Is this Revival Sustainable?

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We began renovating houses in Bryan/College Station almost 10 years ago. Well mostly Bryan, because that is where the numbers worked for us. Renovating several houses in and near downtown Bryan led to us getting more houses to renovate downtown. In the process we fell in love. It was not the Downtown I grew up in. Back then, it was mostly boarded up and abandoned buildings filled with an eerie almost haunted house feeling. As a kid, the only reason to go downtown was to get a hat at Catalena’s or feed and tack at Kimble Feed Store.

In short order, I began to office downtown as well. I would get excited about walking to lunch, to a meeting with an architect, or the city office to pick up a building permit. In our Texas town, it is smoldering hot 10 months of the year. Getting excited about walking anywhere that isn’t air conditioned is pretty much unheard of!

A revival had been started by the brave and patient pioneers nearly 10 years earlier. It consisted of merchants, restaurateurs, and city officials. The revitalization was well underway by the time we had rediscovered our eclectic little downtown. However our discovery came with a vigor, an intensity, and a determination to fan the flames of the revival. Even though we didn’t know exactly what that meant or how to accomplish it, we jumped in with both feet.

In early 2016, after much searching and negotiating we were able to purchase a dilapidated Main Street building that we renovated into office and retail space. Now we were deeply vested in the downtown community. Being landlord’s of a small bakery, a retail gift shop, and officing on Main Street, we became acutely aware of the struggles and successes that retail businesses had downtown. But it wasn’t until we bought the bakery in November 2017 that I truly understood and experienced first hand what it meant to be a “mom & pop” retail business downtown.

My professional background is comprised of underwriting commercial businesses, real estate development and real estate investing, so I understood the “location, location, location” concept and that retail & commercial businesses follow rooftops. Not the other way around. But I didn’t have an AH-HA moment until I was in South College Station in a cement covered, personality-less strip center, hungry and needing lunch. All of the restaurants were buzzing with people. Parking was a pain and it wasn’t even during the lunch hour.

In full disclosure, my reaction was jealously that manifested itself in the form of frustration and a little hatred. Don’t get me wrong, I am for successful business everywhere and know retail is a hard row to hoe regardless of circumstances. Heck, some of the restaurants in this busy strip center also had a location in downtown. Once the emotions cooled down and rational thought took over, the light bulb came on. The sheer volume of people living in the vicinity drives the footsteps to those doors. I was experiencing the principle “commercial follows rooftops” in real life.

With the revival of small and medium downtowns across the country, the exact opposite is happening. And it has too. The spark starts with forward thinking city officials recognizing the potential of their largely abandoned downtown coupled with the demographic trend of both young professionals and empty nesters migrating back to the urban centers. As the plywood comes off the building windows, lights are turned on and life is breathed back into streets, the heart and souls of the old buildings come to life and the friendly smiles of the shop owners stir up a feeling of nostalgia, a remembrance of a better time. The idea of acres of concrete and box retailers with employees that have been dropped in as a cog often under appreciating the human interaction of customers becomes less appealing to us.

Downtown leaders work tirelessly to bring events and gatherings to their newly found downtown. And people come! The response is amazing. The buzz grows and more and more people come time and time again. Just what they wanted!

So what is the problem? The rest of the week or month…when there is no event. The merchants are often able to pay their rent with these events, but the rest of the expenses have to get covered too. Buying merchandise or food, payroll, utilities, marketing, much less profit. Without events the foot traffic is highly erratic and unpredictable, wreaking havoc on restaurants knowing how much to prepare for the day. Merchants can go all day with less than $100 in sales.

What’s missing is the critical mass of roof tops, or heads in beds, with sufficient disposable income needed to support these business. The urban centers are missing the folks that say “lets grab a quick bite to eat” and go to the nearest eating establishments. They are missing residents that need to run an errand and the most convenient place to do that is in the downtown shops.

Our research of similar downtown urban centers of similar size and growth shows that the “critical mass” number is 200 resident lofts in the urban core.

Now our mission of “fanning the flames of a home town revival” has a clear goal. Heads in beds as quickly as possible. We are focusing our efforts on creating houses that people love to live in within 1 mile of the urban core and to grow the number of new residents within the urban core to 200 as quickly as possible.

To give you a feel of where Downtown Bryan is at, based on my best estimates, there are currently about 58 lofts downtown and about 27 newly developed townhomes or 4-plexes. Renovation Wranglers has broken ground on 9 more townhomes and we are working on other projects to get the number of Urban Core Residents up to 200.

Why is this critically important to us? We strongly believe this is what it will take to provide sustainability to merchants downtown. And after all, it is not the buildings and houses, but rather the restaurant owners and merchants that are the soul and character of our town. #MissionCriticalMass200

Check out the State of Downtown Report to learn more about Downtown Bryan.

Written By: Katie Neason, Renovation Wranglers

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