After sitting dark for four decades, Fort Worth's iconic Pioneer Tower will soon light up the night skies once again.
A multi-million dollar effort to restore the 83-year-old structure is underway.
While doing that work, they discovered several unforeseen structural issues with the tower -- which is why Tuesday, city staff will ask council members to approve an additional $981,050 in funding to make the necessary fixes.
"When you're working with a structure like this, you find things that you may not have found during the preliminary analysis," said Richard Zavala, Interim Director of Public Events for the City of Fort Worth. "We want to get things correct. There are some infrastructure things we found, so those definitely have to be fixed. And there's some things we're doing to help sustain the structure."
Zavala says making the fixes now, while construction work is already taking place, will ultimately cost the city less money than if they were to put off that work until later.
The additional repairs should not affect the project's timeline.
The goal is to relight the tower when the brand new Dickie's Arena, which sits adjacent to it, opens in early November.
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"It's just a great celebration for this," said Zavala. "It's a great investment -- there are no tax dollars in this. These are all tourism and culture dollars. It's a good reinvestment of those dollars. We're doing things to make sure we sustain it for the future."
If the extra funds are approved, the total cost of the project will climb to $4.7 million.
The City Council will take the vote during their meeting Tuesday, which starts at 7 p.m.
