New Fountain, New Restaurants, Same Parking Problem: Snider Plaza in 2026

On June 2, 1927, a crowd of thousands gathered at the corner of Hillcrest and Daniel to watch a fountain switch on for the first time. The buildings around it were not even finished yet. Charles W. Snider, an oilman from Wichita Falls, had bought the 30-acre tract with University Park's mayor for $82,500, and Ralph Porter, the developer hired to build it out, wanted the fountain running before anything else so the town would know something permanent was underway. Nearly a century later, University Park has quietly lived through a version of that same moment, minus the crowd. After roughly two years of construction, the plaza's rebuilt fountain is running again, and the corner it anchors has changed hands for the first time in a generation.

If you live near Snider Plaza, you already know the surface story: the cones are gone, a live-fire Mexican restaurant is moving into the plaza's most storied address, and a specialty coffee shop is opening next door. What's easy to miss, because it's buried in city ordinances and a new taxing district most residents will never read, is that the $10.4 million rebuild fixed the pavement and the plumbing without fixing the one problem the plaza has had since Ralph Porter drew the first plans: there has never been enough parking for how busy this place gets.

The Fountain Comes Back On

City engineers approved the fountain's replacement contract in January 2024, telling council it would take 18 to 24 months to complete alongside the broader streetscape work. The new basin and pedestal were designed to replicate the original as closely as possible, with the main visible upgrades being additional jets, LED lighting, and custom-cut stone. That timeline put completion somewhere in the second half of 2025, which lines up with University Park's own project page now describing Snider Plaza construction as complete.

The full package, estimated by city officials at $10.4 million back in 2022, covered new pavement, drainage, sidewalks, lighting, landscaping, and the fountain itself. It also included realigning Daniel Street at Hillcrest, a change engineers said was less about aesthetics than about shortening pedestrian crossing distances and adding a proper left-turn lane. None of that touched parking supply. It touched everything around the parking problem.

The Corner Peggy Sue Left

The most visible change sits at 6600 Snider Plaza, the gateway corner facing Hillcrest. For 75 years, that address was the plaza's oldest continuously running business: a Sinclair gas station built in 1927 that became a barbecue restaurant in 1945 and stayed one, under various owners, until Peggy Sue BBQ finally closed in 2020. Jerry Washam of the Ralph Porter Company, the family firm that has managed roughly half of Snider Plaza's buildings since his grandfather built the place, called it bittersweet at the time. "It's been there longer than Kuby's, another Snider Plaza treasure," he said. "It was a BBQ restaurant since 1945 and is the oldest business in Snider Plaza by far."

That corner sat unresolved for years while the surrounding streets tore up and repaved themselves. It is finally reopening in 2026 as Sueño, an elevated Mexican concept from Richardson founders Julio Pineda and Cristian Lujano, now partnered with Bellomy Hospitality Group, the family behind S&D Oyster Co. and Rex's Seafood. The Snider Plaza build-out is sizable for the block: 6,259 square feet, 116 seats in the main dining room, another 38 on the patio, and a 23-seat speakeasy lounge, all centered on a live-fire kitchen. Right next to it, in Suite 110 of the same address, Kilo Coffee had targeted a July 2026 opening. It's a small operation founded by siblings Alex, Victoria, and Ryan Vu along with Anthony Nguyen and Bao Nguyen, all of whom grew up working the kitchen at their family's Vietnamese restaurant, V's House, in North Richland Hills.

A woodsmoke pit that fed three generations of University Park families is becoming a live-fire dining room and a pour-over counter. That's not a small shift for one corner, and it happened on the same infrastructure timeline as everything else.

What Else Opened While the Cones Were Up

The turnover at 6600 wasn't the only new signage going up. El Molino, an enchilada and fajita concept from Vandelay Hospitality, the group behind Hudson House and Drake's Hollywood, has taken space in the plaza as well. Gelato La Boca, a small Argentinian gelato maker that built a following through online delivery, opened its first physical storefront here in August 2025. A new French creperie also moved in, with a patio the Dallas Observer's food desk noted would be far more pleasant once the parking lot construction around it finally wrapped.

Meanwhile, at 6601 Snider Plaza, right next door to the old Peggy Sue's corner, Kuby's Sausage House hasn't moved an inch since Karl Kuby Sr. opened it on February 13, 1961. Karl Kuby Jr., who runs it now, told People Newspapers that the shop absorbed the neighboring Mr. Tuxedo storefront in 1971 and an auto parts store's space in 1977, growing by inches rather than relocating. His father, Karl Sr., still stops by weekly at 91. Both addresses sit under the same Ralph Porter Company ownership. One corner has changed concepts four or five times since 1945. The other has changed owners exactly once, in 1961, and never again.

The Rules That Came With the Ribbon Cutting

None of this restaurant turnover required the city to add a single new parking space. What it did require was a longer list of rules governing how everyone shares the spaces that already exist, all of which took effect on February 1, 2026, according to University Park's official project page:

• A residential parking district now covers the streets west of the plaza. Residents and their visitors need a placard to park there Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Vehicles over 10,000 pounds with three or more axles are barred from Snider Plaza entirely, protecting the freshly repaved streets and alleys.
• Deliveries are now blocked in and around the plaza between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., the heart of the lunch rush.
• The alley on the east side of the plaza is now one-way northbound. The alley on the west side is one-way southbound.
• Restaurants that want outdoor seating in the public right-of-way now need a formal license agreement with the city, largely to keep sidewalks ADA accessible.

Every one of those rules manages existing space more tightly. None of them creates new space. That's not an oversight. It's a structural fact about the plaza that a 2019 planning study by Catalyst Urban Development spelled out plainly: Snider Plaza was designed in an era when parking demand looked nothing like it does today, and the district has been catching up ever since.

Where the Money Goes Next

The clearest evidence of that catch-up is the new Public Improvement District University Park's city council approved on May 19, 2026. Per People Newspapers' coverage of that meeting, property owners within the district, which includes the SMU-owned parcel at 3330 Daniel Avenue, will pay an assessment of $0.15 per $100 of valuation for an initial ten-year term running from January 1, 2027 through December 31, 2036. The district is projected to generate roughly $194,000 in its first year. Its entire purpose is funding off-site parking for an estimated 150 to 200 plaza employees, workers who currently rely on a leased garage at Hilltop Plaza and a two-hour lot on Rankin Street that most of them can't actually use for a full shift without special permission.

Read that plainly: after a $10.4 million rebuild of every visible surface in Snider Plaza, the city's next move is a decade-long tax district whose only job is finding somewhere for employees to park that isn't in front of a customer's parking spot. The fountain runs again. The alleys flow one direction instead of two. The corner that fed three generations of families now serves aguachiles and pour-overs. But the shortage Ralph Porter's original plat never accounted for in 1927 is still being solved the same way it always has: not with more asphalt, but with better bookkeeping about who gets to use the asphalt that's already there.

If you're heading to Snider Plaza this fall for a new happy hour spot or your usual order at Kuby's, budget an extra few minutes for parking. The plaza looks finished. The parking problem never was.

For more on how University Park's streets, corners, and property lines are shifting this year, Darla Chapman Ripley keeps a close eye on the Park Cities beyond just what's for sale. If you're curious how any of this touches your own corner of the neighborhood, let's connect.