"We have to find another Liars' Table."
Jack Payne, co-owner of Springhill Restaurant, said that to the Austin American-Statesman as the 2505 W. Pecan St. restaurant got ready for its scheduled Oct. 16 closing. The Liars' Table was the weekday lunch group that met there for years. Payne described it as the place "where a bunch of guys get around and tell a bunch of lies."
Five days earlier and farther down the same street, Pecan St. Station Deli & Grill at 1005 W. Pecan St. served its last day after 26 years, according to Community Impact. Within one October week, Pecan Street lost its two longest-running lunch counters. The places now being set up as Pflugerville's next gathering spots are being built on ground with a very different ownership arrangement.
Both closings started with the lease
Pecan St. Station changed hands in July, when Brian Hernandez took over from Paul Prestridge, who was retiring. Hernandez had worked at the deli for 18 years. Community Impact reported that he bought the business but not the building. He called that arrangement "a risk" in a Facebook post. The building is now for sale. "The news came on Saturday for us, that our last day would be the 11th," Hernandez told the outlet. He added that he hopes to relocate. He is also getting ready to open a restaurant in Round Rock.
Springhill began with a lease, too. The Statesman reported that Carroll Humphrey drove past the building in 1984, saw it was for lease, and opened a catfish house there in 1985. He named it after the nearby Spring Hill neighborhood. Pflugerville had a few hundred residents then. Humphrey told the paper he knew the restaurant would draw diners from Williamson and Travis counties, with customers coming from Taylor, Round Rock and Austin. Forty-one years later, the owners told the Statesman that fewer customers were eating out and that they could no longer afford the rent on the 6,000-square-foot building.
Here are the two closings side by side:
- Pecan St. Station Deli & Grill, 1005 W. Pecan St. Open since 2000, last day Oct. 11. The business was sold in July, and the building it rents is now for sale.
- Springhill Restaurant, 2505 W. Pecan St. Open since 1985, scheduled to close Oct. 16. The owners cited the rent and fewer diners.
In each case the owners did not control the building the restaurant depended on. That is a different problem from running out of customers. The Statesman described a dining room that a Florence couple drove 40 miles to every week. City Council Member Rudy Metayer told the paper his parents had eaten there since it opened. Jimmy Gregory, a co-founder of Texas Disposal Systems and a Liars' Table regular, put it this way to the Statesman: "These family-style restaurants are a dying breed."
The neon pig sign, the 5-cent peanut machine, the carousel horse and the rest of Springhill's decor went to an online auction.
The city is about to be downtown's landlord
East of the old core, the city is building something no private tenant on Pecan Street had: a gathering place it owns outright, with a local business signed to a multiyear lease.
At a Sept. 22 council meeting, staff said the Downtown East project is expected to reach substantial completion on Dec. 18, as Community Impact reported. The council also gave final approval to a lease with Two Brews LLC, the operator of West Pecan Coffee + Beer, for café space inside the new City Hall at 605 E. Main St. The lease runs from November 2026 through Jan. 1, 2030, and the café is expected to open in January. It will be the second location for West Pecan, which opened in 2018.
Mayor Doug Weiss told Community Impact that "choosing a local business for City Hall was important to us as we made plans for the building to activate a third space for our community, where people can relax and spend their free time." A third space is exactly what the Liars' Table was. The difference is that this one has a public landlord and a lease with an end date already written down.
The city's timeline from now through spring:
- November: Staff training begins at The Monarch, the new multigenerational recreation center.
- Dec. 18: Downtown East is expected to reach substantial completion.
- Late December: City staff move into the new City Hall.
- Jan. 4: City Hall opens to the public.
- Jan. 10: The current recreation center closes.
- Mid-January: The Monarch soft-opens, with a ribbon cutting to follow in February.
- April: A grand celebration of the project is held alongside the Slice of Pflugerville event.
Drivers will feel the project first on FM 685. Downtown East includes a new traffic signal at FM 685 and the extended Main Street. Median demolition for the signal was scheduled for Oct. 26–30, with overnight lane closures between Pecan Street and Applewood Drive, according to Community Impact's updated report. Deputy City Manager Emily Barron told the council that the city and the Texas Department of Transportation are reviewing intersection spacing and signal timing to keep traffic from backing up.
The city owns old-downtown property too, and filling it has been slower. In February, Pflugerville asked for business proposals to repurpose its property at 101 and 105 E. Pecan St., a former barbershop and specialty shop, with responses due March 18. A second solicitation for the same site was posted on the state's procurement board in August. As of late October, no tenant had been announced.
Stone Hill is filling up with new construction
The other place where new tables are appearing is the SH 130 side of town, in buildings that went up recently and were leased to operators with multiple locations.
- CAVA opened Oct. 21 at 18709 Limestone Commercial Drive in Stone Hill Town Center, serving Mediterranean bowls and pita wraps.
- Hopdoddy Burger Bar set its opening for Oct. 27 at 18708 Limestone Commercial Drive.
- Ramen Tatsu-ya is under construction at 18725 FM 685, just south of Tumble 22 and Kura Revolving Sushi Bar. CEO Todd Coerver told Community Impact it would open in the summer.
- Snooze has announced a location at the same address. This is the Denver-based brunch chain's second try at Pflugerville, after it dropped a plan for the same retail center in early 2025.
Stone Hill already draws crowds, and these openings add to it. They also show where new restaurant space in Pflugerville is being built right now: in new retail centers near SH 130, not in older buildings along Pecan Street.
What's still holding Pecan Street together this November
Pecan Street has not gone quiet. The businesses still opening there are mostly small and locally run, and most of them are not restaurants.
Pfun Arts at 401 W. Pecan St. has expanded into four areas: a fine art gallery, an open studio, space for classes and workshops, and an artisan retail shop that is still to come. It scheduled its grand reopening for Oct. 24. Nearby, Big Boss Bundles opened Aug. 7 at 301 W. Pecan St. Farther out, Back Nine Golf opened July 6 at 2606 W. Pecan St., Ste. 202. It is a 3,000-square-foot indoor simulator with four bays, open 24/7, with courses that include Pebble Beach and St. Andrews.
The most dependable reason to be downtown is still the market calendar. The Pecan Street Collective holds its next market Saturday, Nov. 7, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Coffee & Pfuel Car Meetup runs the same morning from 9 to 11 a.m. at 100 E. Main St. It is held on the first Saturday of each month alongside the market. The Collective's Small Business Saturday market follows on Nov. 28, also from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. downtown.
For anyone who has lost a weekday lunch spot, January brings the first new option downtown: a locally owned coffee and beer counter inside City Hall at 605 E. Main St., on a lease that runs through Jan. 1, 2030.
When a longtime business closes, the reason often turns out to be the building, and that matters if you own a commercial property on Pecan Street or are thinking about buying one. Team West Real Estate works with investors and owners on commercial and multifamily sales across the Austin metro. If you're weighing what a Pflugerville storefront is worth or who should own it next, Request a Specialist and we'll go through it with you.
