By the second week of August 2026, three of the variables that shape daily life at Rough Hollow have moved at the same time. The lake outside the marina is at full pool for the first time in seven years. The restaurant at the top of the tram is under new ownership, with a menu that did not exist in April. And the mixed-use town center five minutes up Lohmans Crossing has a new completion clock that residents will actually feel before winter.
None of these is news on its own. Together, they are, because the same name shows up on two of the three, and it is not the one most residents would guess.
Full pool, and what the tram ride looks like now
Lake Travis reached its 681-foot conservation cap in mid-July 2026, the first time it has hit full pool since 2019. As of the morning of July 31, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gauge read 681.08 feet with outflow at zero, a reading that would have seemed implausible looking at the same lake in March, when it sat at roughly 665.75 feet and LCRA's projections still included dry and extreme-dry scenarios.
For a resident, the practical read is not the number. It is what has come back into play. Coves that spent most of the last seven years as mudflats are open water again. Sometimes Island is under. Ramps that were stranded are usable. The 294-plus slips at Rough Hollow Yacht Club & Marina, the dual-car tram, the fuel dock and pump-out, and the complimentary paddleboards and kayaks all operate now against a shoreline that looks the way longtime members remember it looking before the drought years.
There is a caveat worth carrying in your head if you are launching this month. When Mansfield Dam floodgates are open, the City of Austin restricts watercraft downstream on Lake Austin, Lady Bird Lake, and the Colorado River below the dam. That does not affect boating on Travis itself, but it changes the calculus if you were planning to trailer down.
The Canyon Grille reopening was a repositioning, not a refresh
Canyon Grille temporarily closed on Monday, April 6, 2026, and reopened on Tuesday, April 14, under new ownership. The distinction the incoming team drew publicly was between a reopening and, in Tony Curtis-Wellings's phrasing, "a repositioning." Curtis-Wellings, who founded Faraday's Kitchen Store in Bee Cave before it closed in 2025 and has spent two decades in the Lake Travis and Central Texas market, came on as Director of Operations. The new owner is Haythem Dawlett.
The menu direction is the tell. The restaurant now runs a rotating seasonal menu with ingredients regionally sourced from local farmers, which is a different animal from the taco-night, Wednesday-martini specials that defined the previous chapter of the same room. The room itself has not changed. The patio still overlooks the same infinity pool and marina, still has the enclosed sliding glass wall and the two fire pits, and members still get 10 percent off dining with a FOB. What has changed is who is buying the fish and where.
| What stayed | What changed on April 14 |
|---|---|
| Room, patio, valet, 10% member discount | Ownership: Haythem Dawlett |
| Views over RHYC pool and marina | Concept: farm-to-table, seasonal, rotating menu |
| On-site private events at the 2,700-sq-ft Pavilion | Operations: Tony Curtis-Wellings, formerly Faraday's Kitchen Store |
The person behind all three changes
Here is the part that reframes the summer. Dawlett is not a hospitality operator who bought a lake restaurant. He is a principal at Legend Communities, the Austin-based developer behind Rough Hollow itself. He is also the principal defending the timeline on The Square at Lakeway in front of city council. The same person now owns the neighborhood's on-site restaurant, sits on the developer side of the master plan the residents live in, and is publicly on the hook for the town center a few minutes up the hill.
That is worth stating plainly because it explains why the Canyon Grille pivot did not read like a standard restaurant turnover. Farm-to-table is not a menu decision in isolation. It is a positioning decision for the amenity a developer wants prospective and existing residents to associate with the neighborhood. When the operator is also the developer, the restaurant is a marketing surface as much as a P&L.
The Square's new clock, translated from PUD-speak
On January 20, 2026, Lakeway City Council approved the fourth amendment to The Square at Lakeway's planned unit development outline. Dawlett appeared at that meeting to explain why the original one-year construction timeline set in 2022 has stretched. His stated reasons were economic conditions and unforeseen utility relocations, which he said cost the project nearly two years.
The specific dates that came out of that January vote are what a Rough Hollow resident will actually feel:
- Main Street off Lohmans Crossing Road must be complete by January 31, 2027, replacing the previous June 30, 2026 deadline
- Residential construction was expected to begin later in 2026
- Phase 2 construction is now slated to start in late 2027
- A 35-year Chapter 380 incentive agreement worth roughly $47 million in city tax rebates was withdrawn from consideration at the same meeting, with the mayor indicating it could return
Also on the January agenda without a vote: council asked staff to build a broader Chapter 380 framework the city could apply to any future economic proposal, which is a signal that the specific 35-year deal, as structured, is unlikely to come back in the same form.
For anyone treating The Square as their eventual walk-to grocery and dinner substitute for the drive out on RM 620 to H-E-B Lakeway, the honest read from the January vote is: the amphitheater, the five-acre park, the boutique retail, and the Ash Creek duplex-and-triplex project by Kipp Flores Architects that sits steps from the Main Street entry are all real, but the calendar you should keep in your head is 2027 for the street, then residential occupancy, then Phase 2 retail catching up over the following year.
What's already on the RHYC calendar
The Yacht Club has posted four fixed dates for the back half of 2026, which is worth putting on the fridge because the Rough Life Director's new events director is still rebuilding the fuller calendar:
- October 22, 2026 — Trunk or Treat at the Welcome Center, pizza provided
- November 9, 2026 — fitness classes relocate to the Welcome Center Pavilion
- December 18, 2026 — the Grinch after-school event at the Welcome Center
The fitness-class move on November 9 is the operational one to know about. If your weekday routine runs through yoga in the Pavilion, that room shifts locations that week.
The through-line
Three summer changes, one shared author on two of them and a lake that finally cooperated on the third. If you have lived at Rough Hollow for the drought stretch, the last seven summers taught you to plan around the water being lower than you wanted, the restaurant being a known quantity, and The Square being perpetually two years out. As of August 2026, exactly one of those three assumptions still holds. The Square is still two years out, but the deadline is now on paper with a January 31, 2027 target for the Main Street opening, and the developer signing that paper is the same person pouring your wine at Canyon Grille.
The reason to notice all of this at once, rather than as three separate updates, is that they change how the neighborhood functions as a place to live rather than a place to evaluate. The marina walk, the Tuesday dinner, and the errand run up Lohmans are the three loops most residents actually run in a week. All three moved this summer. It is a reasonable moment to look up from the water.
If you are thinking about a custom home on a Rough Hollow lot, or evaluating a lakefront build against the new full-pool shoreline reality, Seven Custom Homes works these lots and this lake for a living. Contact our sales team to start your custom home consultation.
