Lubbock’s beloved—but bumpy—Broadway is getting a new look. Starting this summer, future generations of Red Raiders walking along Broadway will stumble a little less—unless, of course, they’ve stopped at Chimy’s or Cricket’s first. The $17 million renovation between Avenues Q and E is part of a 2024 roadway bond approved by Lubbock voters and set to begin in July.
The money will fund the removal of the road’s original brick pavers and their replacement with concrete pavement, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Registration. To preserve the “character of the street,” intersections and crosswalks will have modern brick pavers. The city has not yet said what it plans to do with the original bricks once removed.
Red Brick country
Lubbock’s bricks go back as far as Texas Tech itself. The city first started paving streets in 1920, paying $295,000 to cover 20 blocks of red pavers—an economical choice, as they can last more than a century. After Lubbock was determined to be Tech’s future home in 1923, the city built the welcoming brick street and replaced the dirt road that previously occupied the space, Lubbock attorney Chuck Lanehart wrote in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in 2024.
Problems with the streets didn’t even begin until about 2006, when utility companies dug into the avenues “with no motivation to preserve the streets,” Lanehart wrote…