Old Town is the thing I show buyers who are not sure about Burleson yet. Not the new subdivisions, not the ball fields — four blocks of 1900s brick, a plaza built on top of an old parking lot, and a restored interurban rail car parked next to a caboose. It works on people. Here is what is actually open down there, what closed, and why the whole district exists in the first place.
Burleson’s zoning code creates an “OT” Old Town Overlay District, and its central core is bounded by Dobson Street on the east, Johnson Street on the west, S.E. Tarrant Avenue on the southwest, Renfro Street on the north and Bufford Street on the south.
In practice, the part you walk is Ellison, Main, Wilson and Renfro, with Mayor Vera Calvin Plaza at the center. Everything below is either in that core or, where I say so, out on the Renfro corridor toward I-35W — which is close, but is not the same walk.
Old Town is the original 1881 townsite. The interurban rail line arrived in 1912 and built the Ellison Street block; the line died in 1931 and the district spent the next seventy years the way most bypassed Texas downtowns did.
The turnaround has a date, and it is 2005, when the city created TIF Zone No. 2 — a 720-acre tax increment district that includes Old Town. The arithmetic on it is the clearest picture of what happened here:
| Measure | Then | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Base property value in the zone | ~$58M (2006) | over $198M |
| Annual TIF revenue | $44,878 (2006) | over $957,000 (2021) |
City of Burleson, TIF Zone No. 2. The zone runs through 2041.
That increment paid for Renfro Square, Old Town streetscaping and parking, Old Town Station, improvements on Main Street, Mayor Vera Calvin Plaza, the Ellison on the Plaza development, and two dedicated police officers. On top of it, the Ellison Street Project put city money into eight buildings — about 35,000 square feet of new retail and 27,500 square feet of office — plus a new public lot on Bufford, funded through the 4A economic development corporation, downtown TIF bonds and utility funds. Design started in 2021; the first phase finished in 2023.
The plaza at 141 W. Renfro Street is a one-acre public space that used to be City Hall’s surface parking. It has a performance stage, a great lawn, shade pavilions, a children’s play area with a small play trolley, an activity lawn with games, public restrooms and movable tables and chairs. The design team worked the historic train depot and two early-1900s trolley cars into the plan and tied the new concrete into the existing railroad tracks.
It was built with tax increment money, reported at roughly $6.6 million when it broke ground in May 2019 and at $6.7 million in the industry award submission afterward. The city lists it as completed in June 2020. It has since won an ENR Award of Merit and two Texas ASLA Merit Awards.
Vera Calvin was Burleson’s first female mayor. She moved here in 1957, worked as a registered nurse at the Fort Worth State School from 1976 to 1993, was elected to city council five times, became mayor in 1988 when Mayor Jerry Boone resigned, and served through 1992. Among the things she pushed through: acquiring the old interurban building for the museum and visitor center. The plaza is named for her, and the museum three blocks away exists because of her.
“It just means the world to me that they think I’m deserving. I’m very honored.” — Vera Calvin, on the plaza being named for her. She was 91.
One practical note: no pets in the plaza except service animals.
Family-style Southern fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, passed around the table in bowls until you tell them to stop. It is a small North Texas chain and it is the one out-of-towners have heard of. The building is one of the oldest in the district — the local ghost tour says it opened in 1905 as the Wilson Brothers Company and at one point housed funeral services, though that detail comes from a tour operator rather than a historical authority.
The brewpub. 27 rotating taps, a patio, live music on weekends, and weekend brunch starting at 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. Catfish sandwiches, brisket, fish tacos, chicken nachos. Open to 11 p.m. weeknights and midnight Friday and Saturday.
My favorite story in Old Town. It is named for Interurban Express Rail Car 330, which ran through Burleson in the early 1900s, and its covered patio looks straight out at a red caboose. Owner Jesse Birdsall opened it in early 2024 as a scratch kitchen doing what they call “South+Western” — Spanish, Mexican and Southern influences, hand-cut steaks, craft cocktails. The queso has a local reputation and the apple pie empanada has won awards.
Regular rhythm worth knowing: Chicken Fried Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, live music on the patio, and a live gospel brunch the first Sunday of the month. They raised nearly $8,000 for Kerr County flood relief, which tells you something about how the place is run.
Buffalo-style sports bar — hot wings, beef on weck, subs, New York-style pizza. Open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week, which makes it the only late option in Old Town by a wide margin.
