Sometime this month, a community development specialist from Birmingham, Alabama is walking the blocks of Texas Street between the river and Common Street, taking notes, and asking downtown stakeholders the same question over and over: where's the momentum already happening? That's literally his assignment. Jeremy Murdock works for Downtown Strategies, the firm the city hired for $135,000 to write Shreveport's next five-year downtown action plan. City leaders expect the first draft by mid-November.
Here's what he'll find if he grabs lunch before he starts taking notes. A sandwich shop that didn't exist in January. A bar that reopened with a four-day party after a fire gutted it last fall. A barbecue restaurant moving in under two chefs who used to cook next door. A rotating-menu bistro three blocks down that swaps its entire kitchen lineup every few months on purpose. None of that happened because of a plan. It happened while the plan was still being written.
The Plan Nobody's Seen Yet
Ask Shreveport Economic Development Executive Director Bill Sabo what the five-year plan will actually contain, and the honest answer is: not much that's expensive. Murdock has said outright this isn't an infrastructure assessment. No new sidewalks, no lighting overhaul from the ground up. Instead his firm is looking for tactical wins: string lighting, better signage, incentive programs to help the Downtown Development Authority work with property owners, maybe more outdoor dining and public art. Small, visible moves meant to build on what's already working rather than invent something new. A second division of the same consulting company, Retail Strategies, is running a separate retail study for north Shreveport at the same time, which tells you the city is buying this kind of outside read on more than one corridor at once.
More than 350 people had filled out the city's downtown survey by late July, a response Sabo called remarkable. The survey stays open until at least late August. Once it closes, Downtown Strategies folds the feedback into its recommendations, and the city and DDA start deciding what to act on.
Listen to how Murdock frames his own fieldwork, though. He's not scouting blank lots.
"Where are your key assets and destinations? Where's some current momentum? Where are some things that are already happening?"
That's a consultant hired to find what residents built without him. The plan isn't generating downtown Shreveport's comeback. It's cataloging one that started without an invitation.
What's Already Open, in Order
Lay the timeline out and the sequence is hard to miss.
| When | What Happened | Where |
|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | Fusion Bistro Experience opens, built around a rotating chef and caterer lineup | 605 Texas Street |
| January 29, 2026 | 10/10 Bar & Lounge reopens after an October fire, with a four-day celebration | 203 Texas Street |
| March 10, 2026 | Fat Tuesday Sandwich Shop opens its second location | 400 Texas Street |
| May 2026 | Magnolia Pit BBQ relocates under new chef-owners | 440 Olive Street |
| June 17, 2026 | The DDA launches Lunch and Discover to spotlight what's already open | Texas Street corridor |
Every one of those dates lands before Murdock's team finishes its work. Fusion Bistro Experience, the restaurant that changes its whole menu every few months under owner Diane Davis, opened over a year before the plan gets its first draft. 10/10 Bar & Lounge didn't wait for a tactical recommendation to rebuild and reopen at its original address on Texas Street. Fat Tuesday didn't need string lights installed to bet on breakfast and po'boys downtown. Magnolia Pit BBQ's new chefs, Valerie and Taneia Benn, didn't need a strategic action plan to take over a kitchen from retiring Chef John Strand and move it three blocks over. Ono's Hawaiian Grill has been serving lunch and dinner at 708 Texas Street this whole time too, another anchor tenant that showed up on its own schedule.
A Program Built to Point, Not Create
Lunch and Discover is the clearest example of the sequence running backward from how people assume it works. The DDA and the Downtown Shreveport Development Corporation partnered with the state on the program, funded by a $25,000 award from the state general fund that DSDC matched. The first event, held June 17, paired live music with a complimentary tasting table from a downtown restaurant and gift certificates to downtown retailers. It also marked the golden anniversary of the First National Bank Tower at 400 Texas Street, the same address where Fat Tuesday had opened its second location three months earlier.
Lunch and Discover isn't recruiting new tenants. It's pointing a spotlight at businesses that already committed to Texas Street on their own, in a building that was already fifty years old before the ribbon got cut on a sandwich counter inside it.
The Rhythm That Never Waited on a Consultant
Downtown's cultural calendar runs on its own schedule too, independent of any five-year strategy. The Shreveport Regional Arts Council hosts a free GloFest on the first Friday of every month at Riverview Plaza, timed to the Bakowski Bridge of Lights on the Texas Street Bridge. Each one includes:
- A new animated light show on the bridge
- A food truck court
- A local art market
- Street performances
A three-year grant from the Levitt Family Foundation is already funding thirty free music events at Caddo Common Park, the small green space a block off Texas Street where the stage backs up against Church of the Holy Cross. None of that required a consultant's recommendation either. SRAC built the calendar, secured the funding, and kept it running before Downtown Strategies signed its contract.
Even the City's Own Real Estate Is Moving
The clearest sign that downtown isn't waiting for its own plan sits at the corner of Texas and Edwards. The city has owned the five-story building at 401 Texas Street since 2003, when it paid $750,000 for a property originally built in 1977 to house Pioneer Bank. City departments used the space for two decades, most recently Community Development, before that office moved across the street to One Texas Centre. Now the city council is being asked to declare the building surplus and put it up for auction, with a minimum bid of $850,000 based on a December 2024 appraisal.
The city is trying to get one of its own downtown buildings back into private hands before Downtown Strategies delivers a single recommendation. That's not a coincidence so much as a pattern. Texas Street's owners, chefs, and even the city itself keep moving before the paperwork catches up.
What This Means If You Already Live Down Here
If you work downtown or live within walking distance of Texas Street, the plan due this November won't tell you anything you can't already see over lunch. The corridor's shift isn't waiting on a consultant's report or a council vote. It's visible in a fifty-year-old bank tower with a sandwich counter on the ground floor, a barbecue kitchen under new ownership three blocks over, and a bridge that lights up in a different color on the first Friday of every month.
Murdock's job this August is to write down what residents built without him. Worth remembering that when the plan finally lands in November. It's describing your neighborhood, not deciding it.
We pay attention to shifts like this because they tell you what a block is actually becoming, long before that shows up anywhere official. If you want to talk about what's changing in downtown Shreveport or anywhere else in the Shreveport-Bossier market, Murcia & Co. is here. Let's Connect.
