Houston Chronical"People would not come downtown. Crime, a lack of parking and a boring atmosphere were major concerns. The general opinion was: Build the district somewhere else.
But three commercial developers - Tom Flanagan, Joe Penland and Walter Umphrey - weren't convinced. They looked at five neglected old buildings downtown, built between 1886 and 1914, and knew they would give the district a powerful historical draw if renovated and leased for food and fun.
As it turned out, restoring 100-year-old buildings was a more expensive and longer project than expected, costing the developers almost triple the original estimates. But ultimately Beaumont got what so many people thought was not possible - a new lease on life for downtown in the form of the Crockett Street Dining and Entertainment District.
A number of larger Texas cities have been doing the same with their downtowns, among them Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. Beaumont's new Crockett Street complex is no Sundance Square in Fort Worth or West End Historic District in Dallas, but it has turned a downtown section of this 117,000-population town into the best people-gathering spot east of Houston.
It's 10 p.m. on Crockett Street. Men from 21 to 50-something wearing almost identical ivory-colored cowboy hats and women in tight cropped tops with exposed cleavage climb the narrow stairway into a once-infamous brothel, now the Dixie Dance Hall.
At the top of the stairs two entrances open into the huge dance hall. The air pulses with music that overwhelms chatter, bar blenders and the shuffle of hundreds of cowboy boots.
All the tables are full, but there's room for many more, standing in tight groups at the bar or leaning on the wooden rail around the dance floor.
It's almost a full house, and the night is still heating up in the town that some residents used to call "Boremont."
The Dixie Dance Hall is one of 10 nightclubs and restaurants in the heart of the Crockett Street Dining and Entertainment District. None of them is owned by a chain, a rarity for any city, and one that came about unexpectedly.
"The three partners got together and sought out businesses throughout the whole United States," says Christina Delgadillo, spokesperson for the Crockett Street district.
They asked restaurant franchises and other successful downtown venues in entertainment districts to come to Beaumont, and they asked local businesses that had existing restaurants to consider relocating to downtown or opening a second restaurant.
"After we showed them all the plans, all the architectural renderings, which the historical commission helped us with, that made these historical buildings look really attractive and appealing, they kept saying, `Why downtown Beaumont? There's nothing there. There's nothing to do.'
"We did not sign one lease."
That kind of skepticism is tough for even die-hard optimists to handle.
"We had our doubts," Delgadillo admits. "People would telephone call-in radio shows and ask, `Why are you doing this downtown? Why not on the highway?' "
But what seemed like a leasing catastrophe perhaps proved to be good fortune in disguise.
"We ended up doing them all ourselves," Delgadillo says, "which means they are all unique. You don't have a Starbucks next to a Bennigans next to a cookie-cutter nightclub that's in another city."
And because the developers did more finishing out than expected, they were at liberty to tie each venue's décor to the history of the area.
"Like the Spindletop Restaurant," she says. "There's only one oil boom named Spindletop."
Developers and private money don't get all the credit for Crockett Street.
"In 1998 the city of Beaumont borrowed $11 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Section 108 loan," says City Manager Kyle Hayes. "The city in return loaned $3 million to the Crockett Street developers, which they are going to repay over a 20-year period. The loan was toward the construction or renovation of those five historic buildings downtown.
"The city at that time committed to brick-pave Crockett Street and the surrounding block and install decorative lighting, arches and put in the landscaping, which we have done at the cost of $685,000."
But the genesis of the project goes back much further than the '90s, says Flanagan, owner and president of the James J. Flanagan Shipping Corp. in Beaumont.
"The whole origination of Crockett Street probably started in 1983," he says. "I had begun traveling around and observed, especially on the East Coast, how downtowns were starting to make a comeback."
Flanagan looked at examples of cities bringing life to their downtowns in Washington, D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Md., and Richmond and Arlington, Va.
"It became apparent to me, if a city was going to be anything, it had to have a heart and soul in its downtown. So, I became really interested in seeing that happen in Southeast Texas.