Open since 2016, owned by Richard Williams. The signature is escovitch — bone-in red snapper with peppers and onions. Genuinely unusual for a North Texas town of this size, and worth going out of your way for.
Small-batch roasted beans, milk from local dairies, and — the unusual part — open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Almost no small-town coffee shop stays open past mid-afternoon. Voted Favorite Local Coffee Shop in Local Life Magazine’s 2025 Local Love awards.
New Zealand-style real fruit ice cream, where whole frozen fruit gets pressed through a machine into soft serve. Henry Lazcano left an IT career to open it with his daughter Alex in the summer of 2024. Also traditional scoops, shakes and floats, roughly $4 to $8. The building went up in 1955 as a house and was most recently a beauty salon.
These sit east of the district along E. Renfro toward I-35W, in and around Old Town Station. You drive to them; you do not stroll to them from the plaza.
I am putting this in because both are still all over travel articles, city marketing and older blog posts, and I do not want anybody driving down there for dinner and finding a dark window.
Both were heavily promoted as Old Town anchors. Losing two anchors in a year is worth being honest about — the district is in a tenanting phase, not a building phase, and the storefronts turning over is what that looks like. An Italian steakhouse called On The Rocks Italian Bistro has been announced for the former Razzoo’s space; call before you go, because its own website still reads as pre-opening.
The Burleson Museum and Visitors Center at 124 W. Ellison is the 1912 interurban building — the one with the pharmacy and the ticket counter. The city owns it; the Burleson Heritage Foundation runs it with volunteers. Inside is a Linotype machine that set Burleson newspapers for nearly fifty years. Reported hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but call first, because it is volunteer-staffed.
Out front sit rail car #330, relocated next to the visitor center in 2010 with four interpretive kiosks, and the #411 parlor car. Station 330’s caboose is a separate, third car — do not mix them up.
The Burleson Historical Ghost Tour leaves from the visitors center Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., $15 cash, up to two and a half hours. It walks the #330 and #411 cars, Babe’s, Old Texas Brewing, and the old police station and city jail. It is a better introduction to the district than anything I could write.
Hot Sounds of Summer is a free outdoor concert series in the plaza, Friday nights 7:30 to 9 p.m. The 2026 run was May 22, May 29, June 5, June 12, June 19 and June 26, with the July 4 show moved out to Chisenhall Fields. The city’s calendar has entries for it going back to at least 2017.
If you are trying to decide whether Burleson feels like home, go to one of these, get an ice cream at Mr. Henry’s and walk the plaza. That is the whole pitch.
The city added hundreds of spaces in the old railroad right-of-way, and there is a public lot on Bufford Street built as part of the Ellison Street Project. I have never paid to park in Old Town and I have never seen a meter, but the city does not publish a statement that parking is free, so I will say it the honest way: there is plenty of it, and I have never been charged for it.
The core is genuinely walkable — you can park once and hit dinner, ice cream and the plaza on foot. It is small. That is the point.
Yes, and the zoning is unusually friendly about it, which surprises people. Under the Old Town overlay, bed and breakfasts are a primary permitted use, loft and studio apartments are allowed by specific use permit, houses can convert to commercial use while keeping their kitchen and bath, and mixed commercial-residential occupancy is permitted — one dwelling per structure, or multiple loft units up to 60% of total square footage.
One thing to budget for if you buy a historic structure down there: any renovation, repair or addition exceeding 50% of the structure’s value has to comply with the Burleson Old Town Design Standards. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to price the work before you write the offer.
The 1894 Queen Anne Renfro-Clark House at 128 N. Clark — built by Henry Renfro’s widow and daughter, a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1970 — is a good illustration of the older housing stock sitting immediately behind the commercial core.
Want to see what living near Old Town actually looks like? The housing right behind the commercial core is a completely different animal from the new build on the west side, and most buyers never get shown both.
Let’s look at bothFigures current as of August 2026. Populations, prices, city projects and business openings all move — if you are relying on a number here, ask me and I will check it.
REALTOR® · BHHS PenFed Realty Texas
I help buyers and sellers across the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex — Fort Worth, Burleson, Crowley and Keller, and the surrounding Dallas area. I write these because they are the questions I answer on the phone every week, and most people never get a straight answer to them. If you have one I have not covered, ask me — I will probably turn it into the next post.