Brownwood Mayor Stephen Haynes held his annual State of the City address Friday afternoon at the Mabee Center on the Howard Payne University campus, as he recapped the highlights of 2023 and shared news to look forward to in 2024 – the 140th anniversary of the City of Brownwood.
2024
The Brownwood Event Center Complex, Haynes said, is expected to be completed in April of this year with a grand opening planned for the summer and the first major concert expected in October. Haynes also stated a weekend concert festival could be in the cards for the spring of 2025. Haynes added that conferences of around 350 people would be “ideal” for the event center, and a waiting list is available at brownwoodeventcenter.com for those who might want to rent the facility once completed.
The complete reconstruction of Riverside Park will take place in 2024 at a cost of $3,113,912 in American Rescue Plan Acts Funds. Haynes added that the City was recently approved for a grant of $1,500,000 in additional money that Haynes stated would likely be used for additional lighting to the park.
Haynes also shared information about a new 87,000 square foot pavilion that will be constructed on the HPU campus. The pavilion will feature a commercial grade kitchen, space for up to 300 people, state of the art technology, 10 large outdoor televisions, and a large video wall at a cost of $1,500,000.
An open house to discuss the new Downtown Master Plan will be held from 8 to 10 a.m. Monday, Feb. 26 at the Lyric Theatre, and the public is invited to attend. There will be a formal presentation from Freese & Nichols and the remaining time will be open to review the plan with available panel discussion.
Among the new businesses coming to town, Shoe Dept. Encore is expected to open in the spring; contracts have been signed on two of the three plats at the former OYO Hotel location but those have not yet been revealed; and Marathon Medical is moving its corporate offices from Colorado to Brownwood which will result in 25-30 new jobs.
The Superior Essex expansion is underway at a cost of $73 million which will feature 170 new jobs and a 90,000 square feet expansion that will result in more than 500,000 square feet of production space.
2023
The City of Brownwood generated $9,772,386 in sales tax, which is a 49 percent increase from $6,545,855 just 10 years ago in 2014. Because of the sales tax spike, the property tax rate for the 2023-24 fiscal year is $0.6659 – the lowest for the City since 1994. Without the sales tax growth, Haynes said, the property tax rate this fiscal year would be $0.8512.
The building valuation for 2023 was $28,833,582, which Haynes attributed to several smaller projects and one large project – Traflager Homes’ construction of 112 residential units on Milam Drive across from the Indian Creek Townhomes, also a Traflagar project.
Sports tourism continued to grow as well in 2023, as the City hosted 38 events to 49,157 visitors that resulted in 8,839 hotel stays and an economic impact of $2,800,000.