Waxahachie still has the skyline a cotton town paid for: a pink granite courthouse tower over blocks of two- and three-story brick. Around that core, the city is filling in fast. The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates count 50,090 residents in July 2025, up from 41,107 in 2020. Almost 22 percent in five years.
Growth lands in two kinds of building here. One is an 1890s storefront or upper floor on the square, where the Heritage Preservation Commission reviews exterior changes before work starts. The other is a new shell on a highway pad, where the fire marshal’s third-party reviewer and the Utilities Department set the pace. A general contractor in Waxahachie has to be fluent in both.
Here’s the honest part. MASACO’s office at 7950 Legacy Drive in Plano is about 60 miles north, roughly 70 minutes down the Dallas North Tollway and I-35E when traffic cooperates, and we haven’t finished a project in Waxahachie yet. Our closest completed job is Pizza Twist in Irving, a 2,000 SF franchise restaurant where we installed a full kitchen and its utility connections in six to eight weeks, phasing the work around service hours so the doors never closed.
The square, I-35E, and US 77: three different leases
The courthouse square. The City describes a 20-block historic downtown with more than 120 local businesses. The 1975 National Register nomination for the Ellis County Courthouse Historic District counted over fifty buildings and engineering structures in roughly 25 square blocks, built when Waxahachie was known as the “Queen City of the Cotton Belt.” The upper floors are where the opportunity sits, and the City’s downtown incentives are written to fill them:
- Residences are encouraged in upper stories and allowed on ground floors.
- Existing buildings need no off-street parking, whatever the occupancy.
- No impact fees on up to 8,000 square feet of commercial or multifamily development.
- Up to 95 percent lot coverage, under a three-story height limit in the Central Business District.
I-35E and US 287. Where the two highways meet, Baylor Scott & White built its Waxahachie hospital on 52 acres, with physician practices in an adjacent medical office building, according to the system’s groundbreaking announcement. It’s now the city’s largest employer, at 1,750 people on the City’s top employers list. Running a clinic or specialist practice that wants to be near the hospital? Our medical and wellness build-outs page covers that kind of suite. Along the interstate, TxDOT’s I-35E proposal covers about 11 miles between the US 77 interchanges south and north of town: rebuilt, continuous, one-way frontage roads and two direct connectors at US 287. Leasing on the frontage road? Find out where that work stands before you sign.
US 77. This is retail’s newest edge. In October 2026, REjournals reported that CenterPoint Commercial Properties bought 12 acres at US 77 and Grove Creek Road for Village at Soma Creek, a 76.7-acre master plan with about 22 acres of retail on a road carrying roughly 34,000 vehicles a day, near a planned Sam’s Club and a recently opened Tom Thumb. Expect pads, ground leases, and build-to-suit shells. First-generation space, start to finish.
The plants. Further down, the employer list reads like a supply chain: Walgreens distribution at 850 employees, Dart Container at 748, Lippert Components at 334, Cardinal IG at 310, Owens Corning at 300, with BNSF and Union Pacific rail per the City’s transportation page. Plants need offices and break rooms too, and office build-outs inside an industrial building follow their own trade sequence.
Inside a cotton-boom block: brick, cast iron, and tin
Downtown, almost nothing is first generation. The district’s buildings date from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the nomination describes what you’ll find. Two Victorian commercial buildings from about 1890 at 208 and 210 West Main, two stories tall, whose original cast-iron storefronts and elaborate tin cornices are their finest features. The Waxahachie Abstract Company building at 200 West Main, from about 1895, where the window reveals show a 24-inch wall. And the 1894 Penn Building, which the nomination calls an excellent example of the Romanesque Commercial Style, with rounded arches, stone quoins, and a corbel table.
What that means once the drywall comes down:
- Walls up to two feet thick. Every new opening, anchor, or duct penetration in bearing masonry gets an engineer’s look before anyone cuts.
- Cast iron up front. The storefront is the most visible part of the building from the street, which is exactly what the Commission reviews. Plan the interior around it.
- Upper floors need a way out. The City’s commercial remodel checklist asks for a life safety plan showing the number and width of exits, travel distances, exit separation, and exit sign locations. An upstairs office or apartment succeeds or fails on that sheet, usually because of the stair.
Fire protection downtown has a local twist. Under a program funded by Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone #1, the City pays for the fire alarm control panel, the phone lines, and the monthly monitoring fee. The building owner pays for the system and devices inside the building and the wiring to that panel. On an upper-floor conversion, that line item shrinks.
Permits, plan review, and the CO in Waxahachie
The Building Inspection Division, part of Building and Community Services at 408 South Rogers, permits and inspects commercial and residential work. Everything runs through the Citizen Self Service portal, and the automated inspection line won’t book an inspection while any permit fee is unpaid.
