Burleson, a small Texas railroad town south of Fort Worth, was selected as a Legacy Project as part of the 2015 CNU Conference in Dallas. We were invited to work with the local community to propose ideas for revitalizing their downtown and how to enhance the pedestrian realm. Burleson was a town without sidewalks. The plans proposed to create a new Town Square next to the existing City Hall as well as propose new housing and commercial buildings on Opportunity Sites.

For a Texas town that proudly advertised ‘Open Carry’, we were pleasantly surprised at how welcoming they were to an Anglo/Californian, someone called Mohammad, and a Rhode Islander. They couldn’t have been nicer!

Several of our proposals were implemented, although not exactly as we had planned, but the town now has a fine pedestrian street on Ellison Street and a number of new housing projects on sites we had identified.