Two Texarkanas Opened This Year, and They Don't Look Anything Alike

If you have driven Mall Drive lately, you already know something is different. In a five-month stretch, Texarkana added three national brands in a single quarter-mile, and a fourth broke ground a mile west. If you have walked Broad Street lately, you know something else is different, and the two things are not the same thing.

The story most residents are telling themselves is that Texarkana is finally getting the restaurants it deserves. That is half the story. The other half is happening two zip codes away, on a block that spent most of the last decade half-shuttered, and it is being built out of independent shops in the bones of buildings the chains would never have looked at. What follows is a resident's map of both.

The St. Michael Corridor Finally Filled In

Start at the intersection of St. Michael Drive and Mall Drive and turn a slow circle. Everything you see opened between late January and late March of this year.