Stand at the corner of Closner Boulevard and McIntyre Street right now and you'll see the two versions of downtown Edinburg at the same time. Behind a chain-link fence, crews are grinding the last chunks of the old Hidalgo County Courthouse into gravel, a building that held court for 70 years and is now scheduled to be gone by September 4. A block over, another crew is finishing the concrete decks of a three-story parking garage that broke ground less than a year ago. Neither of those things is the story. The story is what happens once both of them are done and a food hall a few blocks away opens its doors into all that new asphalt.
Downtown Edinburg has been "coming back" for a long time. A city planning document from 2010 diagnosed the exact problem: after 5 p.m., downtown emptied out, and even during the workday there weren't enough lunch options for the county, city, school district, and university employees who worked there. Sixteen years later, the diagnosis hasn't changed much, but this fall is the first time the two halves of that problem, a place to go and a place to park, are landing within weeks of each other instead of years apart.
The nine-month window nobody planned as a package
None of these projects were coordinated as a single initiative. They're four separate efforts from four separate parties: a private food hall developer, a title company owner restoring a historic building, the city's public works department, and the county's facilities division. But they all converge on roughly the same six-block stretch of downtown between late 2025 and the end of 2026.
| Project | What it is | Where things stand |
|---|---|---|
| Las Almas Food Hall | Locally owned food hall, $1.6 million investment | Opening fall 2026 at 225 E. Cano St. |
| LEWIS Building restoration | Renovation of a 1925 commercial building, $650,000+ investment | Phase 1 white-box spaces underway; bourbon bar and coffee shop in later phases |
| Downtown parking garage | Three-story, 268-space public garage, $6.2–6.3 million | Under construction at Closner Blvd. and McIntyre St., targeted for completion this fall |
| Old courthouse demolition | Removal of the 70-year-old former county courthouse | Targeted for completion by September 4, 2026 |
| STXIFF 2026 | 12th Annual South Texas International Film Festival | September 10–12 at the ACE Center, 315 W. McIntyre St. |
Look at that table and the pattern is obvious once you see it: Edinburg isn't building a new downtown from scratch. It's reusing what's already standing and pairing it with just enough new infrastructure to make people actually stay after work.
What opens at 225 E. Cano Street
Las Almas Food Hall is the piece most people will notice first, mostly because it's the one you can walk into. The Garcia-Kalifa family is putting more than $1.6 million into converting a building steps from the courthouse into a shared dining hall, and the Edinburg Economic Development Corporation expects it to create more than 30 jobs once it's fully staffed.
What's inside will read less like a food court and more like a curated lineup: pizza, vegan dishes, tacos, burgers, barbecue, sushi, Asian fusion, ceviche, and Mediterranean food under one roof, plus a dedicated coffee vendor, a charcuterie-to-go station, and a full-service bar pouring craft cocktails, beer, and wine. That last detail matters more than it sounds. A downtown that can support a full liquor license on a weeknight is a downtown that expects people to stick around past 5 p.m., which is exactly what the 2010 plan said wasn't happening.
The food hall is also folding in something you won't find at a chain restaurant. UTRGV art students will show and sell original work inside the space, and the venue will host watch parties for UTRGV sporting events. Co-developer Amira Kalifa, who also sits on the city's downtown steering committee, put it plainly when the project was announced:
"I've seen firsthand the momentum building in this district, and I'm proud to bring a space that reflects the diversity and energy of our community right here on Cano Street."
The other building getting a second life
A few blocks away, on E. University Drive and N. 13th Avenue, a different kind of project is unfolding more slowly. Byron Lewis, CEO of Edwards Abstract and Title Co., is leading a restoration of a 1925 commercial building through his company, LEWIS Building LLC, backed by the EEDC. The first phase delivers six white-box commercial rental spaces, finished walls, lighting, and infrastructure ready for a tenant to move in and build out. Later phases are slated to bring a boutique bourbon bar and a coffee shop, positioning the building as one more anchor for foot traffic once it's fully leased.
This is the slower half of the story. The project is projected to create around 15 full-time jobs over three years, not this fall. The reason it matters now is that it tells you the food hall isn't a one-off bet. A century-old building and a brand-new food hall are both getting private capital within the same downtown footprint, which is a different signal than a single flagship opening on its own.
The parking math that made the rest possible
Here's the part that rarely gets covered in the announcements: none of this works without somewhere to leave your car, and Edinburg has been quietly stacking up parking capacity in three separate places at once.
The headline project is the $6.2 to $6.3 million, three-story garage at Closner Boulevard and McIntyre Street, which will add 268 free public spaces. Even the city's own updates haven't agreed on when it opens. Design documents once called for an October 2026 finish. Coverage around last fall's groundbreaking put it at anywhere from November 2026 to early 2027. The most recent estimate, from this spring, lands back on November 2026. None of that is unusual for a public works project, but plan a night downtown around this garage and you might find it still fenced off.
Separately, Hidalgo County added a 104-space lot at N. 12th Avenue and E. Loeb Street specifically to ease pressure around the courthouse, targeted for completion by late 2025, with a Valley Metro shuttle stop built in. And once the old courthouse demolition wraps by early September, the county intends to convert that footprint into parking too, though the final space count and cost for that lot are still being worked out.
Add it up and you get roughly 372 formalized parking spaces converging on a two-block radius before the end of the year, on top of whatever the old courthouse site eventually adds. That's the unglamorous infrastructure that has to exist before a full-service bar a few blocks away makes any sense.
The weekend that tests all of it early
Downtown doesn't have to wait for the food hall to find out if people will show up. The 12th Annual South Texas International Film Festival runs September 10 through 12 at the Edinburg Arts, Culture and Events Center, 315 W. McIntyre Street, which is itself a repurposed building: the city converted the old Sam Houston Elementary School, built in the 1920s, into a 45,000-square-foot venue that now doubles as City Hall annex space and cultural events hall.
This year's lineup includes 31 independent films and 22 regional, state, and world premieres, with actor Edward James Olmos headlining alongside local talents Valente Rodriguez and Dannie McCallum. Mayor Omar Ochoa noted it was good timing that actor Terrance Howard happened to be in Edinburg in late July, just weeks before the festival kicked off its promotion. Tickets range from $5 for a single film block up to $65 for the awards gala, with a $25 full festival pass in between, making it one of the more accessible ways to see whether downtown Edinburg can pull a crowd before the parking garage or the food hall are even finished.
Edinburg has been designated a Film Friendly Texas community since 2018, and STXIFF is produced by the city's Cultural Arts Division with support from the Dustin M. Sekula Memorial Library and the Edinburg Arts Foundation. It's a smaller, older tradition than any of the new construction, but this September it's arriving right in the middle of the loudest stretch of downtown change the city has seen in years.
What this actually means if you live here
None of these projects individually would be worth a headline. A food hall opening is routine news in most cities. A parking garage finishing on schedule, more or less, isn't a story anywhere else. But watch them land together over the next few months and you're looking at the first real test of whether downtown Edinburg can hold onto people once the workday ends, something the city has been trying to engineer since at least 2010.
If you've lived in Edinburg long enough to remember when Cano Street was mostly county offices and empty sidewalks after 5, this fall is worth watching in person, not just reading about.
Knowing which corner of a city is about to change, and why, is the same instinct that makes for good real estate guidance. If you're ever curious how these shifts in Edinburg or the surrounding Rio Grande Valley might affect where you'd want to live next, Mauricio Saldana tracks this stuff for a living. Search homes or request a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
