Twenty things to do, specifically.
What follows is one resident's opinion. It is opinionated on purpose. Cities don't get made better by averaging out all the polite halfway suggestions in the room — they get made better when someone says, out loud, this is what we should do.
Every plank below is specific to Tyler or Lindale by name, by street, or by ordinance. Some of it is expensive. None of it is impossible. All of it is what other small American cities are already doing — or what this one used to do, before we forgot.
- 01
Stop the bleed first. A two-year freeze on new auto-oriented zoning approvals.
Every weekly P&Z agenda has 2–4 plats that quietly extend the post-1957 pattern. Pause them. Use the time to write a Form-Based Code overlay for Midtown, North End, and the Erwin/Broadway corridor — areas Tyler Tomorrow already designates. Restart approvals under the new code. Nothing else on this list matters if we keep digging the hole.
- 02
Restore the courthouse square as a square.
In 1955 Smith County demolished the 1909 domed courthouse and split the square so Broadway could pass through. It was the single largest urbanistic mistake in Tyler's history. Reverse it. Pedestrianize the square block of Broadway between Erwin and Ferguson. Park entry to the courthouse from the side streets. Restore the original 1846 grid intent — a square, not a roundabout for cars.
- 03
South Broadway becomes a real boulevard, not a stroad.
Five lanes, 45 mph, no median refuge, intermittent sidewalks. The most congested road in the region — and the one parents most fear letting their kid cross. Three lanes plus center median, 25 mph through downtown, raised crosswalks every block, continuous sidewalks. TxDOT can be a partner, not a veto.
- 04
Re-instate a real bus spine on Broadway. Every 15 minutes. From Loop 323 north to Loop 323 south.
MicroTransit is fine for the last mile. It is not the spine. You cannot plan a life around a 'app says 27 minutes' ETA. A 15-minute fixed spine on Broadway, with MicroTransit feeders, is what makes the spine usable for commuters, students, seniors, and the 5,000+ Smith County households with no vehicle at all.
- 05
Extend the Legacy Trail to 12 miles. Connect UT Tyler to downtown to UT Health.
The Cotton Belt rail bed is sitting there. 4.5 miles is built. You can ride from the eastern edge of downtown to the western edge of the Azalea District in 20 minutes today, on dedicated concrete, away from traffic. Extend it east to UT Tyler, west to the medical district. Now it's a transportation corridor, not a recreation amenity.
- 06
Legalize the missing middle, by-right, in every Tyler neighborhood.
Townhomes, duplexes, four-plexes, accessory dwelling units. Today these are essentially illegal in most of Tyler. The 1995 owner-occupied ratio (~53%) is artificially low because the city's housing stock is bimodal — single-family OR low-end apartment. The middle is missing because the law removed it. Restore it.
- 07
A Saturday market on the courthouse square. Standing. Every week.
Not 'pop-up.' Not 'on the second Saturday in months that don't end in r.' Standing. 8 AM to noon, fifty Saturdays a year, rain shine or 102°. It will take six months to find its legs and then it will be the most reliable thing in your week. Lindale already has a Saturday Cannery feel — Tyler needs the equivalent on the square.
- 08
A Friday-night band concert at 7 PM, May through September. Free.
Tyler had this for the better part of forty years. The Daily Courier-Times reported in 1920: 'thousands enjoyed band concert last evening.' The brick streets are exactly the venue. Five rotating bands on a 12-week cycle. Total cost: one bandstand and a city contribution. Net effect: every Friday night, downtown Tyler feels like itself again.
- 09
Bring back the Tyler State Park pavilion dances. Friday nights, June through August.
CCC Company 2888 built that pavilion at the edge of the lake between 1935 and 1941 for exactly this reason. The pavilion still stands. The architecture is from Joe C. Lair — Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style, unusual for CCC work. Live bands. Bring a date. Leave the phone in the car. It was a tradition for two generations. It can be one again.
- 10
Lindale's Main Street becomes pedestrians-first.
I-20 made modern Lindale. It also gave Lindale the gift of a contained, walkable, three-block historic downtown that almost nobody walks. Close two blocks of Main Street to through-traffic on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Add restrooms. Add seating. The Blackberry Festival weekend already proves it works — make it permanent for the weekend hours.
