Memorial Center in the Cultural District, opened with a public ribbon-cutting on 26 October 2019 and its first event - a Twenty One Pilots concert - on 8 November. The 540-million-dollar building was a public-private partnership capped at 225 million in public money, with financier Ed Bass leading the private side; it is owned by the city and run by the not-for-profit Trail Drive Management Corp. The design by David M. Schwarz and HKS takes its cues from the city's motto - Where the West Begins - blending Southwest Art Deco with towers echoing the 1936 Will Rogers complex next door, and exterior murals celebrating Western heritage. Inside, capacity runs to 14,000 for concerts, 13,300 for basketball, 12,200 for family shows and hockey, and 9,300 for rodeo, with 40 suites, 2,400 club seats and 215 rodeo boxes ringing the lower bowl. Its anchor tenant justified the boxes: the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo moved its performances into the arena in 2020 after 83 years in Will Rogers Coliseum, filling nearly a month each winter, and the Professional Bull Riders brought their World Finals in 2022 and 2023. NCAA basketball, gymnastics championships and boxing fill the sports calendar between arena-scale concert tours. The building put Fort Worth back on routing sheets that once skipped straight to Dallas: headline tours across country, rock, Latin and hip-hop now play the west side of the metroplex, with the adjacent 2,200-space Chevrolet garage handling parking. Set among the Cultural District's museums - the Kimbell, the Modern and the Amon Carter are minutes away - Dickies Arena gives the city an events room to match its ambitions, with the stockyards' heritage baked into the walls.