Step onto the streets of Old Town Lewisville and enter a friendly, bustling marketplace of locally owned shops, restaurants and specialty services.
OTBA Blog
Turn back the hands of time with a walk through Downtown Old Town Lewisville’s Historic District. The revitalized historic district is the heart of our community and has become an attractive place for local residents to live, work and play, as well as a popular tourist destination to visit. In addition to its distinctive architecture, Old Town features an exceptional assortment of retail and service businesses. Old Town’s diverse business base is anchored by traditional retailers such as apparel, jewelry and furniture stores, as well as antiques, art galleries, boutiques and numerous gift shops. The district also has a variety of restaurants, a community theatre, a thriving wedding community, and luxurious event venues.
This district demonstrates how proven principles of retail development can be combined with the best practices of New Urbanism, Smart Growth, and architectural design to create successful and competitive mixed-use urban commercial centers.
This post by Amanda Ferguson, OTBA President and owner of nest floral studio and pulp::letterpress.
Shops and retailing form the lifeblood of many historic areas, providing vitality, vibrancy and an essential economic base. There are many local examples of how retail development can be successfully integrated within an historic district and add to economic prosperity such as Grapevine Main Street, Bishop Arts District, Downtown McKinney, Denton Square…. Such examples show how retail development can be successfully integrated within an historic context and add to economic prosperity
Historic Old Town Lewisville has experienced many changes over the past five years including public and private investment, business growth, an increase in the number of households, and public transit. The future promises even more growth with transit-oriented development, plaza development, public art, and retail growth. This district strives to preserve the character of Downtown Lewisville as the area continues to grow. Retailing makes a key contribution to the culture and economy of towns today, as well as allowing for the continued viability of historic buildings through their adaptation for new uses.
This post by Amanda Ferguson, OTBA President and owner of nest floral studio and pulp::letterpress.
Business vs. Real Estate Development
I tend to think about economic development in two categories. One of those categories is business development. This means helping entrepreneurs soundly start and grow their business as well as recruiting new companies to the community. This helps boost the local tax base and keep local economic activity thriving.
The other category is real estate development. This focuses on ensuring that building and development activity continues to move forward in the community. This part is much more challenging and can present a number of roadblocks to the business development side of economic development.
Almost anyone in Denton County with $15 can file for an assumed name and become an overnight entrepreneur. I say this not to downplay the importance or complexity of entrepreneurship, but to highlight the fact that real estate development is not as accessible. The commercial real estate market relies on complex pro-forma analysis, funding models, an ever changing market and a myriad of technical experts such as civil engineers and architects.
While real estate development in a new community requires effort and expertise, redeveloping an area is downright challenging and takes careful planning.
Enter Brownfields
Lewisville has big plans for its Old Town area. The district has seen successes with its efforts to revitalize, and was even awarded “Community of the Year” by the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association. This vision is continued forward with the Old Town Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Plan, the Mill Street Corridor Plan and Wayne Ferguson Plaza. These planning efforts have one key element and focus: building more homes into the fabric of Old Town.
It sounds simple. Building more homes means more people. People bring more economic activity because people are consumers. But how do you build and sell homes in an area that is an existing industrial property base? What about the environmental concern that goes with building in such an area? The brownfields program is important because it can help answer these questions and move properties beyond the challenges presented by their age.
Getting to Growth
What is a brownfield? To quote the EPA definition, a brownfield is “any real property, the expansion, redevelopment or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.” The brownfields program in Lewisville is focused on identifying obstacles to development presented by environmental questions while creating a strategy to overcome those obstacles. Funded by an EPA Brownfields Assessment Grant, the program can pay for Phase I, Phase II and Clean-Up Planning for potentially contaminated real property.
No matter what your ilk, whether you are a local business owner, real estate developer, resident or taxpayer, you should know about the brownfields program because it is a key part of the critical path to building new residents (and new consumers) into the fabric of the local economy.
This post by Elizabeth Trosper, Business Development Coordinator at the City of Lewisville. For more information, contact her at 972.219.3417 or visit: http://www.ecodevlewisville.com/brownfields
With so many new and exciting things on the horizon in Old Town, (the new DCTA rail station, the Art Center, the plaza, etc) OTBA felt it was time to udpate our logo before hitting the ground running with our renewed marketing efforts. With the support of our Board and membership, we engaged with Cliff Tew of Tew Marketing (http://tewmarketing.com) to assist us in designing a logo that will both represent us an organization and Old Town Lewisville.
Ideas! At our May general meeting, Tew facilitated a brainstorming seassion during which we discussed what we wanted our new logo and branding to reflect. Themes and ideas for branding tended to focus on the artistic identity in Old Town, our identity as a historic downtown, and the upcoming rail.
Goals! Our resulting goals were to create a logo that is simple in design that allowed for flexibility in use and also to create a logo that speaks to our identity as an emerging downtown area with historic roots with a hip and modern sensibility. Participants at the meeting filled out a survey, the results of which showed that we desired a logo with a vintage feel but also with a modern vibe.
Taking these ideas and direction, Tew created five concept logos that were presented at the June meeting for the membership to choose from. After some discussion we choose to blend two of the designs into the logo concepts you see here.
Inspiration! Tew’s inspiration for these logos was the layout and blocks of Main Street in Old Town. The rectangles represent the individual businesses along the street while the space between them represent the street itself. The colors used are vintage colors and the type face is a blend of both modern and historic font.