Codes. The City adopted the 2021 International Codes and the 2020 National Electrical Code on May 20, 2024, effective June 1, 2024. Per the plan review page, anything submitted since then has to show compliance. The division aims to return comments within 10 business days on residential plans and 15 on commercial.
Contractor registration. Contractors register with the City, and the first category on the registration form is General. The form asks for a master or state license where one applies, the business owner’s driver’s license, and proof of liability insurance of at least $300,000 with the City of Waxahachie listed as certificate holder. Registration expires one year after the application date.
A commercial finish-out. The City’s commercial remodel and tenant finish-out checklist wants a code summary cover sheet, an as-built plan of the existing space, the life safety plan, trade plans, lighting and mechanical COMchecks, an asbestos survey where state law requires one, and your state accessibility registration number on the plans. Under TDLR’s rules, a project with a total estimated cost of $50,000 or more is registered and reviewed under the Texas Architectural Barriers Act. Smaller projects still have to meet the Texas Accessibility Standards.
The certificate of occupancy. If your project includes construction, the CO rides with the building permit and is issued after the approved final inspection. A new tenant moving in without construction files the separate certificate of occupancy application with a tenant space plan showing every wall, door, and room use. Staff can decide that plan needs a building permit first. One line from the guide sets the pace:
“Inspections will not be scheduled until after the application is approved.”
Food service: health, utilities, and the interceptor
Restaurants and cafes add three more offices. The City’s new food establishment guide lists the sequence: a CO application before the final health inspection, Fire Department sign-off on any suppression system, and a grease interceptor sized to the Utilities Department’s requirements. Minimum fixtures include a three-compartment sink, a separate hand sink in the prep area, a mop sink or a lipped floor drain, and a prep sink when you handle raw meat, poultry, or fish. Anyone selling more than prepackaged food needs garbage pickup at least three times a week. Health, Building, and Fire each do a final inspection.
That’s the same rough-in puzzle we solved at Pizza Twist. Our restaurant construction page has more.
Fire review now starts outside City Hall
Since January 1, 2026, the Fire Marshal’s Office requires that fire protection plans be reviewed by an approved third-party firm before they go into the city portal. That covers sprinklers, fire alarms, underground fire lines, commercial cooking hoods, suppression systems, and smoke control. The triggers: a new alarm or sprinkler system in a space with an occupant load of 100 or more, adding or relocating 10 or more alarm devices or 20 or more sprinkler heads. The contractor pays the reviewer directly. Smaller jobs send the office a scope of work letter and a diagram instead.
The department’s inspection guidance then checks the details: working exit lights, 2A10BC extinguishers inspected yearly, hood suppression tagged every 12 months, street numbers on the front and rear, and 36 inches of clearance at electrical panels.
Historic review before the first demo day
Waxahachie has been a Texas Main Street city since 1983, per the City’s Main Street page. The City’s historic preservation page lists six National Register districts and two local overlays, the Downtown Historic Overlay and the Oldham Avenue Historic Overlay.
Under Section 24-56, a Certificate of Appropriateness is required for alteration, restoration, or new construction in a historic overlay or district, on a National Register property or state landmark, or on a designated historic resource. Minor in-kind repairs are excluded. The application asks for current photos, historic photos if you have them, scaled elevations of anything visible from the public right-of-way, a materials list for every exterior surface and sign, and the dollar value of the work. Ten copies of the plans go to the Heritage Preservation Officer at least 20 days before the Commission meets. Signs in the downtown overlay need the Commission’s approval before a sign permit can issue.
“The Heritage Preservation Commission will not approve your project unless the Commission is shown to its satisfaction that the project is consistent with the historical character of the property.”
That bar has an upside. The City’s historic tax incentive gives a base credit of 25 percent of the City’s share of property taxes on a designated property. Commercial owners who spend at least $1,250 a year on repairs or improvements can earn another 50 percent. Residential owners can earn 25 percent more for maintenance and 50 percent more for restoring character-defining features like original windows, porch posts, and woodwork. The catch is order: work that needed an approved certificate and started without one disqualifies the property for the whole year. Applications run November 1 through March 15.
Home remodeling in Waxahachie, from the West End outward
The city’s best houses sit west of the square. The West End Historic District nomination covers about 77 acres along the 400 to 1300 blocks of West Main and nearby streets, with 135 houses, and calls its Queen Anne and Neoclassical Revival homes the city’s finest. Once the railroad brought in better, cheaper lumber, local contractors built grander houses, often from pattern books. One, the Trippet-Getzendaner House, was designed by George Barber of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Remodeling isn’t new here, either. The nomination tells the story of the B. F. and F. Lee Hawkins House: built in 1851 as a small one-story center-passage house, enlarged in 1887 into a two-story L-plan, then given Neoclassical detailing in the early twentieth century. Three eras, one house.
