Ask a longtime Horace resident where downtown is and you'll get a different answer depending on how long they've lived here. Someone who's been here since before the boom points to Main Street, the strip with Casey's and Big Erv's. Someone who moved in during the last five years points toward Jack's Way, where the Dairy Queen and the Sanford Clinic sit. Both answers are correct, which is the part that doesn't show up in the usual roundup of what's new around town. Horace isn't one growing Main Street. It's two finished commercial corridors running on different clocks, plus a third one that exists mostly on paper so far.
The Original Main Street Still Works Because It's Small
The old townsite cluster is compact enough to walk in five minutes. Big Erv's Bar & Grill anchors it at 412 Main Street, Casey's sits at 112 Main Street, The Grove Coffee & Wine is at 574 Main Street, and Taco Revolution operates just off the strip at 560 1st Street N. This is the Horace that existed before the subdivisions, and it still functions the way small-town main streets are supposed to: a place to grab coffee, cash a check, or watch a game without driving anywhere.
What it hasn't done is grow. No new storefronts have opened on this stretch in the recent building wave. Every dollar of new commercial construction in Horace over the past several years has gone somewhere else.
The Real Growth Has Been Happening on Jack's Way
That somewhere else is Jack's Way, a stretch of road about a mile from Main Street that didn't have a name most residents would recognize a decade ago. It now carries nearly all of Horace's new commercial square footage, and it's close to full.
The anchor is the Shoppes at Horace, a strip mall at 7951 Jack's Way that brought in a Sanford Health clinic and, in 2023, The Headquarters restaurant and bar, known locally as HQ. The Headquarters was opened by Bob Kietzer, who also owns West Fargo's Bar Down and PubWest, and it built its identity around Friday night live music, meat raffles, and a game room with Pac-Man alongside blackjack and darts. Manager Abby Sorenson told The Forum at the time that the opening felt significant because Jack's Way was where all the growth was concentrating.
Two years later, that concentration finished the block. A McDonald's is now under construction at 7785 Jack's Way, on the parcel sitting directly between the existing Dairy Queen and a Circle K convenience store. As of the most recent construction photos, taken in late July 2026, the city's planning department hadn't been given an opening date, but the build was moving quickly. What that filled parcel means in practical terms is that the short run of Jack's Way from Circle K to Dairy Queen no longer has an empty lot in it. The corridor that didn't exist as a destination a decade ago is now built out end to end.
| Corridor | Located On | Anchors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main Street | 100-500 block, Main St | Casey's, Big Erv's, The Grove Coffee & Wine, Taco Revolution | Established, unchanged |
| Jack's Way | 7675-7951 Jack's Way | Circle K, Dairy Queen, Sanford Clinic, The Headquarters, McDonald's | Built out, still filling |
| Lakeview | Sheyenne St & Wall Ave | Amphitheater, park, mixed retail | Planned, not yet built |
A Third Corridor Is Still Just a Plan
That third row in the table is the part most residents haven't clocked yet. Back in 2024, InForum reported that a development called Lakeview, centered near the intersection of Sheyenne Street and Wall Avenue, was in the works as a public-private partnership involving the Kilbourne Group, the same firm behind the renovation of downtown Fargo's Black Building. The stated goal wasn't to add another strip mall. It was to build something that felt like a center.
"We have this opportunity to carve this out of a cornfield."
That's how Kilbourne's vice president of development, Keith Leier, described the ambition at the time, saying the plan was to establish a Main Street feel and an urban experience where there's currently open ground. The concept includes an amphitheater, a handicap-accessible park funded by the Horace Park District, and space for restaurants and shops that haven't been named yet.
The developer's own timeline at the time of that reporting aimed for a construction start in late 2025 or early 2026. That's worth watching rather than assuming. Horace has a track record of finishing what it starts on Jack's Way faster than most residents expect, but Lakeview is a bigger and more collaborative project than a single strip mall lot, and nothing in the public record yet confirms a groundbreaking date. If you drive past Sheyenne and Wall and see dirt moving, that's the story catching up to the plan.
What Actually Ties the Corridors Together
None of this growth happens in a vacuum. Horace's population went from 3,085 at the 2020 census to an estimated 7,804 in 2026, which explains why two commercial corridors exist where one used to be enough and why a third is already being discussed. That kind of growth doesn't distribute itself evenly across a map. It shows up first wherever land was available, which in Horace's case meant Jack's Way, and it's now pushing toward wherever the next available land sits, which is Lakeview.
The one part of town that doesn't split along old-corridor and new-corridor lines is the Horace Park District. Its event calendar runs through neighborhoods regardless of which commercial strip is closest, with Movies in the Park, a Party in the Park built around yard games and an hour-long foam party, and an End of School Celebration that includes free hot dogs and a live DJ. Meadowlark Park, built inside the Lost River development, carries a playground, an outdoor rink with a warming house, a softball field, three pickleball courts, and picnic shelters. None of that programming asks whether you shop on Main Street or Jack's Way. It's the connective tissue between a town with two finished centers and a third one still on the drawing board.
Bean Days Is the One Weekend Both Corridors Share
If there's a single date on the calendar where Horace briefly acts like it has one Main Street again, it's Bean Days. The city has confirmed the 2026 dates as September 11-12, and the full schedule includes a parade, a car show, vendor booths, food trucks, games, and a street dance, alongside a Horace Lions Club pancake breakfast, a dog show, a 5K run, a bean bag tournament, and BINGO at the Senior Center.
The parade route runs down Main Street, which for one weekend a year becomes the literal center of gravity it hasn't been for regular commerce in years. The vendors and food trucks, though, pull from across the whole town, including businesses on Jack's Way that didn't exist the last time Bean Days happened. It's a useful reminder that Horace's daily errands and its civic identity aren't quite running through the same street anymore, even if they still meet up twice a year.
The Takeaway for Anyone Watching Horace Change
None of this is really about which corridor is better. It's about recognizing that a town growing this fast doesn't grow in one direction, and the places locals default to for coffee, dinner, or a Friday night out are shifting depending on which decade they arrived. If you've noticed Jack's Way filling in faster than Main Street, you weren't imagining it. And if Lakeview does break ground where Sheyenne meets Wall, Horace will be building its third center before most residents finished getting used to its second.
If you're trying to make sense of how Horace's neighborhoods, growth patterns, and everyday rhythms fit together, whether you already call this town home or you're weighing what a move here would actually look like, Arlin Fisher is happy to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.
