According to the Daily Trib, city officials in Horseshoe Bay dedicated a half-mile walking trail, a small bridge, a set of benches, and a monument to the city's first mayor on April 13. None of it sits on resort property. All of it sits behind the new City Center at 9101 W. FM 2147, a building that had opened only weeks earlier, after the city had needed a new one for years.
For most of Horseshoe Bay's history as an incorporated town, city business ran out of a building that predates the incorporation itself. City Manager Jeff Koska told the Daily Trib that the old city hall was built in the 1970s, decades before Horseshoe Bay officially became a city in September 2005, and by last year it was at capacity, with staff working out of repurposed closets, temporary buildings, and shared offices. The new $12.2 million, 16,000-square-foot City Center opened in February 2026, funded by $10 million in general obligation bonds voters approved in 2023 and another $2.2 million drawn from reserves the city had been building for years. Brown Reynolds Watford Architects of College Station designed it. Braun and Butler Construction of Leander built it under a construction manager at risk agreement, with groundbreaking in October 2023 and construction starting in November 2024.
That timeline matters less than where the building ended up. It sits geographically central to the city, bordered by Horseshoe Bay proper to the east, Horseshoe Bay West, Escondido to the north, and Summit Rock to the south. It is, in other words, not at the resort. Its location puts the new public space near the center of town.
The Trail and City Center Grounds
The dedication ceremony in April did more than cut a ribbon on office space. It added four named features to the grounds. The Elsie Thurman Walking Trail, a half mile, named for and designed by the city's fourth mayor, opened with plans to expand further around the property. Berkeley's Bridge is a pet memorial bridge on the City Center grounds. The Cynthia Clinesmith benches give walkers somewhere to sit. And a new monument recognizes Bob Lambert, the city's first mayor, who served eight years before a separate monument was placed at the old city hall.
Lambert spoke at the ceremony. His comment, as reported by the Daily Trib, was simple: "To volunteer in the city of Horseshoe Bay is the most significant time that I ever did." He'd volunteered in other places before Horseshoe Bay. This is the one that stuck.
None of these features are large. A half-mile trail with a bridge and a few benches isn't a park system, but it gives residents a free option for an evening walk without driving to a fairway or looping a subdivision cul-de-sac.
If you're driving over from another part of town, budget a few extra minutes. The city's own website currently lists an active roundabouts project along FM 2147, the same corridor the City Center sits on, so expect some construction movement near the entrance for a while yet.
What the Resort Was Doing at the Same Time
Horseshoe Bay Resort isn't standing still either, and it's worth naming what's happening there, because it explains why the City Center feels different rather than redundant. The resort, which opened in the 1970s and sits on roughly 7,000 acres around Lake LBJ, completed a four-year, $100 million renovation in 2020. A filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation shows construction on a new $4.5 million racquet club began in May 2026, adding to the resort's existing tennis and pickleball facilities. In August, Golf Channel filmed the Season 24 return of Big Break on the resort's courses, so if your morning walk or drive cuts across a fairway this year, you may be crossing a production hold rather than just another golfer's backswing.
The resort's facilities are built around resort programming, while the City Center's public spaces are available to anyone who lives here.
The Marina Got There First
The City Center wasn't even the first new gathering spot to open this cycle. In December 2025, a new lakefront restaurant called the Wave Bar & Grill opened at 200 S. Wirtz Dam Road, inside the LBJ Yacht Club & Marina on the line between Horseshoe Bay and Cottonwood Shores. It replaced a previous restaurant concept in the same space, with a tiki-themed bar, an outdoor patio over the boat slips, and an indoor stage for live music. The menu runs casual: sandwiches, tacos, grilled chicken, hamburgers, salads. You can walk in from the parking lot or dock a boat and walk in from the water, which is the point of a marina bar.
The resort's own dining rooms, Waterfront Bar & Grill and J's, are open to the public too, and neither requires a membership to eat there. But they sit inside resort grounds, built around resort programming and resort hours. The Wave is a marina business with its own owner and hours.
Put the two openings next to each other and a small pattern shows up. The marina built something informal and public-facing in December. The city built something formal and public-facing in February, then dedicated the walkable part of it in April. Together, they add public-facing options to the area.
A Walk and a Meal Around Horseshoe Bay
If you want to test what's actually changed, the test is simple. Walk the Elsie Thurman Trail behind the City Center, cross Berkeley's Bridge, sit on one of the Clinesmith benches for a minute, then drive the few minutes over to Wirtz Dam Road and get a table at the Wave. That loop, walk and meal both, didn't exist as an option twelve months ago. Now it does.
If you're interested in what the ongoing City Center expansion or the trail's future phases mean for the surrounding neighborhoods, Communications Director Cindee Sharp has said the city is taking sponsor interest for trail expansion and can be reached through the city's website. For anyone tracking how Horseshoe Bay's public spaces are filling in around its private ones, the past year has given you two new data points to watch, and both are worth an actual visit before you form an opinion from a headline.
If you're curious how these changes are shaping daily life and property values around Horseshoe Bay, Lake LBJ Partners keeps a close eye on what's opening, what's building, and what it means for the neighborhoods around the lake. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's changing.
