“I want to show you something.” That is how it started, the revival of Downtown Brownwood.

At Friday’s monthly luncheon of the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce, Eric Evans told the story of how Downtown Brownwood has come to life in the past decade, and why it is successful today.  Evans is President of Downtown Brownwood Inc., and Managing Director of the Lyric Theatre.

Although he did not grow up here, Evans is a sixth-generation member of a Brownwood family.  When he moved here “one of the things I first got enamored with was our Downtown.”  At the time he was on the staff of the First Baptist Church.  One day as he was leaving the church service he was approached by Jessie Hamilton.  She is the owner of Hamilton’s in downtown Brownwood today.  At that time she owned a women’s and men’s clothing store called Pat’s and Gene’s, which she had purchased from Pat and Gene Arthur.  It was located in the building where the Lyric Theatre is now, and occupied only the space which is now the lobby of the theatre.  The rest of the building was storage space.  She said “I want you to come to my shop and I want to show you something.”

So he followed her to Pat’s and Gene’s.  “She walked me out her back door and there was this huge cavernous building inside, that I didn’t even know existed.  It’s amazing what is downtown that you don’t know exists.  And that is what I found.  It had a stage, a flyloft, and an airplane in the attic.”  (Gene Arthur, a retired Air Force pilot, was constructing a homebuilt airplane in the back of the building.) “Tons of storage stuff, that is what it was being used for.  And that was the beginning for me and a couple of other people envisioning what could be in that space if we returned it to a performing arts theater.  And when we did that it became a little bit of a passion of mine to know and learn and to help create a downtown place that would be something special.”

Pat’s and Gene’s moved down the street and was renamed Hamilton’s.  The Lyric Theatre restoration project took several years, along with blood, toil, tears, sweat, and more than a little money.  But it re-opened in 2014, one-hundred years from its original opening date. “We’ve come a long way, baby,” Evans said, borrowing an advertising slogan from years ago.  “The downtown district has found a real niche in Central Texas.”  Last year the Lyric Theatre attracted over 20,000 persons, one-fourth of whom travelled more than 100 miles to attend the shows.

The Lyric was the seed for the revival of Downtown Brownwood.  Since then numerous new businesses have opened downtown, including retail stores, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues.  Evans mentioned businesses such as Shaw’s Marketplace, Pioneer Taphouse, Intermission Bookshop, and Over the Rainbow Ice Cream as examples of unique businesses that have become destinations for local folks as well as out of town visitors.  “We (the Lyric Theatre) are not the only place driving traffic downtown.  Intermission Bookshop is popular on social media, and has customers from Fort Worth and Austin.  They are getting the same kind of people who come to town and find these businesses as destinations.”

Evans told of one out-of-town person who liked what he found in Downtown Brownwood, bought a building downtown with living space to stay in when he visits, and is now looking for places downtown to invest in.  He said he also knows of three investors looking to build living spaces downtown.

Evans said he tells downtown businesses “the Lyric is going to be better if you’re better. If you have more people coming into your spot, we’ll have more people coming into our spot.  And if we do better, you’re going to do better.”

The Lyric is now trying to attract busloads of senior citizens to come to Brownwood for a Lyric show, then shop and eat downtown.  Also the Lyric has recently been approved for funding from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and will use that funding not only to improve the Lyric Theatre, but also to improve all arts offerings in Brownwood.  “We are looking to create an Arts District in Downtown Brownwood, which would include all of the museums, art centers, the upcoming Event Center, etc.  All of that happens because people are investing in Downtown Brownwood.”

Downtown Brownwood has also been the site of very successful outdoor street events, such as the Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

If you have lived in Brownwood for a while, you will remember when Downtown had some successful businesses, but the whole area shut down at 5:00 p.m.  Now it is vibrant and full of life day and night, especially on the weekends.

And it all started with “I want to show you something.”