Chip and Joanna Gaines’ shopping complex, Magnolia Market at the Silos, is poised to become a bigger tourist destination than The Alamo.
The husband and wife, HGTV Fixer Upper stars’ two-and-a-half acre retail destination in Waco, Texas is likely to be visited by 1.6million people — a few hundred thousand more people than anticipated to stop by The Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas.
In 2015, The Alamo reportedly received 1.3million visitors. In comparison, the Statue of Liberty draws about 4million visitors a year.
Despite being closed on Sundays — the Gainses are evangelical Christians — Magnolia Market draws about 30,000 visitors a week from places all across the US, according to a report from the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Fans have turned Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines’ retail complex, Magnolia Market at the Silos, into a major tourism destination
Magnolia Market is expected to host 1.6million visitors by the end of the year, several hundred more than The Alamo will receive, according to a new report
The lifestyle retail space also employees about 600 people from the Texas town.
While at Magnolia Market, visitors eagerly snap up products that carry the Gainses’ stamp of approval, including a $70 wooden laundry sign, lounge on the large artificial turf lawn and nosh on the complex’s food truck fare.
Most of the people who flock to the former mill site are there because they are acolytes of the Gaineses’ home improvement TV series, which begins its fifth and final season on Tuesday.
The local tourism board credits the Gainses and the popularity of their shopping complex with helping to increase local tourism and economic development across the board.
Gaines fans flock to Waco, Texas’ Magnolia Market to indulge in goods and foods that bear the home improvement TV stars’ stamp of approval
The Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, has averaged about 1.3million visitors in recent years
Tourism officials anticipate 2.6million will visit local attractions this year, four times as many as visited the same locations in 2015. Magnolia Market at the Silos celebrated its grand opening in October of that year.
Meanwhile, hotel occupancy was said to be at 75.5 per cent in the second quarter of this year, making it the second-highest occupancy rate in Texas.