"But we were starting to go into a deep recession, a real estate depression. An oil downturn," he says. "The economy in Southeast Texas was difficult."
Nonetheless, Flanagan and Umphrey bought and renovated the Stedman Building, a downtown fruit warehouse about two blocks from what is now the Crockett Street district. They transformed it into an office building, proving to Flanagan that office buildings could stay full in downtown Beaumont. The Stedman received a restoration award from the Texas Downtown Association in 1991.
The next year he renovated more buildings along Crockett Street across from the Stedman. His idea seemed contagious. Two law firms restored nearby train depots into offices.
"Then I just got busy running my business," he says, "but I couldn't get the idea out of my mind."
He had made overtures to some of the owners of the five historical buildings he hoped would be the nucleus of the block-long Crockett Street complex.
"I actually had some of the buildings under option. But I let them go and I never pursued it. The buildings got worse and worse and worse."
Finally in 1998 he decided he really wanted to do the project - and that it could be done.
"I knew it was going to happen," he says.
By 2000 he had acquired the buildings and extra land for parking. The renovation began.
The cost was "a lot higher than we thought," Flanagan says, "eight elevators, a lot of safety aspects, structural supports, double fire walls between every floor level, double-wide fire escapes coming from every venue, elaborate fire-protection equipment and in some cases we finished out facilities ourselves."
The renovation cost in excess of $13 million. But today the buildings are 100 percent occupied with restaurants and nightclubs. The result, says Flanagan, is bodies in downtown Beaumont.
"On a typical Saturday night we have 6,000 people," he says. "All the people that turned us down and said it would never work - it's the biggest place in town. The concept worked."
More than business and cash flow were at stake in the project, Flanagan says.
"Growing up in Southeast Texas we suffered from a lack of pride. We now have a real-life town square. We have a place everybody can bring their families, friends and business visitors and show them the history of our town - the tremendous cultural, musical and food history that we have. We never had a place we could take people and say, `This is my town. Our roots.'
Five or 10 years from now it is going to be greater than it is today."
The Dixie Dance Hall was the first of the businesses to open on Crockett Street, on May 2, 2002. It was named after the Dixie Hotel built in 1914, which became one of the most famous brothels in the South.
"When we first bought the building, all the rooms were painted pink and they had fuzzy wallpaper, really floral," Delgadillo says.
The dance hall still has a device that locked and unlocked doors to the brothel's rooms. "When a customer was coming down the hallway to a room, say No. 5, they would push this button and all the other doors would lock, except to No. 5. No one in another room could open a door and see who was coming down the hall, so the customers felt secure that no one would see them either." The bottom half of the long Western bar in the Dixie Dance Hall is lined with the doors to those rooms. The James Commission shut down the Dixie Hotel in 1961, along with local casinos.
Also in the old hotel are the Black Cat Lounge and Rio Rita's Restaurante and Cantina, the latter named with a nod to the infamous "Miss Rita," who ran the hotel.
Here are the other hot spots on Crockett Street:
Antone's, a live-music venue with a large stage in the Fertitta Building, has a "loose affiliation with the worldwide famous Antone's on Sixth Street in Austin," Delgadillo says. "Clifford Antone hails from Southeast Texas. He made an agreement with the owners to use his name."
The Neches Room, also in the Fertitta Building, offers banquet and special-events rental space.
The Spindletop Restaurant in the Wilson Building occupies what once was a department store and a trading company where shares of petroleum from the famous Spindletop oil field could have been traded.
The Texas Star Bar & Grill is on the second floor of the Wilson Building. The fare includes burgers and nachos. Activities include shuffleboard and pool. A balcony with tables for alfresco dining and refreshments wraps around the corner of Crockett and Pearl streets.
Bobbie McGee's pub occupies both floors of the 1890s Littleton Building, in which American National Bank opened on May 21, 1901. A balcony overlooks the entertainment district. The pub has a red-brick courtyard, and the music is singalong classics or familiar songs. The pub is named for one of the songs of Janis Joplin, a Southeast Texas legend who grew up in nearby Port Arthur.
