There’s the good side, of course, when your patio has a city view and your night light is the Pier 1 tower.
Then there’s the down side of things, when your hot-tub cover blows off and swirls three stories down into a city street.
That’s rooftop-terrace living.
An urban housing boom has brought dozens of town houses with rooftop terraces to downtown Fort Worth in the past five years, and even more are poised to open up on the Cowtown and Arlington horizons this year.
Owners and builders of sky-high terraces gave us a peek into life in the sky – the upsides of rooftop living, as well as the few drawbacks that bring them back down to earth.
Views The lyrics to “Up on the Roof” say it is the stars that provide nighttime entertainment, but in Fort Worth it is the city lights that put on a show for free.
The Pier 1 tower serves as a backdrop for evening meals at Holly and Chris Turner’s home at Bluff Street Townhomes in downtown Fort Worth. Fireworks from LaGrave Field, to the north, provide an extra spark.
The view was a deal-sealer for Holly Turner, who grew up on a Hill Country ranch. She loves urban life but balked a bit when the couple first thought about living in a town house downtown.
“I want to be outdoors, even in the city,” she says.
Then she saw the rooftop terrace, which she and her husband had the builder expand to cover about half of the second-floor roof.
Now she describes the town house with the 650-square-foot elevated patio as the best of both worlds, a place where she can enjoy the city views and still have outdoor space of her own.
The downtown view to the south and east is eye-level with utility lines, a fact the Turners say they don’t pay much attention to because the rest of the panorama is so captivating.
“The builders told us we could pay $70,000 to have the lines put underground or we could wait and the city eventually will bury them,” Holly Turner says. They opted to wait.
Privacy Beautifully rendered drawings of town houses real and imagined are on the wall and desk of Fort Worth architect Ken Schaumburg, who has 188 town houses with rooftop terraces on his drawing board.
If the plans go through, they’ll be built at Interstate 35W and Northside Drive.
“Typically in a town home, your sanctuary is really your roof,” says Schaumburg. “There’s not a lot of privacy between you and the street.” Rooftops essentially are very small, unfenced lots. They are sold unfinished, requiring the owner to put in a walkable deck, or finished, with the builder doing all the work.
By design, some rooftops have built-in privacy where structural walls shield homeowners from the direct view of other building-top neighbors.
Others have clear views toward other terraces. And no one wants to put up a view-destroying 6-foot fence.
Schaumburg’s own home with a rooftop terrace is in Schaumburg Lofts, a group of eight town houses he built on Daggett Avenue in Fort Worth’s Hospital District.
The deck is wide open, with the sky as a canopy that fills most of the view. Look to the north and there’s downtown Fort Worth.
Look to the south and there are four other rooftop terraces. That’s OK with him. He put up three blue wooden panels that serve as a colorful and partial fence that keep his neighbors from seeing him in his hot tub.
Not all town house owners worry about privacy.
U.S. Rep. Kay Granger says she has no qualms about stepping out on her city terrace in her bathrobe, a cup of coffee in one hand.
“I’ve seen people drive by and wave,” she laughs.
Parties Partygoers at Granger’s 2,600-square-foot terrace have views of the glittering glass City Center towers and much of downtown Fort Worth. Toward the south and west, the view includes the unoccupied upper stories of a brick building and to the east are the rooftop terraces of the new Le Bijou town houses.
Granger bought the abandoned 80-year-old office building at Seventh and Jones streets about five years ago. She converted it to ground-floor offices for her insurance company and two second-story residences for her and her son’s family.
Her design included a lot of space for outdoor entertaining.
Town house owners say having rooftop terraces does much to enhance their social lives.
Granger’s 900-square-foot patio serves as a front “porch” to the two town houses. Stairs from that porch lead up to where the entire roof was converted into a terrace for parties.
It’s a large, empty space when not set up for a crowd. A metal roof serves as a cover for just a small section of the patio, and just a few trees in pots screen the air-conditioning units.
A hundred or more could easily attend a party atop the Granger Building without having to leave the rooftop for anything except a trip to the powder room. A permanent stainless-steel sink is installed on the roof, electricity was wired in for lighting, and speakers bring music to the parties Granger hosts. The rooftop also is used by Granger’s grandson, who has a specially installed swing and lots of room to pedal his toy cars.
The elements Perhaps the most disturbing words that Granger has heard about her rooftop terrace are these: “Mom, the party tent is three blocks away.” It blew off, despite efforts to secure it. Luckily, it was a weekend morning and no cars were out to dodge the flying tent.
Wind and sun, never in short supply on anyone’s Texas patio, are in abundance on rooftops.
Without trees or grass, the sun on a rooftop can be intense.
Granger solves that by using her rooftop mostly in the spring and fall. The Turners are getting ready to put a canvas cover over their table. Others say they avoid the most brutal sun by using their rooftops only in the evening during the summer and rely on the ever-so-slight windchill of an almost constant breeze.
The downside is that the breeze can be stiff.
At Schaumburg Lofts, Schaumburg himself has had to rescue a hot tub cover after it blew off the top of his three-story town house.
A yard in the sky “Rooftops are the new back yards,” says Dan Fuqua, developer of the 40 town houses with rooftop terraces at the Palisades on East Bluff Street.
Instead of walking out a slider or a French door, rooftop owners typically climb up spiral staircases. Relatively few town houses have standard stairs, such as the Pecan Place Townhomes on East First and Pecan streets. Elevators to the rooftop are available in only a few town houses, including all of the 14 homes in the upcoming Le Bijou on Seventh Street in Fort Worth.
The big difference, of course, is there’s no lawn to mow.
“A lot of the market doesn’t want to maintain a front and back yard,” says Rob Sell, co-owner of Village Homes, which is building Magnolia Green on Lipscomb Street near Magnolia Avenue. The 17 town houses with 250-square-foot roof terraces are not yet complete, but more than half of them are sold.
Like a back yard, rooftop terraces are popular places for hot tubs. It typically takes a crane to get the spa up top, but once there, most rooftops are able to bear the weight.
Unlike a back yard, rooftops have an advantage that not everyone considers.
“No ants. No mosquitoes. No bugs,” Holly Turner says.
