At the January luncheon of the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce, Brownwood Mayor Stephen Haynes delivered the 2022 State of the City address. The theme of his remarks was the COVID pandemic, how it affected Brownwood, and how Brownwood responded.
Haynes gave a brief history of when COVID first arrived in Brownwood and the concern that was felt by everyone. Some statistics showed negative effects locally, such as unemployment rising above 6% for the first time in many years, and traffic counts taken near the Traffic T declining by nearly 20% in 2020. He said the pandemic illustrated how vulnerable, dependent, and interconnected we all are.
But surprisingly, Brownwood showed its resiliency and business bounced back strongly in 2021. Some of the metrics cited:
*** Sales tax collected in 2021 increased 13% over 2020.
*** Total construction in 2021 was $19 million, vs. $11 million in 2020
*** Hotel Occupancy Taxes in 2021 was $418,000, the highest ever collected
*** Total real estate sales were $86 million in 2021, up from $75 million in 2020.
Haynes then talked about various improvements in Brownwood over the last ten years:
PARKS – The Massey Sports Complex was opened in 2011 with new baseball and softball fields. Since then have been a new soccer complex in 2015, a skate park and the Veterans Memorial Park in 2016, splash pads and improvements to Trigg, Allcorn, and Mayes Parks in 2017, a rejuvenized Cecil Holman Park with the help of the Revitalizing Our Community group in 2018, and improvements to Riverside, Lednicky, Trigg, and Coursey Parks.
DOWNTOWN – The key to downtown was the opening of the Lyric Theatre in 2014. That spurred a revival that has included many new businesses including The Vault, Tres Leches, Teddy’s Brewhaus, Pioneer Tap House, CJ’s, The Hen House, Intermission Book Shop, Saturday’s, Earth and Noble, 10 Mile, Stone’s Grove, Shaw’s Marketplace, and Samantha Rodriguez Photography. More new downtown businesses expected to open this year are Fuzzy’s Tacos, Lucille + Mabel Kitchen and Libations, and Primal Brewing.
Haynes said that in the years 2018 through 2021 there was over $2,300,000 in private investment downtown, assisted by $553,279 from the Brownwood Municipal Development District.
“It was pretty amazing, really, to go through what we went through as a community and everything COVID did to us, and how it impacted us,” Haynes said after the luncheon. “The community is resilient and figured out ways to make it work. It really brings pride to your heart to see the economic performance and how our businesses were able to overcome. First and foremost, the investment by our private entrepreneurs is what is really fueling our economy. We love our small businesses and what they are doing, particularly downtown, but also in our corridors. But the City has to do its part, and we feel like we’ve been a good partner with our parks improvements, with our street improvements, and with our economic incentives, particularly in the downtown corridor.”
(story from Brownwoodnews.com by Mike Blagg)