Bryan, Texas, revitalized…

We first moved into the area known as the Brazos Valley back in the mid 1970’s when the sister cities of Bryan and College Station were much smaller towns. Bryan had a population of about 35,000 and College Station had about 16,000. College Station is now the larger of the two towns at 94,000 while Bryan now has 76,000 residents.

The primary businesses that support this population are both academic as the Brazos valley hosts both Blinn College and the larger Texas A&M University. But since there are no other major businesses in the area there are many smaller service related businesses.Without Blinn and Texas A&M there just would be no Bryan/College Station…

We enjoyed living in College Station for 34 years. It is a great area to raise children and is a relatively inexpensive place to live with a Cost of Living Index at 94.30 in College Station and 81.4 in its sister city Bryan. The impressive George Bush Presidential Library and Museum can also be found here and is a really interesting place to visit as all presidential libraries are.

During all the time we lived here the downtown Bryan area was kind of a “dump” location for visitors.  However, several years ago both the city of Bryan and a few local entrepreneurs started pumping money into revitalizing the downtown area.Over time it has really begun to reemerge as a vibrant and interesting downtown to visit. It was great to see the old historic buildings refreshed, new thriving businesses and patrons strolling along with us on the new larger sidewalks  A lot of art and culture is beginning to find its way to downtown Bryan and they even host the annual Texas Reds Steak and Grape Festival where in 2009 alone more than 25,000 people attended the event. 

There are also some great little restaurants in downtown Bryan with our favorite being Casa Rodriguez where you can get some great enchiladas (Texas Style) if you order the “El Memo.”  A neat little Irish Pub called Murphy’s Law can also be found downtown.

It has been really fun revisiting all our old friends,catching up on things and even better getting to revisit some of our favorite restaurants and taverns in the Bryan/College Station area. If you ever get through this area shoot me an email and I will happily tell you where to go and what to see…