Bryan McVay spent four years looking for the right building before he found 109 N. Kentucky St., a storefront on McKinney's downtown square that had cycled through an antique store, a rug shop, and a bakery before becoming a coffeehouse called Snug on the Square, which closed during the pandemic and sat empty for years after. When McVay finally got the space for his hot dog and cocktail concept, Shorty's, he tracked down an old photograph of the building from decades earlier. It showed a neon sign that read "drinks & lunches." He hired two longtime sign makers to recreate it in blown glass, swapping the wording for "Coneys & Cocktails," and it took a few tries before the design met the city of McKinney's approval. That sign now hangs over a business that opened in March, and it tells you more about how the square works than any list of new menu items could.
Shorty's and its neighbor a few doors down, Centro on the Square, are the two newest kitchens on the courthouse square, and they got there by two completely different routes. Read together, they explain something residents who walk the square every week already sense but rarely see spelled out: turnover here isn't driven by what diners want. It's throttled by how few of these century-old buildings ever become available, and by what it takes to make one work as a restaurant once it does.
A Sign That Took Four Years to Find a Home
McVay is a food and beverage veteran who worked in management and corporate finance for hospitality groups including FB Society, and a Pittsburgh native who worked at a Northeast-style hot dog shop as a teenager. That background is the whole concept: Shorty's serves coneys, smashburgers, sandwiches, and a full bar built around fried pickles and bar snacks, channeling the shotgun-style bars McVay remembers from home.
What took four years wasn't the menu. It was the building. Many of downtown McKinney's storefronts are around 150 years old, and retrofitting one for a commercial kitchen means adding ventilation and grease traps into a structure never built for them, all while keeping the pressed tin panels and original wood floors intact. Those constraints are also why so few spaces turn over. Snug on the Square sat vacant for years not because no one wanted to be on the square, but because so few of these buildings can be converted into a working kitchen without a serious renovation, and landlords aren't eager to gut a 150-year-old storefront for a tenant who might not stick around.
The Neighbors From Willow Bend Who Chose the Square Instead
Centro on the Square, at 112 E. Louisiana St. across from the McKinney Performing Arts Center, came from the opposite direction. It's a collaboration between Brian Dunne, owner of Mexican Bar Company, and George Stergios, owner of Knife Steakhouse, who spent six-plus years as neighbors in the restaurant district at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano before deciding to build something together downtown instead. In their own words, the foot traffic and energy of the square during construction reinforced the decision. The two describe the square as having a pulse of its own.
That's a notable move for two established operators. Willow Bend is a proven suburban mall with built-in traffic. The square offered them a 100-year-old building instead, one previously occupied by Harvest Seasonal Kitchen before that restaurant relocated within downtown and rebranded as Harvest at the Masonic. Renovations on the space began in fall 2024 and were built around preserving the original bones of the building while adding an 11-seat bar and a 10-person lounge near the entrance. There's also a private dining room that seats up to 40, tucked into a structure that predates the mall by nearly a century. The menu leans Italian, with fresh pasta, steak, and fish, and the restaurant now runs regular Restaurant Week specials tied to the citywide event benefiting the North Texas Food Bank.
Why the Turnover Is So Slow
Put these two stories side by side and a pattern emerges. Centro landed in a space that only opened up because another restaurant moved within downtown. Shorty's took four years to find a building because so few spaces like it exist and even fewer are configured for food service without major work. Neither restaurant is in a new building or a repurposed retail box. Both are working inside structures built well over a century ago, with the constraints and the character that come with that age.
This is worth knowing if you live nearby and have wondered why the square doesn't seem to add new restaurants the way a strip center might. It's not that demand is soft. It's that the physical inventory of workable historic storefronts is small and moves slowly, which means when a space does open, it tends to go to someone who has already proven they can run a kitchen, not to a first-time concept testing the waters.
The Restaurants That Never Left
None of this displaces the square's longer-running anchors. Patina Green Home and Market has served its rotating farm-to-table lunch menu out of a home goods shop on the square since 2010, and it's one of two downtown restaurants, alongside Harvest at the Masonic, recommended in the Michelin Guide. Union Bear Brewing rounds out the square's American fare with a Texas twist. If you've had a regular order at any of these for years, nothing about that has changed. The new arrivals are additions to the rotation, not replacements for it.
Saturday Mornings Still Belong to Chestnut Square
The one fixture that hasn't moved at all is the McKinney Farmers Market at Chestnut Square, on Chestnut Street south of downtown. It runs every Saturday year-round, 8 a.m. to noon from April through December and 9 a.m. to noon in the winter months. This spring, McKinney Main Street brought back the Grandma Stand, a simple setup where a volunteer sits at a small table so visitors can stop for conversation. As the Cultural District's Andrew Jones put it, the idea is to offer "a moment of comfort and perspective from someone who has lived enough life to share a little wisdom." It's a small, specific detail, but it's the kind of thing that only shows up if you're actually paying attention to what the square does on a Saturday morning, not just what it sells.
One thing has paused, at least for now. If your evening routine has included a show at the McKinney Performing Arts Center, the historic courthouse-turned-theater across from Centro closed for renovations in February 2026, with no rental bookings currently scheduled. That's worth knowing before you plan a dinner-and-a-show night on the square this season. Dinner is still very much on.
The square keeps changing in small, specific ways, and if you keep an eye on it, you'll notice details like a recreated neon sign or a chef who waited six years to leave a proven mall for a 100-year-old storefront. Those are the kinds of things that make a neighborhood feel like yours rather than just a place you pass through.
If you're curious about more of what's happening around McKinney or want a broader look at the neighborhood, the McKinney neighborhood guide from Alvarez Signature Group is a good place to keep browsing. And if a conversation about the area ever turns into a conversation about buying, selling, or managing property here, we're glad to help. Get in Touch.
