If you drive Highway 71 through Spicewood this month, you'll pass a construction site that's been generating national headlines since January 2026. Canyon Ranch Austin, a 600-acre wellness resort at 600 Moonlight Bend, is scheduled to open in September, and trade press has called it one of the largest hospitality investments Central Texas will see this year. It's also a major new resort development for the area.
Another local change is about four miles down the same highway, at the former site of La Cabana Bar & Grill. Community Impact reported that the building came down in December 2025 to clear the path for a new road serving Lake Travis ISD's incoming high school. The restaurant reopened January 31, 2026, in the former Apis Restaurant space, still run by owners Linda and Chip Holt.
Canyon Ranch's September Opening
Canyon Ranch's scale is real. State filings put the project at roughly 224,000 square feet and an estimated cost near $122 million, and the company describes it as the largest spa in Texas, with 141 hotel rooms alongside 134 residential units. Chef Val Cantú, who runs the two-Michelin-starred Californios in San Francisco and grew up in Brownwood, is heading the resort's primary restaurant, Estella, built around a seasonal take on Mexican cuisine and his own family history with tortillas.
As CultureMap reported, Cantú has said of the dish, “When I'm making tortillas, I feel connected at a root level.”
Estella will not be open to the public. Access is limited to overnight guests and property homeowners. The more casual option, a Flying X Café overlooking the resort's pond, is described as available to a wider audience, but even that hasn't opened yet and its actual hours and walk-in policy aren't public as of this writing.
The Water Permit Tells You the Scale
One number puts the project in local context better than the square footage does. According to the Lower Colorado River Authority, Canyon Ranch Austin is permitted to draw up to 262 acre-feet of water from Lake Travis per year. Horseshoe Bay Resort, the closest comparison point on the lake, is permitted for 1,475 acre-feet. Canyon Ranch's permitted water draw is smaller than the lake's biggest existing resort's, at least on paper.
The Change That Already Happened on Your Drive
The La Cabana story is worth sitting with longer, because it's the kind of change that reshapes a corridor. The original restaurant sat at 21103 W. Highway 71 for years. It came down in December 2025 to make room for a road connecting to Lake Travis ISD's new high school, a project that will eventually bring a different kind of traffic pattern and a new institution into the daily geography of the area. The Holts didn't close up shop. They moved into the old Apis Restaurant building and reopened within about six weeks, keeping the Tex-Mex menu, the bar, and the regulars who'd been coming for years.
A new school means new families, new bus routes, and new road infrastructure built to handle it. A relocated restaurant that reopened without missing much of a beat means the town's small business core is durable enough to absorb that kind of disruption without losing what made it worth visiting in the first place. Watch that road project if you want to know how this part of the lake is growing.
A Few Weekly Local Fixtures
Spicewood's weekly rotation, the one that fills a Tuesday or a Sunday, runs on a short list of names.
- Pedernales Farmers Market runs Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the grassy oak fields behind Pizzeria Sorellina, in partnership with Sorellina and Nectar Flow Yoga Studio, drawing local and sustainable producers under the same oaks every week.
- Angel's Icehouse keeps a standing weekly calendar: Taco Tuesday, Wine Down Wednesday, and Pints & Pies, plus a dog-friendly patio and a stage that's hosted acts like Dean Seltzer and Shawn Mathews.
- Spicewood Arts Society is opening its 27th season this fall, with a pre-season kickoff built around The Zeppelin Project on September 25, the same organization that's been putting on shows here for over two decades.
These local businesses and events were part of Spicewood's calendar before the resort broke ground. Their schedules are independent of Canyon Ranch's opening; whether the resort's residents and overnight guests visit them remains to be seen.
What to Watch This Fall
For residents following local developments this September, three things are worth tracking:
- Canyon Ranch's September opening and whether the Flying X Café announces public hours and a walk-in policy; Estella is limited to overnight guests and property homeowners.
- Spicewood Arts Society's September 25 season opener with The Zeppelin Project, a marker on the town's cultural calendar.
- Progress on the Lake Travis ISD high school road project and its potential effects on traffic patterns and property access along Highway 71 over the next year or two.
Taken together, these developments are shaping the picture along this part of Lake Travis, with effects residents will see in different ways.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing along this stretch of Lake Travis, that's a longer conversation, and one Austin Lakeside Properties has been having with Spicewood buyers and sellers for years. You can also see how we've been reading the broader Spicewood market in a recent look at what the median price actually hides here, or browse current listings on our Spicewood neighborhood page. Let's Connect when you're ready to talk specifics.
