It took Bryan McVay four years to find a location for his hot dog shop.

Not four years to open one, four years to find the right building. McVay had spent his career doing food and beverage work for hospitality groups, helped create Legacy Food Hall in Plano, and grew up in Pittsburgh working the counter at a neighborhood hot dog stand where "every town has a hot dog shop." When he finally decided to open his own place, he wanted a specific kind of building: something on the McKinney square with history already baked into the walls. He landed on 109 N. Kentucky Street, a storefront built around 1920 that had cycled through an antique store, a rug store, a bakery, and, most recently, a coffeehouse called Snug on the Square that closed during the pandemic. Shorty's Coneys & Cocktails opened there in mid-March.

That four-year search is the real story on the square right now, more than any single opening. The historic core of downtown McKinney has almost no vacant land left to build on, so the businesses moving in aren't constructing anything new. They're waiting for a turn in a very short line of century-old buildings, and taking over wherever the last tenant left off.

What's Where, And What Used To Be There

Two of the square's most talked-about openings in the past fourteen months landed in buildings with real history attached.

Centro is a collaboration between Brian Dunne, who owns Mexican Bar Company in Plano, and George Stergios, owner of Knife Steakhouse in Plano. The two spent more than six years as neighbors in the restaurant district at The Shops at Willow Bend before deciding to build something together downtown instead. Dunne has described the location's appeal in plain terms: it "has a ton of foot traffic and is the heart of McKinney." The building itself sat empty for roughly two years after Harvest at the Masonic moved out in 2023, which suggests Dunne and Stergios weren't just taking whatever came available. They were waiting for the right address.

The bet paid off fast. By July 28, about six weeks after opening with dinner service only, Centro had already added lunch and happy hour. Getting a table after 5 p.m. reportedly requires patience, according to the Dallas Observer's coverage of the opening.

Neither Dunne nor Stergios is shy about why they picked the square over a newer commercial strip. "The Square is truly unique and has a pulse of its own," they told CultureMap Dallas when the restaurant was first announced.

Why Anyone Waits Years For A 1920s Building

There's an economic logic here that's easy to miss if you're just counting new restaurant names.

Historic downtown McKinney has a fixed inventory of buildings. Nobody is adding square footage to the district's original core, so every new concept that wants a spot on the square has to wait for an existing tenant to leave, then compete for the space against every other operator who's had the same idea. That scarcity is exactly what McVay described when he explained why the search took so long: he wasn't looking for storefront square footage, he was looking for a specific kind of building with specific bones, and there are only so many of those left.

It also explains why the businesses that do land there tend to move fast once they're in. Centro didn't wait to see if lunch traffic would materialize before expanding hours. It expanded because the crowds were already showing up at dinner. When foot traffic is baked into a location before you even open the doors, the usual slow-build timeline for a new restaurant gets compressed.

Two more downtown additions reinforce that the pull isn't limited to restaurants. Union Bear McKinney, a brewpub that brews its own beer on site, opened downtown in April 2025. And Hugs Café, the nonprofit that trains people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for hospitality careers, opened a new $10 million headquarters, eatery, and training center at 221 Andrews Street. CEO Lauren Smith said the new space "allows us to grow our programs and serve more individuals than ever before." That's a mission-driven organization choosing to put real capital into downtown McKinney rather than a cheaper location elsewhere in the city, which says something about what the address itself is worth.

The Chestnut Hall, a new event venue on South Chestnut Street with a full prep kitchen and a built-in bar, is expected to open sometime this year according to co-owner Alycia Kuehne, per Community Impact's reporting. It'll add 3,000 square feet of indoor event space and 750 square feet of outdoor balcony to a district that's already running low on room to grow.

The Growth That Doesn't Need The Square At All

Not every new opening in McKinney is fighting over an old storefront. A few miles from the square, along West University Drive, an entirely different kind of growth is happening on ground that didn't exist as retail space a year ago.

Oak & Stone opened its first Texas location at 8575 W. University Drive on May 19, 2026, the brand's first move outside its home base of eight locations in Florida. The 6,000-square-foot restaurant seats around 200 guests and centers on a self-pour tap wall with roughly 50 rotating options of beer, wine, and cocktails. It sits in a recently built retail center along the same corridor as Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, Paciugo Gelato Caffe, and Velvet Taco, according to Community Impact.

A few miles away, a Plano-based developer broke ground on the Eldorado Neighborhood Shops, a $27 million retail project on 13.7 acres at the corner of Eldorado Parkway and Stonebridge Drive. Mountain Mike's Pizza, Chipotle, and Willowbrae Academy signed leases before construction was even finished, with the project originally slated to wrap by February 2026.

That's the contrast worth noticing. On the square, growth happens by inheritance: someone waits years for a building to open up, then takes over whatever history comes with it. On the US-380 corridor, growth happens by construction: developers build new retail centers from bare ground and lease them out before the paint dries. Both are real, but they're not the same market, and they don't move at the same speed.

What This Means For A Weeknight Or A Fall Weekend

If you already live in McKinney, the practical takeaway is simple: the square's new spots are worth building a routine around, because most of them aren't going anywhere. A restaurant that waited two to four years for its address tends to stick around once it's in.

Fall gives you a reason to make the trip downtown a habit. McKinney Oktoberfest traditionally lands on the last weekend of September, and it's free to attend according to the city's events page. A few weeks later, the Trick-or-Treat Trail takes over Towne Lake Park with free admission and parking, running in the late afternoon window that works for most families on a weeknight. Both give you an easy excuse to grab dinner at Centro or a round at Union Bear before or after.

The square isn't getting bigger. It's just getting fuller, one inherited building at a time, and that's exactly what makes it worth paying attention to.

If you're weighing a move to McKinney, or you already call it home and want a local read on how a neighborhood like this one actually functions day to day, Allison Keegan has spent years tracking these details block by block. Start your home journey and reach out to Allison today.