Bertha Camarena has run El Taco Jalisco off I-35 in Hillsboro for more than two decades, and she has a theory about why people stop. Travelers passing through pull up Google on their phones, see the reviews, and decide the food is worth the exit. That habit predates every headline about Hillsboro's growth. It is just how a town at the fork of I-35W and I-35E has always fed people who were never planning to stay.
That same stretch of frontage road just got busier. The long-dead Outlets at Hillsboro, the shopping center that sat boarded up for years after the outlet-mall era ended, is filling back in. Four national chains have opened on that site since May 2026: Chili's, Panda Express, Chick-fil-A, and Waffle House. It happened two years after Buc-ee's landed nearby on I-35, and it is the first tangible payoff of a redevelopment plan the city has been talking about since 2021.
If you already live in Hillsboro, you have probably driven past the construction more times than you can count. Here is what is actually finished, what is still coming, and why the city itself does not seem to think this changes anything about going downtown.
What's Actually Open Right Now
As of this month, the frontage road near the old outlet mall has four working restaurants that were not there a year ago:
- Chili's – opened in spring 2026, after construction that started the previous September
- Panda Express – opened in early 2026, the first of the group to break ground
- Chick-fil-A – opened sometime after the first three were announced, filling out the group of four
- Waffle House – opened without ever having a confirmed construction timeline publicly announced
City Manager Megan Henderson framed the project as a practical fix for a town that has to drive somewhere else for a lot of its shopping. Hillsboro sits roughly thirty minutes from anything larger, she said, and the redevelopment means residents can get dinner without leaving town. Her point was not that downtown needed the competition. It was that the city was tired of watching drive-through traffic pass by without spending a dollar in Hillsboro.
Ten Sites, Four Open, One Still a Mystery
This project has been on Hillsboro's radar longer than most residents probably realize. During the city's 2021 Strategic Plan process, residents named the Outlet Mall as both one of the town's biggest challenges and one of its best opportunities. The council responded in 2022 by making redevelopment an official planning goal, and Dallas-based Glaser Retail Partners took on the site with a plan for ten total pad sites along the frontage road.
Developer Brian Glaser told the city council it would take three years to get the first new business open. The project broke ground in March 2023, and it hit that mark almost exactly on schedule. Roughly three-quarters of the original mall structure came down in the demolition, with the remaining quarter folded into the new site plan.
Not every tenant has gone public yet. City council materials referred to one unannounced restaurant only by an internal code name, "Project Nosh," the kind of placeholder a business asks for while its ownership, financing, and lease terms are still being finalized. Jessica Trew, executive director of the Hillsboro Economic Development Corporation, watched the site sit empty for years before this started. It used to be very happening at that mall, she said, and it had been sad watching it sit dormant. Whatever fills the remaining sites will decide whether that description applies again.
Two Different Clocks, Same Five Square Miles
Here is the part that gets missed if you only read the headline about new chains. None of this touches the rhythm that already runs downtown, because the outlet mall redevelopment and the historic square were never operating on the same calendar to begin with.
| Highway corridor (I-35 frontage road) | Downtown square (Main Street district) |
|---|---|
| Four chains open since May 2026: Chili's, Panda Express, Chick-fil-A, Waffle House | Saturday farmers market, a tradition on Main Street since 1982 |
| Up to six more pad sites still planned, one unannounced | Wednesday trivia night at Branded Burger, 100 West Elm Street |
| Built to capture drive-through traffic between Waco and DFW | Wednesday evening Bibles and Brews at Ember Cigar Co. |
| Funded by sales and property tax on new commercial space | Free outdoor concert series Saturdays at THE YARD |
Downtown Hillsboro was named one of the first five Texas Main Street cities back in 1981 and later ranked among America's Top 10 Main Streets. That reputation was built on brick storefronts, locally owned shops, and a weekend rhythm that has nothing to do with what is happening off the highway exit. The outlet mall site was never going to replace that, because it was never designed to compete with it.
Why City Hall Isn't Calling This Competition
Henderson was direct about the reasoning behind the project when she spoke to a Hillsboro TV station last month. We are not a bedroom community, she said, and that line is the whole logic of the redevelopment in six words. Hillsboro residents already drive to Waco or the Metroplex for a lot of their shopping and dining. The new pad sites are not trying to pull people away from downtown. They are trying to keep dollars in town that were already leaving on I-35 anyway, the same dollars Bertha Camarena has been catching one taco order at a time for twenty years.
Henderson also pointed out that the arrangement does not raise anything for current residents or local businesses. The sales and property tax generated by the new restaurants is expected to fund other city priorities, including street repair, once those businesses are fully up and running. That is a direct, traceable benefit tied to specific new taxpayers, not a projection.
The Square Kept Its Own Calendar This Month
None of the highway activity changed what is actually on the downtown events calendar this fall. Westfest just wrapped its run on the first weekend of September. Antique Alley Weekend is set for September 18 through 20, alongside the city's fall Citywide Cleanup Day. The Saturday farmers market keeps running through the end of October, and the free concert series at THE YARD continues on Saturday nights through the fall months.
Further out, Autumnfest brings its festival and concerts to downtown on October 10, and Halloween in Hillsboro takes over the square on October 24 with a haunted house and the Boo-Seum program at the Texas Through Time Museum. None of these events moved, shrank, or got rescheduled because four chain restaurants opened two miles away. They did not need to.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The outlet mall site is turning into what it was always meant to be: a place to grab dinner on your way through town, not a new gathering spot competing for your Friday night. If you have been wondering whether the highway growth signals some shift away from the historic square, the answer sitting in the city's own numbers is no. Four chains opening on a frontage road and a farmers market running since 1982 are not rivals. They are two separate economies sharing the same zip code, one built for people passing through and one built for people who are already home.
That distinction matters if you are trying to read what Hillsboro's growth actually looks like right now. The town is adding commercial tax base without touching the character that made Main Street worth preserving in the first place, and residents get both a faster dinner option and a downtown that has not changed its habits at all.
If you are watching Hill County and wondering what any of this means for property values, timing, or what your money buys in a town balancing highway growth with a preserved downtown, that is exactly the kind of question The Alexa Boedeker Team works through with clients every week. Contact us today to talk through what's actually happening on the ground in Hill County.
