Maria Halkias The Dallas Morning News
Chip and Joanna Gaines are taking over another building in downtown Waco, this time to house a new headquarters for their expanding Magnolia lifestyle brand.
Magnolia told city officials last week that it will move into The Waco Tribune-Herald building at 900 Franklin Ave., just a few blocks from the company’s Magnolia at the Silos shopping district, the city’s biggest tourist attraction.
Magnolia said it plans to spend $13.6 million to renovate the three-story, 110,000-square-foot building that housed the newspaper for 70 years.
The Tribune-Herald’s staff will move later this month into another building downtown, according to an article published last week. The newspaper building is owned by Brazos River Capital, a real estate investment group controlled by Waco residents Clifton and Gordon Robinson, according to a story in The Tribune-Herald.
Waco’s downtown Tax Incremental Financing Zone board approved $2.6 million in economic development funds on Thursday to help retrofit the building. Renovation plans include offices, meeting rooms, a test kitchen, a production studio for Magnolia Network programming, warehouse space and exterior improvements.
The Magnolia brand includes operations in retail, real estate, hospitality, entertainment and publishing. The company said it will consolidate about 200 staff members from various locations to the building in summer 2022. In its recommendation to the board, Waco’s TIF staff said Magnolia’s corporate staff move will be “a bellwether moment in the resurgence of downtown Waco,” which is something the celebrity couple has been working on the past few years.
Magnolia’s total Waco employment, which includes stores, restaurants, real estate and e-commerce, is about 700, according to a Chamber of Commerce local employer list.
The Gaineses are also redeveloping a downtown office building into a hotel. Last year they expanded their shopping district, adding a Magnolia Home furniture store, six small shops, a large patio with seating and renovating an old church that was moved to the Silos property.
Magnolia also has a separate distribution center for its online sales in Waco, and it has been adding merchandise categories to its brand.
Joanna Gaines’ first cookbook, Magnolia Table, is also the name of a restaurant in Waco and is now a cooking show. That all gives the brand credibility to add more cooking items to its Magnolia shopping site.
She put together a Jo’s Kitchen Essentials collection that could be a complete kitchen recipe for a newlywed couple. Cooking and baking pieces for sale on Magnolia.com include French brands Emile Henry and Le Creuset, KitchenAid and Cuisinart mixers and food processors, Wustholf knife blocks and Magnolia’s own branded items.
Discovery’s Magnolia Network has renewed its cooking series Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines for two more seasons. The second season started Friday, and the third season will begin July 15, the same day that Magnolia Network will launch as its own network on Discovery+ and on the Magnolia app. The Discovery+ preview launch started in January.
Next year, Magnolia Network plans to launch as a traditional broadcast channel that would be delivered through cable or satellite TV systems that agree to add the Magnolia channel to its lineup.
And while Magnolia Network has created a dozen new shows, its headliner is the return of Fixer Upper, which started it all back in 2013. Fixer Upper: Welcome Home premiered on the Discovery+ app in January.
