If you haven't walked the stretch behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum lately, you might still be picturing the Riverwalk as basically wrapped up. Foster Pavilion opened, the parking garage went up next to it, and the mayor has spent the better part of two years talking about restaurants with river views. It would be reasonable to assume the hard part is behind us.
It isn't. As of this month, the city is still driving retaining walls into the riverbank and pouring fresh concrete along one of the busiest sections of trail downtown. The $26 million overhaul that was supposed to be done by the middle of this year now has a completion target of late 2027. That's not a delay measured in weeks. It's a full extra year, and it changes how you should think about the path you've been walking for the last decade.
The stretch that's actually a construction zone right now
The current work sits on the west side of the Brazos, running roughly from the Union Pacific Railroad bridge down to Baylor's School of Law. Contractor Fain Group LLC is the crew behind it, using heavy equipment to sink metal sheet retaining walls into the bank behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum and pouring new concrete near Foster Pavilion. If your usual route takes you through that section, expect it to look and feel like an active job site for a while yet, not a finished amenity with a few loose ends.
The scope goes beyond the walking surface itself. The base contract, priced around $23 million, covers the Riverwalk path and Sandtown Plaza. City staff had roughly $3 million in additional budget to decide how to spend, and they chose to keep the Cove Bridge, a fountain feature, the full landscaping plan, and added fencing rather than cut any of it to save money. There's also a quieter fix underway: the lighting system under the I-35 bridge, installed back in 2015, has been running at only about 60 percent operational capacity because of maintenance issues, and the current project is meant to address that too. If you've noticed dark stretches under the interstate on an evening walk, that's why.
Why "done by mid-2026" turned into "late 2027"
Back in early 2025, Mayor Jim Holmes described a straightforward timeline: construction starting mid-2025, water features and two new restaurants in place by the middle of 2026. That version of the story is the one most residents still have in their heads. It's just no longer the operative one.
Part of the reason the plan kept moving is that the plan itself kept moving. Earlier this month, the city council approved a fourth amendment to its Master Development Agreement with Catalyst Urban Development, the firm handling the riverfront build-out. That amendment shifts the focus of Phase 2, located at Webster Avenue along the river, from a hotel to a mixed-use residential project. When the developer partner changes what it's building on a piece of the site, the sequencing of everything around it shifts too. The riverfront isn't a single project with one finish line. It's several overlapping ones, and each adjustment to one piece ripples into the schedule for the rest.
City officials have been direct about the intent behind all of this, even with the extended timeline. Holmes has said the investment is meant to work "for the Waco residents in general to enjoy this area," regardless of whether there's a game at Foster Pavilion on a given night.
The half-built brewery everyone's been asking about
The most concrete piece of good news, literally and figuratively, is the brewery deal locals have been hearing about for months. Back in April, the city council approved a 15-year lease with Manhattan Project Beer Co., a Dallas-based operator, to bring a brewery, taproom, restaurant, and coffee bar into the ground floor of the Pavilion Parking Garage at 600 S. University Parks Drive, right next to Foster Pavilion.
Here's the detail worth sitting with: that ground floor has 20,000 square feet of retail space total, and Manhattan Project Beer Co. is taking about half of it. The city is putting up to $2.49 million into finishing out that space, and the lease is projected to bring in roughly $3.6 million in rent over its 15-year term, with two five-year extension options built in. As of the most recent reporting, the target opening is May of 2027.
That means two things for anyone planning around this corner of downtown. First, the space you drive past on University Parks Drive is going to sit unfinished for a while longer, not weeks, but into next year. Second, even once that opening date arrives, it only accounts for half the retail footprint down there. The other 10,000 square feet still doesn't have a named tenant, so whatever fills it is a separate announcement still to come.
What already changed while the construction dominated the headlines
None of this means downtown has been standing still. A lot of what residents actually interact with day to day has already shifted, quietly, over the last year or so, and it's easy to miss if you've been focused on the orange cones near Foster Pavilion.
The Downtown Waco Farmers Market relocated to Bridge St. Plaza last year after eight years at its previous spot, and the move brought a noticeable jump in Saturday morning foot traffic along with more vendors. Kilwin's opened its doors on 6th Street that same year, filling the block with the smell of fudge and waffle cones on weekend mornings. BRÛ made a bigger jump not long after, moving out of its original spot in an elevator shaft inside the Praetorian Building and into the historic Anthem Stories building. Summer Sips debuted as a new seasonal tradition that year too, pairing the Texas heat with specialty cold drinks at stops across downtown. And last year's Silobration packed the district again with more than 80 local vendors and performances from Forrest Frank and NEEDTOBREATHE.
There's also a route a lot of Waco runners already know without needing a map. After finishing the Baylor Bearathon, the standard refuel loop runs through a latte at Dichotomy, lunch at Terry Black's, and something sweet from Milk Bottle Cookies, all within easy walking distance of each other downtown. It's the kind of small, specific pattern that tells you more about how a place actually gets used than any press release does.
Walking it this fall
None of this is a reason to avoid downtown or the riverfront right now. It's a reason to be specific about which part of it you're heading toward. The Bridge St. Plaza farmers market, the new spots on 6th Street, and the Anthem Stories block are open, functioning, and worth the trip today. The stretch behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum and around Foster Pavilion is a working construction site that will likely still look that way through next year, with the ground-floor retail space beside it not fully activated until spring 2027 at the earliest.
The honest version of this story is less tidy than "the Riverwalk is almost done," but it's the one that actually matches what you'll see if you go look this week.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property near the river corridor, or just want a straight answer about a specific block before you make a decision, Vianey Suarez knows this stretch of Waco block by block. Let's Connect.
