For the better part of two years, driving through Old Town Keller has meant working around something. First it was Bates Street, torn up and rebuilt into a festival-ready block with a pedestrian beacon crossing US 377. Then it was Elm Street, closed at Pecan Street while crews demolished and rebuilt the bridge over Bear Creek. If you live here, you already know the detour signs. What you may not know is that the delay isn't one long project running late. It's two projects, deliberately run one after the other, because the city could not afford to close all of Old Town at once.
That sequencing is the part worth understanding, because it explains both why this has taken so long and why the hardest stretch, the bridge, is likely behind you right now.
Two projects wearing one name
Old Town Keller's rebuild actually started back in 2017, when the city finished nearly $4.5 million in work on the west side, replacing water and sewer lines, redoing streets, and adding parking and lighting. That was Phase 1. Phase 2 covers the east side, from Keller Parkway to Bear Creek Parkway, and the city split it into two sequential builds rather than one: Bates Street first, completed in fall 2023 with a ribbon-cutting on October 7, then Elm Street, which broke ground in March 2025 and is budgeted at $30.7 million with a completion target of summer 2028.
Public Works Capital Projects Manager Rick Hardcopf put the logic plainly when the bridge work was announced:
"Work on Elm Street is like replacing a car engine while you're driving the car. We're working within the space constraints of a narrow, developed project corridor and need to build new infrastructure while keeping all the existing services running and maintaining public access and safety during construction."
That single line explains the entire pace of this project. A one-shot closure of the whole corridor would have been faster on paper and would have shut down every business on the street for a year or more. Splitting the work into Bates, then Elm, then the bridge inside Elm, kept at least part of Old Town open and functioning the whole time.
Why the bridge was the hardest piece
The Elm Street bridge over Bear Creek wasn't getting a facelift. It's being demolished and rebuilt to meet current floodplain standards, with new pedestrian access added beneath the span so people can cross the creek without using the roadway above it. That's a genuinely different structure, not a repaved version of the old one, which is part of why it required a full closure rather than lane-by-lane work.
The closure itself had a rockier start than planned. The city announced in January that bridge work would begin that spring, with the Bear Creek trail crossing near the Bear Creek Parkway and Whitley roundabout closing for construction staging and an estimated four months of work once it started. A separate report in early February said the closure was originally supposed to start that month, but Winter Storm Fern's ice pushed the actual start date back into spring.
Run that math forward. A four-month closure that finally got underway sometime in the spring lands its finish line somewhere in the summer, which is exactly where the calendar sits as of this writing. If you haven't already crossed back over a reopened Elm Street bridge, you are very likely about to.
Here's how the full sequence lines up:
| Phase | Work | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 (west side) | Water and sewer lines, streets, parking, lighting | Completed 2017 |
| Phase 2: Bates Street | Road rebuild, pedestrian hybrid beacon, Bates Street Park | Completed fall 2023 |
| Phase 2: Elm Street | Road rebuild, on-street parking, sidewalks, landscaping | Construction since March 2025, budgeted through summer 2028 |
| Elm Street bridge | Demolition and rebuild to floodplain standards, new creek-level pedestrian crossing | Closure began this spring after weather delay, four-month window closing out now |
Tarrant County has been funding a meaningful share of this. Voters approved $5.75 million toward Elm Street as part of the 2021 bond package, and county commissioners approved an additional $1.84 million at their June 2025 meeting once the project's real scope became clear. That's public money tied to a specific finish line, not an open-ended civic wish list.
Parking, not paint, is driving the design
It's tempting to read all this as cosmetic, gateway arches and stamped concrete meant to make Old Town photograph well. The city's own staff have said otherwise. Assistant Director of Community Development Sarah Hensley called out the actual constraint directly during the Bates Street phase: parking is "the No. 1 concern" in Old Town, ahead of any decorative element. That's why both Bates Street and Elm Street were designed with dedicated on-street parking built into the roadway itself, not added as an afterthought once the sidewalks were in.
That single fact reframes what's happening underneath all the barricades. The lighting, benches, and landscaping are real, but they're the visible layer on top of a much less glamorous fix: a corridor that was running out of places to park cars for the businesses it was trying to attract.
What survived the barricades
Not every business in Old Town waited for the construction to clear before opening. Keller House Collective opened its craft beer and pizza concept ahead of the Elm Street work specifically, with its owner framing the timing as a bet on the corridor rather than a reason to wait. A few blocks over, The Polkadot Giraffe gift shop has been running out of a house built in 1920 on Olive Street since around 2017, well before any of this current construction started, giving Old Town a business that predates the entire Phase 2 effort and has simply operated through all of it.
Those two stories sit at opposite ends of the same idea. One business bet on the construction finishing well. The other never needed the construction to succeed in the first place.
What opens when the dust actually settles
The next wave of new business in Old Town is tied directly to the timeline above. Hops Kitchen + Bar, an upscale steakhouse concept from Donny Wu and Tommy Zheng, the team behind Hush Sushi + Bar, is set to break ground this August at 200 Keller Parkway, with an opening targeted for summer 2027, roughly a year ahead of Elm Street's full completion. The concept blends premium steaks and seafood with traditional Chinese cuisine and craft cocktails, and its timing puts it right in the middle of the corridor's transition from construction zone to finished pedestrian district.
Mayor Armin Mizani has framed the Elm Street work as a deliberate setup for exactly this kind of business, calling the reconstruction "another catalyst for city council's vision for Old Town as a dining, shopping and entertainment district." Read against the timeline, that's not marketing language. Hops Kitchen + Bar breaking ground this month, right as the bridge closure winds down, is the plan working roughly on schedule.
The rest of Old Town never stopped
Construction aside, the weekly rhythm of Old Town has kept running the whole time. None of it required Elm Street to be finished:
- The Keller Farmers Market runs Saturday mornings from spring through fall at Bear Creek Park, with produce, baked goods, and crafts from Texas vendors
- A free youth fishing event opens each June at the pond behind Town Hall, stocked with catfish by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for anglers 16 and under
- Moviehouse & Eatery keeps dinner-and-a-movie a one-stop errand
- Salt & Light Collective hosts public workshops in a historic farmhouse setting
None of that needed a bridge. It's worth remembering that the disruption has been real, but it's been layered on top of a neighborhood that kept its normal week intact the entire time.
The two-year story, in one line
If you've been assuming Old Town Keller is one project that keeps sliding its finish date, the more accurate read is that you're watching the second of two sequential builds, timed on purpose so the corridor never had to close all at once, with the worst single piece of it, the bridge, closing out right around now. The next two years, through the 2028 target, are less about disruption and more about the slower work of filling in what the bridge and the road rebuild made room for.
If you're keeping an eye on how Old Town's transformation is shaping property values nearby, or you're just trying to figure out what your own Keller home is worth as this corridor finishes filling in, Jennifer Frank tracks these changes block by block across Keller and North Richland Hills. Reach out for a conversation about your neighborhood, or get an instant home valuation to see where your home stands today.
