New businesses are arriving on Lakeline Boulevard in the western areas of Cedar Park and Leander.

Developments are concentrated at Cedar Park’s Cypress Creek Road and Lakeline intersection as well as Leander’s Crystal Falls Parkway and Lakeline intersection.

In Leander, Randalls announced it will break ground in October on its Lakeline grocery store. Plans originally called for the store to open by December, but the Randalls opening has been postponed to 2016. It will anchor a new plaza of shops and restaurants.

In Cedar Park, two new businesses will open in fall, Grit & Grace Gift Shop and Gino’s Italian Cuisine, and in 2016 a new Gold’s Gym is set to open along with new restaurants.

The growth is a result of each city’s vision to promote Lakeline as a major north-south arterial spanning both cities. City planners hope that within 10 years drivers will be able to travel on a four-lane Lakeline all the way from US 183 south of Cedar Park to Hwy. 29 north of Leander.

The road is bordered by existing and planned single-family housing neighborhoods and apartments that have led residents to the western market for more business. Both Cedar Park’s and Leander’s land-use maps call for more housing and retail centers at each of the two Lakeline intersections. Each city has invested resources at or near the intersections, such as Cedar Park’s ongoing project to improve the intersection of Cypress Creek and Lakeline as well as Leander’s and Williamson County’s funding of a North Lakeline extension to Old FM 2243. The extension opened in April.

Lakeline business is expected to keep growing in that area, Leander Assistant City Manager Tom Yantis said.

“We anticipate seeing commercial and high-density residential and office development, which is exactly what we’re seeing happen there [already],” he said.

Lakeline in Leander

Randalls plans to break ground Oct. 15 on its new store southwest of the intersection of Lakeline and Crystal Falls. The 59,000-square-foot store will anchor a new plaza, Crystal Falls Town Center, which will include 23,000 additional
square feet.

Utility work is ongoing at the Randalls construction site, and Leander City Council is set to approve the retailer’s building plans in October.

“Randalls is a great grocery store and a good anchor tenant for shopping centers,” Yantis said.

The anchor will draw chain restaurants to build in front of the plaza near Crystal Falls, he said.

The intersection’s first restaurant, Brooklyn Heights Pizzeria, opened
Aug. 19 in The Shops at Crystal Falls plaza southeast of Lakeline and Crystal Falls. Northeast of the intersection, Cedar Park Regional Medical Center is building its first Leander facility, Cedar Park Regional Emergency Center. The freestanding emergency room facility is on track to open in March, CPRMC Director of Marketing Laura Balla said.

“We see the location at Crystal Falls and Lakeline as optimal due to visibility and proximity to residential communities,” Balla said.

Before the opening, Leander’s closest emergency facility is CPRMC itself in northern Cedar Park.

In addition to the emergency center, the area is slated to receive a new neighborhood, Mason Hills, which will add 1,000 single-family houses near the new North Lakeline extension that meets Old FM 2243. Yantis said other housing developers are inquiring about vacant land along North Lakeline, which will eventually become a four-lane road.

However, on Sept. 17, Leander City Council turned down a developer’s zoning request to build age-restricted senior apartments at the intersection’s northwest corner. Crystal Falls residents and some council members said they prefer to see commercial development there.

“That corner—that’s really [the] last piece of a large tract that is undeveloped there,” Yantis said. “[The zoning request] will come back through the [zoning] process and we’ll come up with a solution to that.”

Lakeline in Cedar Park

More than 50,000 vehicles travel each day through the intersection of Cypress Creek and Lakeline, making that Cedar Park’s busiest city-maintained intersection, said Garret Bonn, former Cedar Park engineering project manager.

In June the city started a $2.95 million, seven-month project intended to improve intersection efficiency by adding and extending turn lanes. The intersection project is funded by the city and Williamson County and expected to be finished in January.

Business could be supported by new apartments near the intersection, such as two senior living facilities that have been proposed on either side of Juliette Way. Cedar Park engineers are designing plans to finish nearby Little Elm Trail, filling gaps so the road will connect Lakeline with Bell Boulevard.

Russo’s owner Raymond Rosario said he considered other cities for his new restaurant, including Georgetown and Northwest Austin, before choosing the Lakeline intersection. Nearby homes and apartment complexes as well as baseball and soccer fields make the area desirable for a full-service Italian restaurant, Rosario said.

“[The area] is actually an underserved market when it comes to options to eat,” he said.

Shauna Cotton and Amanda Madden said they believe the area is also an underserved market for a gift shop. They plan to open Grit & Grace Boutique in late October and intend to capture traffic not only from nearby homes but also from Lakeline Mall and SH 45 farther south in Austin.

“Being Leander residents, we still come [down Lakeline] to Cedar Park to do a lot of our shopping,” Madden said. “So we just felt like that was the right location. … Leander has more room for growth. But we felt like [a Cedar Park shop] is a very centrally located place.”