The old Tip Top Building is home to the Crockett Street Deli and Black Gold Coffee House. The deli's checkered black-and-white tile floor is reminiscent of early depots from Beaumont's railroad history. A model train chugs around the room near the ceiling, and the walls have drawings of locomotives.
Between the lighted arches that announce Crockett Street at both ends of the closed street between Pearl and Main streets is the district's largest activity area. The outdoor area has been renovated with red-brick pavers, early 1900s-style lampposts and black iron benches with wooden-slat seats.
Special events, with free admission, are held here, such as street dances that include retailers in tents and activities to entertain children. When the recent Y.M.B.L. Rodeo took place several miles away at Fair Park, Crockett Street had Rodeo Week. Activities and attractions included rope tricks, roping a running steel calf from the back of a mechanical horse, riding a mechanical bull and hourly Wild West shootouts between a U.S. marshal and two unsavory outlaws who tried to snatch the purse of Miss Mamie.
The college crowd gathers at Crockett Street to "just hang out." For motorcycle enthusiasts, it's a place to meet other riders and listen to music close to their parked bikes. Nightclubs and dance halls bring in entertainment. A 24-hour maintenance crew cleans up after the street dance and the late, late Saturday night revelers so it's clean for Sunday after-church family dining.
Obvious downsides to the project aren't easy to find. The Crockett Street district pays for its own security of off-duty Beaumont police officers.
"One restaurant downtown closed, maybe because of the competition from the entertainment district," Hayes says. But another will open soon on Bowie Street two blocks from Crockett. "It's just waiting for tax credit from the state." The new business will be a restaurant on the bottom floor and a jazz club on the second floor.
Naturally, no one sings the praises of Crockett Street louder than Beaumont's Chamber of Commerce. President Jim Rich recalls what he saw when he moved to the city as the warden of a federal correctional complex in 1996: "Beaumont had nothing downtown," he says. "But the Beaumont we have today is dramatically different. We are attracting from miles around us. People are coming here to spend their discretionary dollars."
Mayor Evelyn Lord is a before-and-after Crockett Street elected official, having served as mayor the first time from 1990-94.
"The biggest (change) that I've noticed is the appeal that the city now has for young people," Lord says. "Before, it was always a problem. They said, `There is nothing here to keep us or intrigue us.' And now that is very different with Crockett Street."
Dr. Jimmy Simmons, president of Lamar University, says, "With the nice restaurants and the Crockett Street area in close proximity to the university, I would assume it would be a real draw for the city. Also this new Southeast Texas Entertainment Complex and the great success they have experienced with its first concert really gives you a feeling that things here are exciting. There are things to do, places to go and people to see. Our students seem to have a much stronger sense of community than they have in the past."
Simmons is also known for his 18-member band made up of Lamar University faculty and former students. They played to full audiences last summer at Antone's. "Crockett Street's a great venue," he says.
The district has been the catalyst for other projects, City Manager Hayes says. The City Council has approved a contract of $929,000 to brick-pave the sidewalks and install decorative lighting and landscaping on Orleans Street from Wall Street to Crockett Street, and the city is working with the Port of Beaumont to develop the riverfront further. "Tourists have no idea we have this (Neches) river downtown," Hayes says.
Other downtown historical renovations are near completion, says Carolyn Howard, director of Main Street Beaumont. In the past, grand buildings like the Jefferson Theatre and the Hotel Beaumont were just maintained or slapped with "Band-Aids," Howard says. "We have been able to restore the Hotel Beaumont, 135 rooms with 115 to 120 filled now. It's not low-income housing; it's for retired seniors. They have to be mobile, and they enjoy living downtown."
In the 1990s the hotel was in horrible condition. Howard says that through eight years of effort and $7.5 million it has been not only saved, but also restored majestically."