Standoff town all fixed up
It’s an unlikely tourist town. A flat, dusty stretch, Waco was until recently best known in Texas as the halfway point between Dallas and Austin, or Baylor University’s college town. Nationally, it was most famous for its proximity to the 51-day standoff between the FBI and Branch Davidians in 1993 that resulted in almost 80 dead in a fire.
That’s all changed now, thanks to Fixer Upper, the HGTV home makeover show that premiered in 2013 and ended this year after five seasons. It followed Chip and Joanna Gaines, an attractive, can-do construction and design couple, as they renovated buildings all over Waco, transforming old houses into cosy homes with plenty of shiplap on the walls. They filmed there for a reason: As they explained on their website, an “unnecessary strain on our families and children” was out of the question. (The couple’s oldest child, Drake, was 9 when the first season aired, and in June of this year, a fifth child, Crew, was born.)
The couple met in Waco at Joanna’s father’s Firestone Tire store in 2001 after both graduating from Baylor University, and they quickly partnered in love and home design. Chip handled the construction, Joanna the finishing touches. With lots of rough hewed wood and matte colour palettes, their modern yet folksy style attracted an HGTV offer and a devoted following.
And as the couple’s popularity grew, so did their investment in Waco.
In 2015, they opened Magnolia Market, a home goods store that sells Joanna’s mass-produced collections of bohemian farmhouse decor, and quickly followed with a bakery, garden shop and a turf-lawn park built near two old silos that had been constructed in 1950 by the Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Co. They also opened a nearby restaurant, Magnolia Table, in the former Elite Café, a longtime favourite that closed in 2016 after several different owners and renovations. When the Gaineses took it over, they installed subway tile along the walls, exposed the wood beams in the ceiling and stuck an ever-changing marquee sign out front. Naturally, the renovation was featured on their show.
No one’s complaining. The number of tourists to Waco has tripled in the four years since Fixer Upper first aired, with some 1.7 million people visiting in the first seven months of 2018 alone, and other local businesses have flourished with the influx.
Tessa Calori, an 18-year-old fan of Fixer Upper, said she was visiting with her mother from Denver and that she had begged to visit Waco for two years. Calori said she had never heard of Waco’s deadly siege. Her mother, Lynette, said she knew about the town’s former reputation, but said, “I had no interest in visiting then.”