For years the running joke among Westlake homeowners was that the town had more Fortune 500 headquarters than dinner reservations. You drove to Southlake for a proper meal, to Roanoke for a walk-around night, and back home to a beautiful house on a quiet street. Summer 2026 is the first stretch where that pattern actually starts to break. Between the Solana Plaza hotel renovation, a public-facing Terra Lounge, and Centurion American's amended plan for Entrada's amenity core, the two mixed-use nodes that bracket Highway 114 are converging into something residents can walk to on a Thursday night.
None of this is a promise about the future. It is a set of things you can already put on the calendar, plus a shorter list of things you will see under construction as you drive past. What follows is a resident's map of what is open, what is planned, and where to point out-of-town guests when they ask why anyone would live in a town of roughly one square mile of retail.
The Ricardo Marriott Rebrand And House Of Toro
The building most of us still call the Marriott Solana has a new identity. The 288-room property recently completed a multimillion-dollar renovation led by Coury Hospitality, and is now known as The Ricardo Marriott, part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio, with a new chophouse called House of Toro. The name is a nod to architect Ricardo Legorreta, whose work includes the Camino Real Polanco and Pershing Square. If you have driven past the terracotta-toned tower on Kirkwood Boulevard for two decades and never once thought about who designed it, the rebrand is a good excuse to look up.
The restaurant is the more useful development for residents. House of Toro leans into Spanish ingredients, which pairs neatly with Entrada's Catalonian architectural theme a mile up the road. The interior uses dark wood paneling, dim lighting, portraits of matadors, and red decor, with Chef de Cuisine Nate Sanders — previously at Carbone Dallas and Trick Rider in Frisco — overseeing the restaurant, while Executive Chef Joe Riojas leads the hotel's overall culinary program. The hotel's other room, the Solana Great Room (SGR) restaurant, is still there for casual lunches.
For a Westlake resident, the practical takeaway is that a Legorreta-designed hotel three minutes from your front door now has a chophouse serious enough to host in-laws or a client dinner without a drive to Grapevine or Southlake Town Square.
Terra Lounge Is Fully Open To The Neighborhood
The other Solana address worth knowing is Building 7 at 1500 Solana Boulevard. Terra Lounge, at the back of The Terraces office complex, was formerly only for tenants of the eight-building, 1.1 million-square-foot complex, but Chicago-based Glenstar, the owner and property manager, opened it so it could serve neighboring office buildings and communities including Westlake, Trophy Club, Southlake, and Roanoke.
The pitch from management is refreshingly modest. Kristi Layton, Glenstar's vice president and general manager of The Terraces, has said Westlake has very few restaurants in town and that they want Terra Lounge to become the "cheers" of the neighborhood, where people can gather, play bocce, hear some music, and connect with co-workers, friends and neighbors. That is not a marketing line most steakhouses would attempt. It is also, if you have lived here long, exactly the gap that has needed filling.
The menu is not trying to compete with House of Toro. The venue offers beer, wine and mixed drinks, appetizers and gourmet pizzas, with premium cocktails ranging from the Platinum Paloma with Casamigos Blanco tequila, fresh lime juice and ruby red grapefruit soda to a smoked cherry old fashioned. Hours skew office-friendly, so plan around them: Monday through Thursday noon to 8 pm, Friday noon to 5 pm, closed Saturday and Sunday. If you want a weekend patio, you are still driving to Southlake.
What The Westlake Together Concert Series Actually Looks Like
The town's outdoor concert program has quietly become the most reliable summer standing appointment in the 76262. The lineup this spring included Tall & Sweet, a Sabrina Carpenter tribute, on Thursday, April 23, followed by Texas Born & Bred Band on Thursday, May 7, both free, with food starting at 5:30 pm and music from 6 to 7 pm. Terra Lounge stays open for these nights, food, drinks and games are set up at both concerts, and the venue is behind Building 4 at 1500 Solana Blvd from 6 to 7:30 pm.
A future date on the calendar is a Westlake Together Concert Series performance by Lover, a Taylor Swift tribute band. The town's own tagline for the series is #westlaketogether, per the spring 2026 town announcement inviting residents to share pictures using the hashtag.
