By six o'clock on a Friday, most people in Hollytree have already made the call without thinking about it. Either you're changing for dinner at the club, where live music starts at 6:30, or you're pointing the car toward South Broadway, where the restaurant cluster keeps adding names faster than anyone can memorize the new signage. Both directions feel like home. Only one of them has stayed exactly the same since 1983.
That gap between what's fixed and what's still being built is the more interesting story this year. Hollytree residents have spent 2026 watching a corridor that promised a lot of new openings on a schedule, and the schedule hasn't always held. Knowing which of those promises actually landed changes how you plan a Friday, not just this month but for the rest of the year.
Two Directions, One Neighborhood
The club side of Hollytree runs on a rhythm that hasn't changed in decades. The Hollytree Country Club dining program puts live music on the calendar every Friday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., with select Fridays reserved for a Steak Experience, and Pasta Night rotating through the month's themed buffet lineup. Sunday brunch splits between a casual Mixed Grill and the formal Main Dining Room, and members with a taste for wine can rent a climate-controlled locker with their name on it.
The corridor side is a different animal entirely. It's the stretch of South Broadway and Old Jacksonville Highway a few minutes from the neighborhood, where national chains have been landing in waves for the better part of two years. The two directions aren't really competing. They're serving two different moods, and this year the corridor's mood has been "under construction."
| The Club | The Corridor | |
|---|---|---|
| Friday anchor | Live music, 6:30–9:30 p.m. | Rotating new openings |
| Signature draw | Steak Experience, select Fridays | Fast-casual density near Loop 323 |
| Consistency | Same program since membership records began | Timelines shift month to month |
| What's private | Wine locker rentals, member-only access | Nothing, it's all visible from the road |
What Actually Opened In 2026
Here's the corridor's real track record so far this year, in the order it happened, not the order it was announced.
- March 10 — Smalls Sliders, the black-and-orange container burger concept, opened its drive-thru at 1781 SSW Loop 323, with the grand opening handing out free sliders to the first hundred customers.
- Projected for June — A 106,000-square-foot BJ's Wholesale Club near the Village at Cumberland Park was, as of a mid-May report, still on track for a June opening, joining the fuel-station format the chain runs at its other Texas locations.
- Targeted for August 31 — Tikka Shack, a fast-casual Indian concept, is set to replace the former Cycle Bar space at 5868 Old Jacksonville Highway Suite 200, with construction expected to wrap by the end of this month.
Read that list straight through and the pattern is obvious. Something opens roughly every couple of months, which is exactly why it's easy to assume the next announced project will follow the same clock. It doesn't always.
And What's Still Just A Rendering
Two projects on the same corridor tell the opposite story. Back in December 2024, Tyler Morning Telegraph reporting had Dave & Buster's breaking ground in March 2025 at 8930 S. Broadway Ave., with a completion date of January 19, 2026. As of a report from this past May, no significant construction progress was visible at the site, and the project's owner had not released an updated timeline.
The bigger road project tells the same story at a larger scale. The long-discussed widening of Old Jacksonville Highway from four lanes to six, the corridor Hollytree residents actually drive to reach most of this new development, was pushed from a 2028 start to 2030 following a January 2026 public meeting. MPO Director Michael Howell attributed the delay to the time needed to acquire right-of-way and coordinate utility relocation before construction can begin.
One Tyler resident summed up the broader frustration at an MPO update later that spring:
"We're frankly way behind when it comes to planning for the development of our community."
That's not a knock on any single project. It's a fair description of how growth actually moves in this part of Tyler: in bursts, on its own schedule, regardless of what the original press release said.
Why Hollytree Drive Itself Feels Different Lately
If the road under your own tires has felt rougher than usual this year, that's not imagination. Hollytree Drive is on the list for the city's 2026 Asphalt Enhancement Project, a $3.7 million effort to repave roughly 20 miles of Tyler streets. Utility crews have already cut into the pavement in three places on Hollytree Drive between Rieck and Rice Roads, in front of the condo community, ahead of the resurfacing work itself.
It's a small, unglamorous detail, but it's the kind of thing that explains a lot. The corridor's visible growth (new restaurants, a new wholesale club, a widened highway someday) all depends on the same unglamorous groundwork: utility lines moved, right-of-way acquired, pavement cut before it's repaired. The club's Friday night doesn't require any of that. The corridor's does, every time.
The Club Side Doesn't Move, And That's The Point
While the corridor reshuffles itself, the golf course at the center of Hollytree has stayed put since Bruce Devlin and Robert von Hagge laid it out in 1983. It's a target-style design with water in play on nine holes, Champion Bermuda greens, and a par-72 layout stretching close to 6,800 yards. The signature par-4 15th still asks for a tee shot over water with more water running the length of the fairway, the same test it's presented for over forty years.
That permanence is the actual trade residents are making when they choose a club Friday over a corridor one. The Steak Experience, the wine locker, the Sunday Mixed Grill: none of it is subject to a construction delay or a right-of-way negotiation. It's already built, and it has been for decades.
The Real Choice
None of this means the corridor isn't worth the ten-minute drive. Smalls Sliders is open. Tikka Shack is close. If BJ's held its projected June timeline, that's one more errand that no longer requires a trip further into South Tyler. The honest version of a Hollytree Friday night isn't club versus corridor. It's knowing which corridor promises have actually been kept this year, and building your plans around what's open rather than what was announced.
That kind of local read, the difference between a press release and a parking lot with cars in it, is the same instinct that matters when you're thinking about a neighborhood in a bigger way, whether that's understanding how an area is evolving or figuring out what its growth actually means for your own address. If you're curious how any of this fits into the bigger picture for your home or your next move, The Tyler Lifestyle is always happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready.