Inside a house like that, kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling happen in rooms never planned for either. New wiring and plumbing get fished through plaster without losing the trim, and where original pocket doors and heart pine floors survive, they’re repaired and refinished, not replaced. If the exterior is changing too, the Residential Design Guidelines the City implemented in 2021 apply to rehabilitating, restoring, and expanding historic homes. The Ellis County Museum’s Gingerbread Trail, founded in 1968 and in its 56th year in 2026, is a good look at what these interiors can be.
Newer houses are a different job. Communities like North Grove, Oaks of North Grove, and Sunrise at Garden Valley are young enough that the work is usually finishes, a primary bath, or a whole-home remodel that resets several rooms on one schedule. If you need space, the City’s residential remodel and addition checklist is specific: a site plan with drainage arrows for any addition, plus an engineer-sealed foundation design and an energy compliance report once the addition reaches 500 square feet. On a lot with septic, home additions also need a separate on-site sewage facility permit.
Three Waxahachie landmarks worth a stop
The Ellis County Courthouse
That’s the building at the top of this page. Its cornerstone went down on July 4, 1895, and the county accepted it in 1897 at about $130,000, per Ellis County. J. Riely Gordon’s design mixes gray and rose pink granite, Burnet County limestone, and Pecos red sandstone, and 21 carved stone faces on the porches are attributed to carver Harry Herley. In 2000 the Texas Historical Commission awarded the county a $3,567,787 restoration grant, and the THC records the rededication in October 2002 after work on deteriorated masonry, building systems, and accessibility.
The Rogers Hotel
The district nomination says the Rogers Hotel dominates the northeast corner of the square. Built in 1912 of dark brown brick, it rises as twin four-story towers with an open well between them, and its rooftop garden once gave guests a view across town. The nomination reads the balance of big windows and spandrels as a sign of the steel frame inside. When this photo was taken, a leasing sign on the street wall advertised lofts, offices, retail, and restaurant space. A 1912 hotel, looking for its next tenants.
The Chautauqua Auditorium in Getzendaner Park
Built in 1902, the octagonal open-air auditorium seats about 2,500, according to the City. It was nearly demolished before a community campaign restored it in the 1970s. It’s a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register on May 3, 1974.
Running a Waxahachie job from Legacy Drive
Distance changes how a job is run, not how well. Our six steps are on the process page; here’s the Waxahachie version.
- Understand. We walk the building with you and check whether the parcel sits in an overlay, a National Register district, or both.
- Visualize. 3D renderings come before a price. They also show the Commission the view from the street.
- Plan. A fixed-scope proposal by trade, with allowances, built around the Commission’s 20-day lead time, third-party fire review, and the Utilities Department’s interceptor sizing.
- Execute. One project manager, a written photo update every week, and site visits grouped around the inspection calendar so a 70-minute drive never holds up an inspector.
- Deliver. As-builts, permits, inspection records, the certificate of occupancy, and warranties in one close-out package.
- Support. One number to call after you move in.
Signing a lease on US 77, planning offices above a storefront on the square, or restoring a West End parlor? Book a consultation. We’ll make the drive, walk it with you, and come back with a plan you can hold us to.
Building in Waxahachie: what to know.
Waxahachie, the Ellis County seat, grew from 41,107 residents in 2020 to 50,090 in July 2025 by Census Bureau estimates. Its courthouse square of 1890s brick and stone sits inside a Downtown Historic Overlay where the Heritage Preservation Commission reviews alterations and new construction, while new retail, medical, and distribution space spreads along I-35E, US 287, and US 77. The Building Inspection Division at 408 South Rogers issues permits and certificates of occupancy under the 2021 International Codes, in effect since June 1, 2024.
Waxahachie neighborhoods and districts.
- Downtown Waxahachie (courthouse square)
- West End Historic District
- Oldham Avenue Historic District
- North Rogers Street Historic District
- Wyatt Street Shotgun House Historic District
- Marvin-Patrick Street Historic District
- North Grove
- Oaks of North Grove
- Sunrise at Garden Valley
- I-35E and US 287 interchange
- US 77 corridor
- Village at Soma Creek
Waxahachie on the map.
Open Waxahachie, TX in Google Maps
Photo credits
- Ellis County Courthouse, Main Street and Rogers Street, Waxahachie, TX - 54463052556.jpg by w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Main Street, Waxahachie, TX - 54463054181.jpg by w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- J. M. Alderdice House, Main Street, Waxahachie, TX.jpg by w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Rogers Hotel, Main Street and College Street, Waxahachie, TX.jpg by w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Waxahachie Chautauqua Building (1 of 1).jpg (cropped) by Renelibrary, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
