Walk the Katy Trail from Highland Park south toward Cityplace on a Thursday evening in July and the corridor tells a different story than the press releases. The construction cranes at 3333 Knox have come down. The precast arches of a 27-story tower now cast real shadows across the trail. The monk parakeets are still there. Most of the restaurants and boutiques that filled last winter's headlines, though, are not.
If you live in Knox-Henderson, Uptown, Oak Lawn, or the streets just south of Mockingbird, you have been reading about Knox Street for two years. The useful question this summer is not what is coming. It is what is actually open by Labor Day, what opens this fall, and what you are still waiting on well into 2027. The three answers are not the same, and treating them as one calendar is why the block feels quieter than the marketing suggests.
The 2026 delivery is a building and a park, not a lineup
The single biggest change on the corridor this summer is residential, not retail. The Lora, a 27-story luxury apartment tower rising over Dallas' Knox Street, is finally showing off what it looks like on the inside, and the building gets ready to welcome its first residents this summer. The tower will bring 186 apartments to the Katy Trail corridor, with one- to four-bedroom homes that run from roughly 800 square feet to more than 3,500 square feet. Designed by the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Woods Bagot, The Lora is distinguished by a sculptural façade of warm, earth-toned precast concrete articulated through generous arches framing each residence. These architectural gestures subtly reference the site's history along the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad line.
The name is a Katy Trail joke, sort of. Its name draws from the Spanish word lora, an homage to the bright green monk parakeets, originally native to South America, who are now beloved residents of the Katy Trail bordering the site. If you have ever paused near Knox to figure out what was chattering in the oaks, that is the reference.
Alongside The Lora, the ground plane changes too. The Lora offers direct access to the Katy Trail, and the corridor is picking up a new half-acre greenspace between the tower and the trail. In addition to The Lora, the development will include 150,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of retail, a half-acre park, and The Knox Hotel and Residences, operated by Auberge Collection, set to debut in late 2026.
For a current resident, that is the whole 2026 story in one line: a tower leasing this summer, a park connecting to the trail this fall, and a hotel and office building delivering late in the year. Almost every restaurant and boutique you have been reading about opens after that.
The timeline the press releases blur together
The confusion is understandable. Announcements have arrived monthly since mid-2025, each one written in the present tense. Sorting them out matters if you are trying to figure out where to eat Saturday.
| Tenant | Status | Actual window |
|---|---|---|
| The Lora | Leasing by appointment | Summer 2026 |
| Knox Street Park | New greenspace at Katy Trail | Fall 2026 |
| 3333 Knox office building | 100% preleased since fall 2024 | Late 2026 |
| The Knox Hotel and Residences (Auberge) | Residences nearly sold out | Late 2026 |
| DÔEN, STAUD, TOTEME, TWP | Texas debuts announced Dec 2025 | Following the hotel opening |
| Addison Bay | Confirmed for Knox Street | Fall 2026 |
| Sant Ambroeus | First Texas outpost, at base of The Lora | 2026 into 2027 |
| Théa Mediterranean Rooftop | Sam Fox concept, two-story rooftop | Early 2027 |
| The Main House | Former Mashburn space, Katy Trail patio | 2027 |
The joint venture partnership of BDT & MSD Partners, Trammell Crow Company, Highland Park Village Associates and The Retail Connection announced the topping out of its Knox Street mixed-use development in Dallas, Texas. Spanning more than one million square feet, the project will deliver 150,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of retail, a 27-story, 186-unit apartment tower, a half-acre park with a direct connection to the Katy Trail, and The Knox Hotel and Residences, a 140-room hotel and 47 ultra-luxury condominiums operated by Auberge Collection.
Read that mix carefully. Retail is 100,000 square feet across a million-square-foot project. It is the connective tissue, not the anchor. The anchors are the hotel, the office building, and the residential towers, and the retail comes online in step with them.
Why Sant Ambroeus is the one restaurant everyone is watching
Of the confirmed food and beverage tenants, one has done more to reset expectations for the corridor than the rest combined. In June 2025, celebrated Italian hospitality group Sant Ambroeus announced Knox Street as the location of its first Texas outpost. Anchoring the base of The Lora and overlooking Knox Street Park, the restaurant will offer all-day dining, an elegant café, and dedicated outdoor patio seating.
The scale is worth pausing on. The 7,800 square-foot Dallas outpost will offer all-day dining and outdoor patio seating overlooking Katy Trail. That is a large footprint for an all-day café concept, and it sits at the base of the residential tower directly on the trail. If you are trying to picture how Knox Street feeds the trail rather than turning its back on it, this is the room to picture.
The brand is not new to Americans who summer on the coasts. Sant Ambroeus was founded in Milan, Italy, in 1936. A New York location opened along Madison Avenue in 1982. Other locations include Aspen, Palm Beach and Paris. Dallas is next.
The 2027 wave is the one that will actually change your Saturdays
Two openings that landed as headlines this spring are worth knowing about now, even though neither will be open when the fall pumpkin-spice cycle arrives.
