Old Town Burleson Was Planned Into a Real Downtown

Old Town Burleson reads like an old downtown that got lucky, but most of it was deliberate. The city has been working an Old Town Development and Preservation Plan for more than twenty years, refreshed in 2016 after a new-urbanism design charrette, with the goal of turning the strip along Renfro Street from a pass-through into a place people actually stop.

The centerpiece is Mayor Vera Calvin Plaza at 141 W. Renfro Street, finished in June 2020, with a performance stage and gathering space that now hosts the town's events. Around it the city spent more than $12 million (adding hundreds of parking spaces in the old railroad right-of-way, recruiting restaurants, calming the traffic so people would walk it), and that public money pulled in far more private investment behind it.

If you're trying to make sense of Burleson's fast-growing north side, Old Town is the tell. The city bet on a real center rather than another road to drive through, and the plaza is where that bet shows.