- 11
Sidewalk completeness — measured per school radius, hit 100% by 2030.
Tyler ISD school boundaries are public. Map every block within a half-mile of every school. Where the sidewalk is missing or broken, fix it on a published schedule. This is the simplest, most measurable thing the city can do — and the one most directly tied to whether kids can walk to school safely, which is the single biggest predictor of whether a neighborhood feels like a neighborhood.
- 12
Stop subsidizing greenfield. Tier water and sewer extensions by infill vs edge.
Every new subdivision on Loop 49's outside means more pipe, more pump stations, more pavement to maintain — paid mostly by ratepayers in older neighborhoods. Make the new neighborhood pay the marginal cost. Make infill projects pay base cost. The math gets honest, the development pattern reorients, and we stop hiding the bill for the next 50 years of maintenance behind oil revenue we no longer have.
- 13
Publish a value-per-acre map. Make Tyler the first Texas city to do it.
Joe Minicozzi has been doing this for 15 years in city after city. A downtown department store generates ≈$634k/acre in property tax. A suburban Walmart on 34 acres generates ≈$6,500/acre. The Smith CAD parcel data is all public. The map is 90 days of work for a competent GIS analyst. Once it's on the city's website, every council decision changes.
- 14
Save the brick streets. Period.
The pre-1940 brick blocks downtown are the literal foundation of Main Street. They outlived the trains. They outlived the loops. Public Works has been quietly arguing for asphalt-over for decades because it's cheaper to maintain. It is not cheaper. Replacement asphalt under heavy use needs to be re-laid every 12–18 years. The brick is doing fine after 80. Restore. Repair brick with brick.
- 15
The half-cent sales tax goes to multimodal too, not just streets.
Tyler's Half-Cent Sales Tax has overwhelmingly funded road projects since adoption. Carve out 25% for sidewalks, bike lanes, the Legacy Trail extension, transit shelters, and a permanent Saturday-market structure on the square. The mode share will follow the money. It always has.
- 16
Bring the Mayfair back to Saturday night. Standing.
It is back as a venue you can book. That isn't enough. Make Saturday night a standing date — local musicians on rotation, a small cover, a bar, a 600-person dance floor. Elvis stood on that stage. Dolly stood on that stage. Pretend you're hosting them again.
- 17
A Smith County 'Build to Last' road program.
Every county-maintained road built in the last 40 years has been built once and patched twenty times. Pick a 15-year capital plan. Resurface fewer miles per year to a higher standard. Stop new road extensions. Spend the difference on intersection rebuilds, sidewalks where they're missing, and Complete Streets retrofits inside Loop 323. Future commissioners will inherit a maintainable system instead of a moral hazard.
- 18
Lindale partners with TxDOT to redesign the I-20 frontage roads.
Today the frontage roads at Lindale's exits are 50+ mph stroads with sidewalk only where Walmart paid for it. There's a model — the Texas Frontage Road Conversion guidance — for converting one-way frontages to two-way slower streets with bike lanes and curbed crossings. Get on it.
- 19
A 'Brick Streets Weekend' twice a year. Spring and fall.
Close two blocks of brick downtown to cars for a Friday evening and Saturday. Vendors, music, no cars. It's the cheapest possible way for locals to fall in love with their own street — and the cheapest possible argument for permanent pedestrianization on the same blocks.
- 20
Plant trees. A lot of them. Specifically along sidewalks.
Tyler is hot. Lindale is hot. Sidewalks without shade in July are aspirational. A city-funded tree canopy program, prioritized by census-tract heat-island data, targeting 35% canopy coverage citywide by 2040. Pin oaks, water oaks, cedar elms, sweetgums. Some of them will be 80-foot trees when our grandkids are pushing strollers under them. That's the timeframe.
We are not thinking about the next two years.
We are thinking about the next two hundred.
The brick streets are 110 years old and still working. The Cotton Belt rail bed is 150 years old and now carries walkers. The Tyler State Park pavilion is 87 years old and still dance-able. The choices we make in the next decade are the ones our grandkids will inherit — for better, or for worse. The math, the dignity, and the long-term math all point the same direction.
East Texas built it right the first time. We can build it right again. We have to start.