As far as forks I would recommend...pick up a 1" steel fork off of some 80's road bike on Craigslist or just buy a Surly Pacer fork...there are others. Anything drilled for a brake will work. My Casati's tire is perilously close to the down tube as it sits, when I hit a decent expansion joint on pavement sometimes it leaves a little rubber on the DT. That's close folks. A brake will stress the legs of the fork just south of the crown, often seperating the two or cracking the leg at the crown end. A road fork, even a crowned one like on a KHS has the steer tube welded through the crown and often (most of the time) it's double tubed at the point where it is drilled and faced for a brake, thus giving it three tubes inside of each other. That's reinforcement. Track forks not unlike my own are made to keep weight low, assumed since they are not drilled there will be no braking forces applied to the crown area, and made to tolerate only the weight of the rider and their pedaling forces.

Do as you wish but it's cheaper to blow $100 on an Ebay fork than $1000 on new front teeth when the fork collapses and you eat sidewalk.