The Vacant Broadway Buildings Are Filling Back In: A Summer 2026 Walk Through Alamo Heights

If you drove Broadway a year ago, you were driving past ghosts. The Jim's at 4108 had been dark since the chain's collapse. La Madeleine at 4820 had wrapped its last croissant. The old Nix Health clinic at 5307, the low grid-front building everyone still calls "the Nix," had been sitting empty since 2019. For a stretch that most '09 residents treat as their default errand loop, that was a lot of quiet frontage.

This summer, most of those doors are either open again or actively under construction. The pattern is worth paying attention to, because Broadway isn't gaining new pads on empty land. It is recycling its landmarks. What opens next in each of these buildings will shape the daily rhythm of the corridor more than any new development farther out.

The story isn't more restaurants. It's which buildings.

Alamo Heights has never lacked places to eat. The '09 has been called one of the city's iconic dining destinations for years, and long-standing rooms on Broadway keep humming along. So counting new openings misses the actual shift.

The shift is that five of the corridor's most recognizable vacant or turning-over addresses are being converted at the same time, and four of the five are food. That concentration matters because these are the buildings residents already had a relationship with. You didn't need directions to Jim's. You didn't need a pin drop for La Madeleine. When those addresses come back as something else, the map in your head updates whether you like it or not.

Here is where the corridor stands as of July 2026.

4108 Broadway: Adair Kitchen picks up the all-day slot

The Houston-based Adair Kitchen took over the former Jim's on March 2 and kept the 1971 building's original structure and signage intact, which is a small courtesy but a real one for a landmark that generations of Alamo Heights kids grew up with. The room reads Mid-century Modern now, done by Austin's Edgerton Studios, with booths and natural materials rather than diner Formica.

The menu covers what Jim's used to cover and then some: chicken and waffles, huevos rancheros, and a sausage and sweet potato skillet in the morning; grain bowls, fish tacos, and sandwiches at lunch; green chicken enchiladas, a Nashville-style fried chicken sandwich, garlic butter-basted branzino, and an eight-ounce sirloin at dinner. There is also a full bar, which the late-night Jim's crowd never had. Co-owner Katie Adair Barnhart described Alamo Heights as fitting the family-and-community feel of the group's Houston neighborhoods, and the family has personal ties here through co-owner Nick Adair's wife.

The practical read for residents: the corner that used to be your fallback breakfast is a fallback breakfast again, with dinner and cocktails added.

4820 Broadway: Los Tios is Adair's second Broadway address

Two blocks up, the same Adair Concepts group is converting the 5,500-square-foot former La Madeleine into Los Tios, the Houston Tex-Mex chain the Adairs bought in 2000. La Madeleine closed in early 2025 after more than three decades on Broadway, and permits initially projected a November 2025 finish. That slipped. Construction is still underway this summer, with a spring 2026 opening on the calendar and no revised date publicly confirmed.

This will be the seventh Los Tios and the first in the greater San Antonio region. The chain claims the first frozen margarita in Houston, back in 1975, and the menu leans on fajitas, enchiladas, and puffy queso. Two Adair Concepts rooms within walking distance of each other on Broadway is a deliberate bet on this corridor.

5216 Broadway: Dirty Dough tries San Antonio again

Dirty Dough's arrival at 5216 Broadway, inside the Arcadia Grove Shopping Center, is the corridor's most quietly interesting opening because the brand has been here before. Its first San Antonio location debuted in 2022 and closed six months later, with the local operator blaming slow business. The chain has since settled its Crumbl litigation, been acquired by Craveworthy Brands in 2024, and started growing again.

Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation paperwork put construction wrap-up in early July, which means locals should start watching the shopping center windows now. The menu has broadened past cookies into maple bacon cinnamon rolls, fluffernutter bars, churro waffle bites, shakes, and a Fanta-and-vanilla "dirty soda" line. Whether the second attempt sticks in a shopping center that already gets steady foot traffic will be its own small case study.

5615 Broadway: A walk-up cookie window next to Hanley-Wood

The other cookie project on Broadway is Tiny's Milk and Cookies, a Houston bakery known for chocolate chip cookies and order-window service. It is taking roughly 2,000 square feet next to Hanley-Wood, the gift shop that has been part of Alamo Heights for about half a century. Construction begins this spring, with a fall opening planned.

The signature cookie has been around since 2007, spun out into its own concept in 2016, and the chain now runs four Houston locations plus one in Austin. Menus vary by location but usually cover croissants, doughnut holes, blondies, cinnamon rolls, scones, breakfast burritos, yogurt parfaits, espresso, and house-made ice cream. Two cookie counters within a few blocks on the same street is a lot of cookie, and the difference will come down to walk-up window versus shopping-center storefront.

5307 Broadway: The one that changes the corridor

The most consequential project on the list is the one that isn't food-only. Ridgemont Properties, which originally shopped the vacant 1965 Nix Health building to other medical tenants, has committed to a $6.5 million conversion into a mixed-use hub. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation paperwork puts renovations from February 2026 through November 2026. Renderings keep the distinctive facade grid and add brick cladding, slatted wood, and a central landscaped atrium.

The ground floor will hold two restaurants. Per the project's own description, one is:

an East Coast-inspired oyster and martini bar with American cuisine, open for lunch and dinner

The other is a New Orleans-style chophouse focused on prime steaks, Gulf seafood, and classic cocktails. Upstairs is office space, including a 6,870-square-foot suite outfitted with meeting rooms, a lounge, and a hospitality-focused kitchen with a cold brew tap. Operator names have not been released.

For residents, this is the one to watch. A vacant 1965 clinic block turning into a walkable oyster bar and chophouse with offices above is exactly the kind of use change that reshapes a stretch of street. It also gives Broadway two upscale evening rooms it did not have last summer, in a building that had felt inert for six years.

What the corridor feels like right now

Put the map together and the summer picture is this: you can already eat at Adair Kitchen. You can plan around Los Tios and Dirty Dough opening in the next few months. You can watch the Nix building and 5615 Broadway all fall. The vacant landmarks that had been visual gaps in the daily drive are becoming destinations again, several of them at once.

That has a compounding effect. A single opening on Broadway is a headline. Five conversions within a mile of each other, in the buildings residents already used as reference points, is a shift in how the corridor works. Errands cluster differently. Weeknight dinner options expand at both the casual and the more formal ends. Two of the corridor's most recognizable dark buildings will be lit again by Thanksgiving.

If you own here, you already know the '09 tends to absorb this kind of change quietly. It rarely feels dramatic while it's happening. A year from now, though, the muscle memory of driving Broadway will be different, and the buildings doing that work are the ones you already had opinions about.

If you have been thinking about how corridor changes like these affect what your home is worth, or what a move within the '09 might look like this fall, Leslie Reyes Idais is glad to talk it through. Let's connect.