"The Square is truly unique and has a pulse of its own."
That's how the team behind Centro on the Square described downtown McKinney when they signed a lease directly across the street from a construction zone. Most restaurant operators treat a shuttered landmark next door as a reason to wait. This team treated it as a reason to move faster.
Since February, the McKinney Performing Arts Center, the 1875 former Collin County Courthouse that has anchored the square's evening life since it reopened as a theater in the mid-2000s, has sat dark for a top-to-bottom renovation. If you have walked the square this year and noticed a different mix of storefronts than the one you remember from January, this is why, and it is not the story you'd expect.
What's Actually Closed, and For How Long
MPAC hosted its last public performance on Jan. 17, 2026, then closed to the public two weeks later on Feb. 1. Construction started in early February on a renovation the city has priced at roughly $10 million, with council approving a contract ceiling near $9.2 million for Fort Worth-based Byrne Construction Services to serve as construction manager. Because the 1875 building carries a State Antiquities Landmark designation, historic preservation firm Architexas and the Texas Historical Commission have signed off on details as granular as paint color. Architexas found the courthouse's original 1930s green under later layers and is restoring it.
The scope goes past cosmetics. Plans include new theater seating, acoustic upgrades, a permanent stage, and one deliberately strange piece of adaptive reuse: the old judge's bench is coming out of storage to serve as a bar inside the renovated lobby. City officials have pointed to a fall 2026 reopening, and the construction firm's own submitted schedule puts a possible finish as early as Nov. 20. Until then, temporary restrooms sit a block away on South Kentucky Street and parking along Tennessee Street runs tighter than usual.
Three Businesses That Read the Construction Differently
Here's where the story stops behaving the way you'd expect a downtown with a shuttered anchor to behave. In the same months MPAC has been dark, three new concepts have opened within a five-minute walk of the courthouse steps.
| Name | Address | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shorty's Coneys & Cocktails | 109 N. Kentucky St. | Detroit-style coney dogs, smash burgers, and a full bar in an 1875 storefront | Opened March 16, 2026 |
| Centro on the Square | 112 E. Louisiana St., directly across from MPAC | American bistro with handmade pasta and craft cocktails, from the owners of Mexican Bar Company and Knife Steakhouse in Plano | Now seating guests |
| The Cipher Lounge | 101 S. Chestnut St. | Escape room paired with a cocktail bar and shareable plates | Opened Aug. 15, 2026 |
Shorty's owner Bryan McVay spent four years looking for the right building before he found 109 N. Kentucky, a storefront that has stood on the square since 1875, the same year the courthouse itself was finished. Before McVay signed the lease, the space had cycled through an antique store, a rug shop, and most recently a coffeehouse called Snug on the Square that closed during the pandemic. He didn't see an empty theater down the block as a warning sign. He lined Shorty's walls with more than 300 vintage photographs of the square instead, leaning into the same history that made the courthouse worth restoring in the first place.
Centro's ownership, restaurateurs Brian Dunne and George Stergios, already run successful restaurants in Plano. They picked a storefront with a direct sightline to scaffolding and construction fencing. By their own account, watching the crowds keep moving through the square while the courthouse sat wrapped in tarps is what convinced them the location would work, not what gave them pause.
The Cipher Lounge came from Stephanie Roman, a former law enforcement professional who moved to McKinney with her husband two years ago. She converted a former flooring store on Chestnut Street into an escape-room-and-bar concept, opening her doors just over a week ago as of this writing, two blocks from the still-quiet MPAC building.
This Isn't the Same Story as McKinney's Other 2026 Restaurant News
Worth separating this from a different piece of McKinney dining news you may have also seen: Chuy's Tex-Mex is opening a location this year at West Grove, a mixed-use development on West University Drive near Highway 380, and Oak & Stone, a beer-focused concept making its Texas debut, opened in May at a University Drive shopping center alongside Velvet Taco and Kura Revolving Sushi Bar. Both are real growth, and both are miles from the square, on the newer commercial corridor that has defined most of McKinney's retail expansion for the past several years.
What's happening downtown is a different kind of growth. It's not chasing rooftops on the edge of town. It's filling in storefronts around a 150-year-old courthouse while that courthouse is closed, which is the opposite of what you'd expect a downtown's food and drink scene to do when its biggest cultural draw goes dark for the better part of a year.
The Calendar Backs It Up
When the city announced MPAC's closure, officials promised annual downtown events would continue on schedule during construction. They kept that promise. Arts in Bloom, the spring festival that fills the streets immediately around the courthouse with more than 120 juried artists, went ahead this April as always, just with a fenced-off theater as its backdrop instead of an open one.
The bigger test is a few weeks away. McKinney Oktoberfest, the city's largest annual gathering, typically lands in mid-September and historically draws more than 60,000 people across a footprint covering 14 blocks of downtown. This will be the first time that crowd has to route around active construction fencing at the courthouse rather than filing in and out of the building itself. If Shorty's, Centro, and the Cipher Lounge really are absorbing the evening foot traffic the numbers suggest, Oktoberfest weekend is where that gets proven at scale rather than assumed.
What This Means If You're Already Here
If you've skipped downtown for a few months assuming construction made it less worth the trip, the restaurant math argues otherwise. Three concepts opened or came online in the exact stretch MPAC has been dark, in storefronts within blocks of the closed courthouse, run by owners who by their own account read the construction as a signal to move in rather than a reason to wait.
The courthouse isn't gone. City projections point to a fall 2026 reopening, potentially as early as Nov. 20 per the contractor's own schedule, which would put a restored theater with a new stage and a bar built out of a 150-year-old judge's bench back in business right around when the square typically shifts into Home for the Holidays mode. Until then, the square's after-dark draw has simply moved a few doors down from where it used to sit, and it's worth a visit whether or not you've been keeping track.
If you're curious how shifts like this one shape buyer interest and property values around Historic Downtown McKinney, TLC Realty TX tracks these patterns as part of our ongoing coverage of Collin County's neighborhoods. Request a Personalized Consultation if you'd like to talk through what any of it means for your own plans in McKinney.
