In a shocking revelation that surprised no one who has ever looked at a city map, residents of East Lubbock are pointing out that while the rest of the city grows at a terminal rate toward New Mexico, their neighborhood has been treated like the junk drawer of the South Plains. Longtime locals like Sonya Fair and Cosby Morton recently sat down to remind us that East Lubbock is more than just a place you drive through to get to the airport—it’s a community that’s been surviving on DIY energy and grit since the 1950s.
The “progress” report is inspiring, if you consider a splash pad and paved streets to be the pinnacle of 21st-century urban planning. While the West side gets a new Chick-fil-A every forty-five seconds and enough “luxury” apartments to house the entire population of Rhode Island, East Lubbock residents are just asking for the radical, high-concept luxury of… a grocery store that isn’t on Avenue Q and a bank that isn’t a payday loan window.
History buffs will love the callback to the 1950s “Urban Renewal” project, which—in classic Lubbock fashion—involved knocking down everyone’s houses with the pinky-promise that they could move back later. Spoiler alert: they couldn’t. This forced the community to become self-sufficient back when segregation meant you couldn’t even enter most businesses downtown. They built their own mini-economy of bricklayers, contractors, and legendary spots like the Pleasure Garden skating rink, proving they could thrive despite the city’s best efforts to ignore them.
Today, the “torch” is being passed to a new generation, which is great, because the city’s strategy still seems to be “maybe if we build another loop even further west, the problems on the east side will just fall off the edge of the Earth.” Residents are still holding out hope for a Walmart or a “mini-mall,” which honestly feels like a humble request in a town that builds $60 million high school football stadiums like they’re popping popcorn.
Is it really a Lubbock “development plan” if it doesn’t involve abandoning an entire quadrant of the city to build a car wash on 158th and Milwaukee?