Two things about this that are easy to miss:
- The concerts are free, which shifts the demographic from "date night" to "families with kids in strollers plus retirees plus the office crowd upstairs." That mix is unusual and worth showing up for.
- The location is not a park or a plaza. It is behind an office building. If you have never been, park at 1500 Solana and walk around Building 4 toward the lawn. The signage does not help.
The Entrada Amenity Core Is Getting Larger, Not Smaller
The most-asked question at any Westlake dinner party remains some version of "what is actually happening at Entrada." The short answer is that the project got bigger this year, not slower.
The Town Council recently approved a development plan amendment request from Entrada developer Centurion American, allowing major changes to the amenity core: a new retail and events area adjacent to the parking garage currently under construction, a hotel, office space, restaurants, a residential repository along Highway 114, and potential luxury condominiums atop retail amenities and offices, proposed to begin construction early next year. Combined with the soon-to-be-opened restaurants, reception hall, and chapel, the amenity core will begin to take shape in the next year or two.
If that sounds abstract, use the corner you can already see as your reference point. The opening of Starbucks anchored what is now a fully occupied retail corner at the intersection of Davis Boulevard and Highway 114. That is the tone of what the rest of the block is meant to look like once the parking garage is done and the reception hall and chapel finish out.
A few grounding facts on the full build, from the town's own economic development page: Entrada is a mixed-use development where the architecture will emulate the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain across 85 acres, with over 1,000,000 square feet of office, retail, hotel, entertainment, and over 300 residential units mixing villas, town homes, and condominiums. The plan is characterized by curvilinear narrow roads and zero lot setbacks, which is unlike anything else in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
What that means as a resident is that the next two summers will be noisier than this one. If you drive Davis Boulevard daily, the operative detail from the town is worth knowing: town staff is working with the developer to keep the site as clean as possible during construction, including hauling trash off daily, weekly erosion-control maintenance, visibility screening on the chain-link fence at the Gas Pad material storage area, removal of old piles of dirt, stone and construction debris, and landscape plans for the area south of the pedestrian bridge. Translation: expect more construction traffic, but also expect the eyesore piles to go away.
A Quick Note For Families With School-Age Kids At Home
Westlake Academy has expanded its summer offering in a way worth flagging even for parents who normally send kids elsewhere. Westlake Academy expanded Camp Forge for Summer 2026 to welcome both its students and those from the surrounding community in grades K–12, held June 1–26, with programming designed to inspire curiosity, creativity, and connection. If you have summer scheduling gaps and have always assumed Camp Forge was closed enrollment, that assumption is now out of date.
Where This Leaves The Rest Of The Summer
Stack the pieces together and the map of a Westlake summer evening looks different than it did two years ago. Solana Plaza gives you House of Toro for an occasion, Solana Great Room for a quieter meal, the Tex-Mex option at Mar Cosina in Solana, and Terra Lounge for a pizza-and-a-drink stop before or after the Thursday concert behind Building 4. Entrada gives you the Starbucks corner today and, over the next two summers, a walkable core of restaurants, a reception hall, and a chapel taking shape along Davis Boulevard.
The larger point is that Westlake has spent most of the last decade being a residential address attached to other towns' amenities. The town's own listing framing has long acknowledged this, describing neighboring Keller, Roanoke, Southlake, and Trophy Club as the surrounding retail options, per the town's restaurants and shopping page. This summer is the first one where a resident can plan a Thursday-night dinner, drinks and a concert entirely inside the 76262. Not every night, not for every occasion. But often enough that the joke about reservations is starting to age poorly.
If you are already a Westlake homeowner and you have been thinking about how this build-out affects the value of your address over the next few years, or you are eyeing a villa or townhome in Entrada as the amenity core comes online, that is a conversation worth having with someone who lives and works in this specific submarket. Julie Gray has spent nineteen-plus years advising families across Westlake, Southlake and the surrounding North Texas markets, and would be glad to walk through what the Solana and Entrada changes mean for your street. Let's Connect.