The first is a rooftop. Théa Mediterranean Rooftop will open in early 2027 at 3333 Knox St. It will open between the Katy Trail and Travis Street and across from restaurants Toulouse Cafe & Bar and Taverna. The two-story eatery comes from Sam Fox, the restaurateur behind The Henry, Flower Child, Culinary Dropout and Doughbird. The Phoenix original earned rooftop-of-the-year attention. Dallas is only the second location.
The second is the space that used to make you a little sad every time you walked past it. Called The Main House, it will take over the former Mashburn space at 3333 Knox St., Ste 145, at the corner of the Katy Trail. According to a release, it is slated to open in 2027. The restaurant will feature a patio opening directly onto the Katy Trail, beckoning walkers, cyclists, and diners looking for an outdoor seat. The all-day Main House will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All-day breakfast on the trail is a Knox Street the corridor has not had before.
The retail cohort follows a similar rhythm. Knox Street revealed that lifestyle brands DÔEN, STAUD and TOTEME will be opening their first standalone Texas locations, in addition to TWP. These openings follow The Knox Hotel's opening in Fall 2026. Add cult-favorite women's activewear brand Addison Bay setting up shop on Knox Street this fall and the picture of the block in 2027 sharpens quickly, even if the picture of the block in July 2026 is still mostly its familiar older tenants.
What this actually means for your July and August
Set aside the coming-soon list. Here is how the corridor reads right now if you already live nearby.
- The Katy Trail still ends at the same places it did last summer. Toulouse and Taverna are still your closest patios at the Travis intersection. Cafe Madrid remains at the corner. The Katy Trail Ice House is a Corporate Partner of the Year Award Finalist for its longstanding support of Friends of the Katy Trail.
- The new fenceline between the trail and the tower is the biggest visual change. Watch the half-acre park take shape through late summer and into fall.
- The Lora leasing office is open by appointment this summer. If you have a friend who has been asking whether renting on Knox Street is a real option, this is the season the question stops being hypothetical.
- The Katy Trail 2024 City Bond Projects will bring a new entrance to the Trail and landscape restoration north of Knox. That work is separate from the private development and worth watching if you use the Knox entrance regularly.
- The 28th Annual Katy 5K takes place September 10, 2026, at 7:30 P.M., starting at Reverchon Park, 3505 Maple Ave. That evening is the moment the corridor's new geography gets its first crowd test.
The useful mental model for Knox Street this year is a stage being set, not a curtain going up. The lights come on this summer with The Lora and the park. The cast arrives across 2027.
What it means if you own or rent nearby
Two quiet signals in the data are worth registering, even without turning this into a market read.
The first is on the office side. The nine-story, 150,000-square-foot office building, 3333 Knox, is also scheduled for delivery in late 2026 and has been 100% preleased since fall 2024. Anchor tenant ISN Software Corporation will be joined by Paul Hastings LLP and BDT & MSD. A fully preleased office building in a market where downtown vacancy is a running conversation is the kind of tell that gets read carefully by anyone tracking demand for walkable Dallas.
The second is on the hotel condo side. The Knox Hotel and Residences is set to debut in late 2026, with the private residences nearly sold out well ahead of completion. In June 2025, celebrated Italian hospitality group Sant Ambroeus announced Knox Street as the location of its first Texas outpost. Anchoring the base of The Lora and overlooking Knox Street Park, the restaurant will offer all-day dining, an elegant café, and dedicated outdoor patio seating. Presale absorption on a hotel-branded residence that has not yet opened is unusual, and it hints at how the buyer pool is reading the corridor's next decade.
Neither of those datapoints tells you what your own street will do. Both tell you the professional money has made its call, which is a useful thing to know when you are still deciding whether to walk your Saturday morning coffee north toward Highland Park Village or south toward the trail.
A word on the retail promise, tempered
The new development is a joint venture between BDT & MSD, Trammell Crow Company, the owners of Highland Park Village, and The Retail Connection. The Highland Park Village partnership is why the tenant mix reads the way it does. The retail curation on Knox is being run by the same people who curate Highland Park Village. Whether that produces a second version of Highland Park Village or something that reads more like a trail-adjacent extension of it is the question that will not be answered until the boutiques actually open in 2027 and residents start to vote with their afternoons.
For the summer of 2026, the corridor is a construction site becoming a neighborhood in slow motion. The best posture is patience with a calendar in hand.
When you are ready to talk about the block
Watching a corridor reset is one thing. Deciding whether to buy, sell, or lease into it is another. If you own nearby and are wondering how the Knox Street timeline affects your resale window, or you are relocating to Dallas and trying to decide whether to plant yourself walking distance from the Katy Trail before the retail lands, that conversation deserves a real sit-down. Torelli Properties Group works quietly and specifically across Highland Park, Uptown, and the Knox-Henderson corridor, and can walk you through what the next twenty-four months mean for your particular block. Schedule Your Personalized Consultation.
