How Texas Avenue came back

For forty years downtown Baytown was the part of town you drove through to get to the part of town you were going to. Then it wasn't. This is what happened, as far as we can tell it, and what it means for the next ten years.

What it was. Texas Avenue was the main street of Goose Creek before the three towns — Goose Creek, Pelly, and Baytown — merged in 1948, and for a generation after: the department stores, the Brunson Theater, the bank, the newspaper. Then Garth Road happened — the mall, the highway, the chains — and the avenue emptied the way every American main street did in the seventies and eighties. By the nineties it was storefront churches, empty windows, and the Little Theater keeping a light on.

What changed. The city made a decision it could have made twenty years earlier: designate the district, fix the sidewalks and the lights, put a square where the traffic used to be, restore the theater, and bet that people would come if there was somewhere to sit. The ACE District — Arts, Culture and Entertainment — was the name. Art Alley was the first thing people photographed. Town Square gave the town a place for the Market, the tree, the parade and Grito Fest. And then a few businesses took the bet: Bocanegra's at 214 West Texas Avenue, the Dirty Daiquiri on North Main, the galleries and the Art Center, the shops that turn over until one sticks.

What it is now. Three blocks that feel like a town on a Market Saturday and a festival night, and are still quiet at two on a Tuesday. The evening economy came back before the daytime one. The empty storefront that everyone points at is the next thing, whatever it is. It's smaller than the internet says — the bars people put "downtown" are mostly on Garth and the I-10 side — and better for being honest about it.

What it isn't yet. A place to get coffee at four in the afternoon. A hotel. A grocery. A reason for the turnaround crews on Garth to drive in on a Wednesday. Those are the gaps, and they're also the opportunities; every one of them has been filled in a dozen other Texas main streets in the last decade, usually by one stubborn person with a lease.

The tension. The San Jacinto Marketplace — the redevelopment of the old mall out on Garth — will either pull the town's energy back to the highway or push it downtown, depending on what opens there. Watch it. Downtown's next five years are decided on Garth.

What you can do. Go on a Tuesday. Buy the coffee wherever it is, eat at Bocanegra's, sit in Town Square. Main streets come back one weekday lunch at a time, and this one is closer than it looks.

En español. Texas Avenue fue la calle principal de Goose Creek antes de la fusión de 1948, se vació cuando Garth Road y el centro comercial llegaron, y volvió cuando la ciudad creó el Distrito ACE: Art Alley, Town Square, el teatro restaurado, el mercado, el Grito Fest, y negocios como Bocanegra's que apostaron por el centro. Todavía le falta un café de tarde, un hotel y una tienda de comestibles. Vaya un martes.