NEAR SOUTHSIDE, INC

ESSAY

Cheering for the Home Team

Near Southside, Inc. and Megan Henderson

By Sonya Cisneros Wierzowiecki

The walk to Fire Station Park meanders through Fairmount, where candycolored craftsman homes are as distinct as the people who live in them and the crowd gathered to hear important news for Southsiders. And she was worried no one would come to her party.

Megan Henderson is director of events and communication for Near Southside, Inc. (NSI), though she would tell you she’s the waterboy. “I don’t take credit for any of the touchdowns,” she says.

NSI is a private, member-funded, nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing Fort Worth’s Near Southside.

A small staff of five work to keep the community connected and thriving by matching good people with good projects, advocating on behalf of small-business owners, and creating events like ArtsGoggle that bring people together.

Megan considers the construction of the skate plaza at Fire Station Park, along with the establishment of Art South, as two major wins for NSI. Since 2013, Megan has been there for the good, the bad and the ugly, with an inherent readiness for honest dialogue. Her work in making Fort Worth better is personal, though the city wasn’t always home. “All the cool kids from Cleburne now live in Fort Worth,” according to friend Shasta Haubrich, who met Megan at Cleburne High School years ago.

“She is a really hard worker with a big heart, always trying to look out for people who need help,” Shasta says. “She’s the person to rely on.”

Photos of Near Southside, Inc’s past events

“My day, my mind, and heart stays in the Near Southside.”

-MEGAN HENDERSON , director of events and communication for Near Southside, Inc.

Megan’s parents always had an open door for anyone in need. The couple had two biological children, Megan and her brother, and helped many others. Her mom worked two jobs and went to night school, while her dad worked three jobs.

“Pandemic pivot is nothing to me,” she says, given how adaptive she and her brother had to be as self-described latchkey kids.

NSI administers TIF#4, a city-wide tax increment financing that has collected and distributed nearly $100 million in public funding to advance economic investment and infrastructure improvement in the Near Southside. A great example of how funds are stewarded is the skate plaza. “I could cry right now,” said one teen, alongside visibly tearful elected officials. He and his friends will soon have their third place.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term, “third places,” which refers to places where people spend time between home and work. A third place could be the gas station across the street from JPS Hospital, where Megan once managed the gift shop. There, Nehme Elbitar was working toward opening a Lebanese restaurant.

If the gift shop was closed, it was because Megan was helping him deliver pizza. After work, she would stop by and just listen to his dreams. The Elbitar’s Chadra Mezza & Grill now anchors Park Place Village.

Megan Henderson Photo courtesy of Make Something Beautiful

Photos of Near Southside, Inc’s past events

Revitalizing Fort Worth’s Near Southside

The chat room is Megan’s third place. “The people who occupy that place live in permanent protection in my brain,” she says. They are family. It’s a place she can go where she doesn’t have to be “Megan from the Southside.”

“It was the Kool-Aid that got me hooked on this neighborhood.”

In her mid-20s, Megan applied for a job answering phones for the Main Street Arts Festival. As a college dropout with a tenacious work ethic, she’s grateful to have been given a chance. She was recruited by NSI President Mike Brennan to do the same thing she was doing for Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. but for the “home team.”

After a decade of living in the Near Southside, she recently decamped to a giant project house in South Hills that she shares with her partner, Tatara Siegel, and 10-year-old daughter, Esme.

Given her deep roots in the Near Southside community, Megan is nomadic. She would love to buy a one-way ticket anywhere. She enjoys tiny towns as much as big cities, marveling at how big and complex the world is.

At Fire Station Park, familiar lyrics soar above the crowd that tap into the tender spirit of youth that Megan never lost.

I was a teenage anarchist

Looking for a revolution

Do you remember

When you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?

“I’m still on the hunt for who I want to be,” she says.

After drowning herself in Thai food and scrubbing a day of park dirt out from under her nails, she’s undoubtedly dreaming of the next big thing. With events on the horizon, she may not have time to see a new country or learn to crochet. She wants to read more, but there’s work to be done. “My day, my mind, and heart stays in the Near Southside.” There’s a certain swagger to the Southside that won’t be lost on her watch.