Drive around the Fannin County Courthouse square on a Saturday morning and you will notice the parking is tighter than it used to be. Not because of a festival, not because Trade Days rolled through last weekend, just because more storefronts have people behind their counters than they did a year or two ago. If you have lived in Bonham long enough to remember when half those windows were dark, this is the part worth paying attention to.
The easy explanation is that the city finally found money for downtown. That is not quite what happened. The businesses got there first.
What filled the storefronts
Stephanie Liebel has owned Blessings and Butterflies Stylehouse downtown long enough to remember a different square. "Bonham was where we went to shop, the square used to be bustling and we would walk around," she told KXII in a February 2026 report on the city's growth. She was not describing ancient history. She was describing a downtown that had quieted down and is now filling back in, one lease at a time.
Some of what filled in is familiar in a new location. Take Juniper Kitchen at 110 E Russell Ave, the address that used to house Gail's Restaurant. The new tenant is not a franchise testing the market. It is Stacy Hilliard, who spent 15 years building Juniper Cake Company before turning that experience into a full scratch kitchen in the same spot. That is not outside capital discovering Bonham. That is someone who already had a business here deciding to bet bigger on the same town.
A few blocks off the square, Neighbors Place Winery opened at 205 W 3rd, pouring wine and building charcuterie boards close enough to the courthouse that a walk between the two makes sense on a slow evening. Down on Main Street, Bamboo House keeps serving pho and wok dishes out of a storefront that has been family run for years, a reminder that not everything filling downtown is brand new. Some of it just kept showing up.
None of this is theoretical growth on a slide deck. William Myers, BEDCO's executive director, put it plainly in that same KXII piece: new boutiques, restaurants, a bank and various shops have been finding space downtown as more people move to the city. He was careful to frame it as deliberate rather than accidental. "We're not looking to just grow the population just to be growing the population," Myers said. "We're looking for quality."
Where the $74 million actually sits right now
Here is the part that surprises people who assume the storefronts filled up because the city spent money on downtown. It has not, not yet.
In May 2026, Bonham and Fannin County announced a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, a financing tool built around a $74 million investment plan for downtown and the major highway corridors. It sounds like a construction budget. It is closer to a promise. A TIRZ works by capturing the additional property tax revenue that new investment generates inside a defined zone, then plowing that new revenue back into public improvements in the same area, sidewalks, lighting, drainage, the kind of quality-of-place work that makes a square easier to walk. Myers described the intent to KXII as improvements that make downtown more pedestrian friendly for both locals and out of towners.
The mechanism only works if the increment already exists. In other words, the tax base has to rise before the fund has anything to spend. That means the businesses opening on and around the square right now, Juniper Kitchen, Neighbors Place Winery, the boutiques Liebel and Myers described, are not the result of the TIRZ. They are the reason the TIRZ has anything to capture.
The process for actually spending that money is still early. According to the city's own account, getting from concept to construction runs through a defined sequence:
- An architect, in this case HH Architects, studies downtown and prepares a preliminary financing plan.
- The city publishes a public hearing notice.
- A public hearing is held so residents and property owners can weigh in on the proposed zone.
- The city council or commissioners court takes a majority vote to approve the ordinance.
City Manager Sean Pate has framed the effort around the 1888 courthouse at the center of the square, the idea being that any redesign should draw people toward that anchor rather than away from it. But that is a plan still moving through hearings and votes, not a construction schedule. If you are waiting for new sidewalks before you go check out what is downtown now, you are going to wait through at least one more council cycle.
Not every business owner downtown is convinced the public money solves the whole problem in the meantime. Pamela Neighbors, who owns a business along one of the narrower downtown streets, told KXII she sees the value but also the limits: "It's a small road to begin with, so I think if you add more parking and add a sidewalk, it would enhance the visibility of us and then maybe bring in another business to help offset some of that cost." That is a business owner who wants the infrastructure and is not waiting around for it before opening her doors.
What that means for a Saturday in Bonham
None of this requires you to understand tax increment financing to use it. It just means the reason to go downtown this weekend already exists, independent of what the city eventually builds.
If you have not been down there in a while, a short list of what is actually open right now:
- Juniper Kitchen (110 E Russell Ave) for a full scratch-kitchen menu in the old Gail's space, run by the longtime owner of Juniper Cake Company
- Muddbones (1701 State Hwy 121 N) for the burger that has picked up multiple Best of Texoma wins and a spot on the Texas Bucket List
- Bamboo House (413 N Main St) for pho, wok dishes and sushi in a family-run downtown storefront
- Neighbors Place Winery (205 W 3rd St) for wine and charcuterie a short walk from the courthouse
- Wings Over Bonham (2160 N Hwy 121) for a newer, family-owned bar and grill if you want burgers and a beer without driving further
That list will look different in six months. That is the actual story here, not that the city is about to hand downtown a facelift, but that Bonham residents and business owners kept placing bets on their own square while the paperwork for the bigger public investment worked its way through hearings and votes. The Fannin County Courthouse has sat at the center of this town since Bois d'Arc first became the county seat in 1843. It has outlasted a lot of quiet stretches on the block around it. What is different right now is that the people filling those storefronts back in are mostly people who were already here.
If you are watching Fannin County from a distance and wondering what a place like this actually feels like day to day, that is the more honest answer than any city press release. The square is not waiting on anyone. It is worth a walk now, not once the sidewalks get redone.
If land, acreage or a home outside town is part of what you are weighing for Fannin County, Bois D'Arc Realty has spent more than 30 years working these county lines and can walk you through what is actually available. Start Your Country Property Search whenever you are ready to look past the square and into the acreage around it.
