City details investments, approach to growing development in South Longview

Aerial images of Longview from the 1970s and 1980s depict a city with a different center of gravity than the one residents know today. Loop 281 was constructed in 1960, but entire tracts of the city’s northern expanse laid undeveloped and shrouded in pine trees for the better part of the last century.

South Longview — between Interstate 20 and U.S. 80 — was nearly built out with homes and small businesses by the same point. The story of the next five decades, however, was one of uneven development.

Retail investments rushed into those empty northern acres, introducing Longview to its first mall in 1978 and a Walmart Supercenter in 2004.

Lateefah Pruitt, a longtime southside resident and owner of State Realty (her family’s business), said that despite South Longview’s many strengths, food and entertainment often mean a drive north…

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