Round Rock Mayor Alan McGraw said that he remembers when he was first elected to city council in 2001, he would go downtown every other week for the meetings, leave afterward and the area was empty.

“Now when I come to the council meeting you have to look for a parking place, and when you leave the council meeting there’s people everywhere. It’s become a destination,” McGraw said. “That’s been my 15-year experience watching it change.”

Downtown is in a time of change as the city goes into the second year of a major construction project that has led to detours and sections of roads being closed. Business owners along Mays Street have said the construction has hurt their business, but there are also signs of growth during the construction. A new office complex in southwest downtown is expected to bring hundreds of workers when filled, and a variety of new restaurants have come to Main Street and throughout downtown.

“We are trying to focus on the fact that at the end of this [road work] it’s going to be very beneficial [to businesses],” Downtown Manager Courtney Ainsworth said. “And in the meantime we’re trying to support the businesses any way that we can.”

Roadwork

Barbara Waldare, owner of Wine Sensation on Mays, said she knows about the city’s long-term plans for downtown and expects it to be beautiful, but she is trying to keep her business open “right now.”

“We feel [Mays] has been torn up all at once,” she said. “We feel that’s what has made it a lot worse.”

Waldare said the construction has stopped drive-by traffic. She said Wine Sensation relocated to Mays about the same time construction started in spring 2015, and business was good at first. Waldare said business drastically slowed when crews started detouring traffic near the roundabout.

“My main goal in all this is to not put down the city,” she said. “My goal is to encourage people to please come in during construction because they need to support us now.”

McGraw and Ainsworth said the city is doing everything it can to minimize the effects on businesses, including posting messages on social media encouraging people to come to the area and moving as aggressively as possible on road construction.

Furthermore, Ainsworth said many businesses continue to do well during construction and others are interested in opening downtown.

Archie Johnson, owner of Johnson Outdoor Advertising, said he plans to open a new restaurant along with his son Lee called Under the Tower Barbecue near the corner of Mays and Main in the fall.

Johnson said the construction has been “a pain,” but he feels the city has been communicative. He said his family decided to open the restaurant in part because of the anticipated renovations to the area.

“They’re making improvements that are going to be great for this downtown area,” he said. “The downtown area has changed in the decades since [Johnson Outdoor Advertising] has been here. There’s more nightlife and restaurants coming down here.”

Future plans

Round Rock Transportation Director Gary Hudder said as part of the city’s efforts to make downtown more pedestrian-friendly, the city wants to push traffic away from the Main Street corridor.

He said to do that, the city is doing preliminary work to extend McNeil Road from where it currently ends near Mays to Georgetown Street.

To construct this new extension, some of the property on the south side of the former Gypsum Builders Supply property will be used as right of way.

Hudder said the goal is to give drivers who only use downtown as a bypass a means of getting through the area without driving through the more pedestrian-friendly core.

Using the former Gypsum location as the road right of way is one part of the city’s plans for the property. The city is also working with a developer to get a site plan established for a townhome project to be built on the site.

Round Rock Planning Director Brad Wiseman said the townhome project will be about 80 units of one- and two-story condos. He said the goal of the condos project is to get more people living downtown.

“One of the goals of the downtown master-planning initiatives, in addition to creating more restaurants and retail, was to increase the number of folks living downtown,” he said.

Wiseman said because of the project’s complexity, city officials are not sure about the timeline for building the condos. He said it is possible the deal between the city and the developer could be set by the fall.

Long-term goals

Nelson Nagle is developing the Four Eleven office project downtown and is the co-owner of the downtown restaurant Uban Eat.Drink, which opened in May.

Nagle has had investments in southwest downtown for decades and said the area is “re-urbanizing.”

“We can’t keep it the same,” he said. “I think it’s exciting to have all the food venues and music venues. But it also creates the opportunity to make sure our ordinances complement all businesses. Because if we’re not careful we end up with music venues only. [...] I think it needs to be managed so [businesses] can coexist.”

McGraw said the city is aiming to create a downtown that is compatible with the family-friendly “Sports Capital of Texas” branding.

“If we’re marketing sports tourism to attract families, then the amenities we’re offering them need to be complementary,” he said. “It can’t just be a bar district. It has to be a family-friendly atmosphere that you can bring the kids to.”