Walk down to the Ship Store at the Rough Hollow Yacht Club right now and check the events board. It's thinner than usual. Not because nothing is happening in Rough Hollow this fall. Almost the opposite. The neighborhood is in the middle of the biggest physical expansion of its outdoor footprint since the marina itself opened, but the expansion is being built by two groups that have nothing to do with each other, on two completely different timelines, and neither one is responsible for telling you what the other is doing.
That's the actual story here. Not a single new amenity, but a neighborhood whose trail system is about to grow in two directions at once, coordinated by no one in particular.
The Volunteer Track: Hollow Flow And The Bike Park Nobody Permitted
If you ride mountain bikes in Rough Hollow, you already know about Hollow Flow. If you don't, there's a good chance you've never heard of it, even though it sits inside the same trail network your evening walk probably touches.
Hollow Flow is a green and blue flow trail built by local riders through something called the Trail Boss Coalition, a group that raised the money and secured the land access to build it themselves. The trail feeds into a pump track, then exits into a steeper companion line called Lower Hollow, a jump-and-flow run built for more experienced riders. Together they add up to roughly a quarter mile of continuous, no-brakes riding packed with ten to fifteen features. According to Trailforks, the group that documents the build, the plan has always been for the whole bike park to eventually transfer to the City of Lakeway and operate as a public park, the same way the older Canyonlands trails did decades ago.
None of that required a city council vote, a bond measure, or a construction contract. It's the product of riders, builders, and a property owner working something out among themselves, described by the mountain biking advocacy site MTBATX as a partnership between "motivated riders, builders, investors, and property owner." It's free to ride today. The city isn't managing it yet. And unless you happen to follow the local trail-building scene, you'd have no reason to know it exists.
The City Track: Butler Rough Hollow Park Finally Breaks Ground
The other half of the expansion moves at government speed, which means most of it has been visible for a year and only became concrete this summer.
Butler Rough Hollow Park started as resident feedback at a town hall back in October 2025, when the City of Lakeway asked what people actually wanted in a new park near Tomichi Trail. What came back was ambitious enough that the budget swelled from an original $2 million plan to a $3.5 million wish list before the Parks Department scaled it back down to fit what the 2024 Parks Bond could actually fund. The plan that survived includes an amphitheater with limestone block seating, a mountain bike course, a basketball area with six individual hoop stations, a multisport field for baseball and soccer, a ninja course, and a playground built with accessible and shaded structures.
On April 20, 2026, Lakeway City Council awarded the construction contract to Millis Development and Construction, the lowest of nine competing bids at just over $2 million, after the company's track record with the cities of Frisco and Fort Bend County scored well with the review committee. The city held its official groundbreaking on July 6, 2026. According to the Lakeway Parks and Recreation Department's own event notice, the park is expected to open to the public in summer 2027.
That's a full public bike course, built with taxpayer bond money, arriving on a different trail from the volunteer-built one a short walk away, on a schedule set by a construction contract rather than a group of riders with weekend hours to spare.
| Project | Who's Building It | Funded By | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hollow Flow / Lower Hollow | Trail Boss Coalition (volunteer riders) | Private fundraising | Open now, free to ride |
| Butler Rough Hollow Park | City of Lakeway Parks & Recreation | 2024 voter-approved Parks Bond | Groundbreaking held July 6, 2026; opening targeted summer 2027 |
Two Systems, Zero Shared Trailhead
Here's what makes the split more than a bureaucratic curiosity. The trails on both sides already cross the same physical ground.
Rough Hollow's own Lakeside Greenbelt Trail and Peninsula Pass Trail connect directly into the city-run Canyonlands network through what's marked on the ground as the Rough Hollow Trail Connector, a stretch that dips under the Highlands Blvd bridge at the creekbed before climbing back up into Lakeway's Trophy, High, and Rim trails. The Canyonlands system itself, a 20-acre tract at Rough Hollow Cove, was largely built by a different volunteer group entirely, Friends of the Parks, going back to the early 2000s. Dogs are welcome there on a leash, and the city's own trail page for Canyonlands notes the fall foliage in the canyon turns "shades of yellow, gold, brown, orange and red."
So the geography already treats Rough Hollow and city-run Lakeway as one continuous trail system. The organizations building the next phase of it don't.
The Marina Is Resetting On Its Own Clock
There's a third thread running through all of this, and it belongs to neither the city nor the volunteers. The Rough Hollow Yacht Club and Marina is privately owned, entirely separate from the homeowners association, and it's in the middle of its own leadership transition. The club's events page currently carries a note that a new Director of Membership and Events is rebuilding the published calendar from scratch, which explains why the board out front looks lighter than it has in past seasons. Canyon Grille, the restaurant at the marina, went through its own ownership and concept change earlier this year, closing for a week in April before reopening under new leadership.
Compare that to the HOA side of the neighborhood, where lifestyle coordinator Rachelle Sturgis has been running Highland Village programming since 2012. The pool events, the fitness classes, the seasonal parties at the pavilion, those have kept a steady hand through more than a decade of turnover everywhere else. The contrast tells you something real about how Rough Hollow actually operates day to day: the HOA side is the stable constant, the marina side is mid-reset, and the trail side is being built in parallel by people who don't answer to either one.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
None of this requires waiting for anything to line up. Here's what's usable right now and what's still ahead.
- Hollow Flow and Lower Hollow are open today, free, and already connect into the broader Mount Lakeway trail system if you're riding rather than walking.
- The Rough Hollow Trail Connector under the Highlands Blvd bridge is already open and links straight into the city's Canyonlands trails, leashed dogs welcome.
- Butler Rough Hollow Park broke ground July 6, 2026, with a public opening targeted for summer 2027. It's worth watching for the amphitheater and the mountain bike course specifically, since those were resident asks that survived the budget cuts.
- The Yacht Club's event calendar is mid-rebuild. If you're planning around pavilion access or club programming this fall, the HOA's Highland Village calendar is currently the more reliable source, given the marina side's staffing transition.
Rough Hollow isn't short on outdoor space. It's short on any single group that can tell you what's happening across all of it at once. That's not a complaint about the neighborhood. It's just a more accurate map of how it actually runs, and it's worth knowing before you plan your next weekend around a calendar that might not be caught up yet.
If you're curious how any of this shows up in what a Rough Hollow home is actually worth, or you just want a local read on the neighborhood from someone who tracks it closely, Steve Dedear is a good place to start.
