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With live mannequins in the window and barbecue waiting, about 100 people gathered for the ribbon cutting ceremony of the new Texas Wesleyan bookstore.
Students, faculty and staff joined administrators, alumni and local officials in recognizing the efforts of everyone who played a part in establishing the new bookstore.
This is the payoff for all the hard work that the trustees put in at this university," said Anne Skipper, chair of the board of trustees.
Alan Strapman, regional vice president for Follet Bookstores, said he was in shock when they were asked to move off campus.
However, when the revitalization talk of the neighborhood came to reality, "we got on board very quickly," he said.
The district director for the office of Rep. Michael C. Burgess, Eric Whip, said he and Burgess had walked around the Polytechnic neighborhood five years earlier trying to figure out a way to relocate their offices there. Whip presented the university with a flag that had flown at the capitol in honor of the work being done.
"We look forward to a lot of success for them and for the others that will be joining them here in the near future," Whip said.
Phillip Poole, lead development executive for The TownSite Company, said they have partnered with the school and asked for the North Central Texas Council of Governments to help with a sustainable development grant program. The program would put back the urban fabric, he said.
"It would literally calm down East Rosedale, add signalization and make the on-street parking safer," said Poole, in reference to the grant criteria. "It would really turn this street back to what it once was."
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