Veramendi's Town Center Is Still Coming. Here's What Filled the Gap While Everyone Waited.

In 2019, an ASA Properties development manager stood in front of the Hispanic Business Alliance and laid out what Veramendi would become: retail, restaurants, trails, and parks built into daily life, close enough to walk to. Two regional parks were promised, each bigger than Landa Park once you subtract the golf course. Seven years and thousands of new residents later, one full-service restaurant has actually opened its doors inside Veramendi's commercial parcel.

That is not a complaint about broken promises. It is the most useful fact a current resident can know about this community right now, because it explains something that otherwise looks strange: why Veramendi feels lived-in and social despite having almost no retail to speak of. The homes arrived on schedule. The shopping center didn't. Neighbors filled the space in between.

The Plan Everyone Remembers

Veramendi's development agreement with the City of New Braunfels was fully executed on February 25, 2013, setting the terms for a roughly 2,400-acre mixed-use project spanning homes, parks, and commercial space. By the time ASA Properties addressed the Chamber of Commerce committee in 2019, the pitch had specifics: nearly 488 acres set aside for parkland and trails, a partnership taking shape with Howard Payne University, and a vision for Class A office space that would let New Braunfels compete for jobs it couldn't previously keep local.

Most of that has happened, on the residential side faster than most master-planned communities manage. What hasn't kept pace is the part of the pitch built by outside businesses rather than home builders.

What's Actually Open in 2026

Walk the commercial strip along Oak Run Parkway today and here is what you'll find: breakfast., a brunch spot known for its breakfast egg rolls, chicken-waffle nachos, and blueberry lemon glaze pancakes, still described on Veramendi's own site as "the first restaurant in Veramendi," a title it has held since opening in August 2024. Winslet Provisions, the café inside the Welcome Center, pours coffee for anyone touring model homes or just passing through. A second location of Kora Kora Coffee was announced for the same address, next door to breakfast., though it hasn't shown up on Veramendi's own list of open businesses as of this writing.

That's the full list. Veramendi's own homepage still refers to its commercial footprint as "budding neighborhood retail," which is an honest way to put it.

For anything more, most residents already know to drive a few minutes into Town Creek, a separate New Braunfels neighborhood where Wine Folks opened this summer. Owners Danielle and Jason Grantham built a wine bar and bottle shop at 967 N. Academy Ave that opened stocked with roughly 75 wines, including several Texas labels, plus craft beer and a lounge for slower evenings. It isn't part of Veramendi and never will be, but it's close enough that it has become part of the informal answer to "where do we go for a glass of wine that isn't our own kitchen."

The Second Pool Keeps Moving Its Own Groundbreaking

The Outlook, Veramendi's second resident amenity center, is the amenity most current residents ask about, and the timeline is worth tracking closely because it has already shifted once. In March 2026, Community Impact reported that developers were targeting a groundbreaking for the end of the second quarter or the start of the third quarter of this year, essentially a June-to-July window. The plans call for a 3,000-square-foot clubhouse with a 1,300-square-foot basement, sited on a hillside with a second-story level looking out over the future Word Park.

Today is August 5, 2026, which puts us past that window on any reasonable reading of it. Yet Veramendi's own current site language now describes The Outlook's construction start as "projected in late 2026," a later target than what was reported back in March. If you've been waiting to hear a firm groundbreaking date, the honest update is that it's still coming, just not on the schedule that was floated five months ago.

Word Park tells a similar story. A December 2025 announcement described the 65-plus-acre regional park as set to break ground in early 2026, with a hillside slide designed instead of a built incline and a name honoring the Word family, who held the land since 1941. The park's advertised size has since crept up to 76 acres in the community's current materials, which suggests the design is still being finalized along with everything else. As of now, Veramendi's own site talks about the park in future tense, without a confirmed construction start.

None of this means the plans have stalled. Garrett Mechler, one of Veramendi's co-CEOs, has been consistent about the intent behind all of it.

"Veramendi is very active, connected and rooted in community," Mechler said.

The intent is real. The calendar just keeps sliding a quarter or two at a time, which is worth knowing if you're the resident who keeps checking for an Outlook opening date.

Where the Gathering Already Happens

While the amenity centers work through their timelines, the community's actual social life has been running on a separate, faster track, one built by people rather than contractors. Cohere, the HOA's management partner, keeps an on-site office and organizes the kind of recurring, informal events that don't need a ribbon cutting: Mahjong nights, Bunco groups, coffee socials, and Food Truck Fridays that draw residents out of their houses on a normal weeknight.

New neighbors get a quarterly touch called Warm Welcome, which is exactly what it sounds like: a pie delivered to the door along with information about events and ways to get involved. It's a small gesture, but it's the kind of thing that makes a subdivision start to feel like a neighborhood before the retail catches up.

Four signature events anchor the calendar year to year: Spring Fling, Patriots and Picnics, Fall Jubilee, and Hill Country Holidays. Each one is designed around the season rather than a fixed script, which is why a resident who's been here three years can still find something new at Fall Jubilee even if the format looks familiar.

There's also a large tree the development team preserved early on, one Mechler points to as an example of what they tried to hold onto while building everything else around it. Kids climb it now the way kids climb any good tree, which is a small thing but not a nothing thing.

The Two Timelines Worth Watching

Here's the pattern, once you line it up: home construction at Veramendi keeps accelerating. The next phase adds more than 500 new lots, including the community's first 100-foot and near-acre homesites, plus a new custom-home section and David Weekley Homes joining the builder lineup by late 2026. Del Webb Veramendi, the community's active-adult section, already celebrated its own grand opening. None of that is behind schedule.

What lags, every time it's mentioned, is the shared civic and commercial layer, the restaurants, the second pool, the regional park that keeps growing on paper before it breaks ground. If you live here and have wondered why the neighborhood feels more finished on the social side than the retail side, that's the reason. The homes came first. The businesses are still catching up. The gathering happened anyway, because Cohere and your neighbors didn't wait for a storefront to organize it.

That's worth knowing whether you've lived here since the first phase or moved in last month. It also matters if you're weighing what a home in Veramendi is actually worth right now, given how much of its value depends on amenities that are promised but not yet built.

If you're trying to figure out how Veramendi's pace of growth is shaping home values in specific sections of the community, The Renfeld Group tracks this market closely and can walk you through what it means for your specific street. Request a Custom Market Plan and we'll bring you the local read, not just the developer's.