For most of 2025, the storefront at 109 N. Kentucky Street sat behind paper, the way empty buildings on the square always do between tenants. Before that it had been Snug on the Square, a coffeehouse that closed during the pandemic. Before that, an antique store, a rug shop, a bakery. The building itself has stood on the square since 1875, the first non-wood structure in the historic district, which means it has outlasted every business that ever tried something inside it.
This year it opened as Shorty's Coneys & Cocktails, a Detroit-style hot dog and smash burger bar. A few blocks away, at 112 E. Louisiana Street across from the McKinney Performing Arts Center, a second concept called Centro on the Square opened from a pair of established Plano restaurateurs. Two independent groups, working with no connection to each other, landed on the same six blocks of downtown McKinney in the same year. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's a signal about what the square has quietly become.
What the Centro team already knew
The owners behind Centro on the Square, Brian Dunne of Mexican Bar Company and George Stergios of Knife Steakhouse, weren't newcomers guessing at a market. They'd spent six-plus years as neighbors in the restaurant district at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, one of the busier retail corridors in Collin County. When they decided to open a concept together, they didn't stay in that established traffic pattern. They picked McKinney's square instead.
"The Square is truly unique and has a pulse of its own."
That's the reason they gave. Watching foot traffic build steadily on the square during construction is what confirmed the decision for them, according to their own account. For two operators who'd already proven they know how to read a restaurant district, choosing an older, smaller downtown over a shopping center they knew intimately is worth sitting with.
The other proof point: how long it took to say yes
Bryan McVay, the owner behind Shorty's, brings a different kind of credibility. His background runs through Hard Rock Cafe, House of Blues, Fox Sports Grill, and FB Society, where he helped build Legacy Food Hall in Plano. He knows what makes a food concept survive in North Texas because he's built several of them for other people.
It took him four years to find the McKinney storefront he wanted. Not four years to decide he liked McKinney. Four years to find the right building on the square specifically, after he realized the old brick storefront at 109 N. Kentucky reminded him of the Pittsburgh hot dog shop where he worked as a teenager. He didn't just want downtown McKinney. He wanted this stretch of it, and he was willing to wait.
McVay's own read on what the square needed wasn't complicated. He wanted a place where a family could eat well for less than the price of a sit-down dinner elsewhere in the district: he told Local Profile they needed a spot where you could "bring a family and feed them for something less than $20 a person." That's a pricing decision built around who actually walks the square on an average Tuesday, not just who shows up for a festival weekend.
| Restaurant | Address | Concept | Previously in that space |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shorty's Coneys & Cocktails | 109 N. Kentucky St. | Detroit-style coneys, smash burgers, cocktails | Snug on the Square (closed during the pandemic) |
| Centro on the Square | 112 E. Louisiana St. | Handmade pasta, steaks, seafood, craft cocktails | New build-out |
The calendar that makes the math work
Here's the part that doesn't show up in a restaurant review: neither of these leases is betting on a single big weekend a year. They're betting on a square that has stacked enough recurring, smaller events that foot traffic shows up on a predictable schedule, week after week, month after month.
Downtown McKinney's summer calendar this year includes:
- The Margarita Stroll on July 11, a single-day ticketed walk with 15 tasting stops plus 5 bonus stops across downtown from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Biweekly Friday vendor markets at TUPPS Brewery, most recently August 14 and 28, combining local craft vendors with the brewery's taproom crowd from 6 to 9 p.m.
- The America 250: Texas Trailblazing Wonder Women exhibition at the McKinney Cotton Mill, running from June 12 through August 30, open daily during business hours
- A classic car show on the downtown square August 15, its third year running, featuring 150 cars from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
None of these individually rivals a big regional festival. Together, they mean the square rarely goes more than a week or two without a reason for someone to park downtown who wasn't already planning to eat there. That's a different kind of traffic than a once-a-year draw. It's the kind a restaurant lease can actually be underwritten against, because it repeats on a schedule an operator can plan staffing and inventory around.
Compare that to a different model working a few miles away. Hub 121, in McKinney's Craig Ranch area, has built its own draw from scratch with a steady lineup of free tribute-band concerts and food trucks. It works, but it's a manufactured pull inside a purpose-built entertainment complex. The square didn't need to build that infrastructure. It already had the walkable blocks, the historic storefronts, and a decades-old habit of residents treating downtown as a destination. The event calendar simply gave that habit a schedule.
The same logic explains why McKinney is drawing restaurant debuts outside the square too. Oak & Stone, a beer-centric concept making its Texas debut, opened May 19 in a University Drive development alongside Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, Paciugo Gelato Caffe, and Velvet Taco. That's a different kind of traffic bet: a built retail cluster rather than an events calendar. McKinney is apparently deep enough into its growth cycle that both models are working at once, which says something about the city broadly, even if the square's version is the more interesting one to understand.
What actually changes if you already live here
If you've lived near downtown for a while, you've probably noticed the square doesn't go quiet the way it used to on a random Wednesday night. That's not your imagination. It's the direct effect of two new kitchens choosing to open on blocks that already had a reason for people to be there on a Tuesday, not just a Saturday.
Practically, that means a few things for anyone who treats the square as part of daily life rather than an occasional outing. Parking around North Kentucky and East Louisiana is going to feel tighter on Friday and Saturday evenings than it did even a year ago, especially on the second and fourth Fridays when the TUPPS market overlaps with dinner hours downtown. If you've been going to the square mainly for daytime errands, weekday evenings are now a real option in a way they weren't when the storefronts sat empty.
It also means the square's identity is shifting slightly from a shopping-and-brunch destination toward something closer to a full evening economy, with two operators who've placed real bets that it can support dinner and late-night cocktail business on top of what was already there.
What to watch next
If the pattern holds, the next wave of openings will likely follow the same logic these two did: operators who spend real time watching the square's actual weekly rhythm before signing a lease, rather than chasing whichever building happens to be available. McVay waited four years for the right one. Dunne and Stergios watched construction-phase foot traffic before committing. That's a slower, more deliberate process than a typical retail buildout, and it suggests whatever opens next on the square will have been chosen with the same kind of patience.
For residents, that's worth knowing less as a prediction and more as a way to read what's happening around you. The square isn't accumulating restaurants at random. It's filling in around a calendar that already existed, one storefront at a time.
If you're keeping an eye on what your part of McKinney is worth as the square keeps changing, Texas Life Real Estate tracks these shifts block by block, not just citywide. Request your free home valuation from Megan Christensen and her team whenever you're ready for a read on where your home stands today.
