A crane has stood over the stretch of West Berry Street between Cockrell and Greene avenues since last year, and this fall it finally started to matter to anyone who isn't a TCU student. Lane closures, shifted parking, and a construction fence that eats half the sidewalk have turned what used to be a two-minute errand into a real detour. If your Tuesday dinner routine has quietly rerouted itself since August, you are not imagining it.
Two blocks north, on Stanley Avenue, something opened this summer that has absorbed a good share of the traffic Berry used to hold. Neither change was planned around the other. Together they explain why Colonial feels like it is eating and drinking in a different place than it was a year ago.
The Crane Between Cockrell and Greene
The project behind the disruption is Morado on Berry, a two-building complex built to house roughly 780 upper-division and graduate students along with about 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Endeavor Real Estate Group broke ground on it in April 2025 as the first physical piece of TCU's 2024 Campus Master Plan, which calls for turning the corridor between University Drive and McCart Avenue into a walkable mixed-use edge rather than a cut-through to campus. On July 16, 2026, Fort Worth's Urban Design Commission approved design waivers for the retail building at 2950 West Berry Street, clearing the way for restaurants and street-level storefronts near the TCU bookstore. The same meeting rejected unrelated signage and tree-removal requests tied to Camp Bowie Boulevard and White Settlement Road, so the approval was specific to this one building, not a blanket green light for the whole corridor.
The standbys that predate the construction have mostly stayed put. Jon's Grille, Jon Bonnell's burger and brisket spot in the former Aardvark space at 2905 West Berry, sits close enough to watch the work from its own front door. A block off Berry on Greene Avenue, Perrotti's Pizza has kept its doors open through the same stretch of dust and detour signs, with TCU regulars carrying the business through the school year the way they always have. Getting to either place is simply slower than it used to be.
TCU Catholic, the campus ministry that occupied a building on the same side of West Berry, relocated further down the street last year and only fully settled into its new space by this spring, a delay long enough that members leaned on the reminder that their group is about more than one building. It is one more sign that the corridor's disruption has not been limited to restaurants.
Students crossing the street every day have been the most vocal about what the construction has cost in the short term. As one TCU senior put it to campus reporters:
"I have to cross West Berry Street every day to get to class and it's always a nightmare."
That is a student's daily walk, not a diner's commute, but it captures the same friction anyone driving Berry this fall will recognize.
Two Blocks North, Stanley Avenue Filled In
The building at 2736 Stanley Avenue used to be Carter's Coffee, Fort Worth's first drive-through craft coffee spot, opened in 2020 by chef-turned-owner Carter Froman. This summer the coffee trailer moved a few doors down to 2808 Stanley, and the original building reopened in late June or early July as Drinks N' Such, a sports bar built around a food-hall structure rather than a single kitchen.
The ownership group reads like a reunion of Fort Worth hospitality names. Clayton Grunewald and Tino DeFranco of Funky Lime Hospitality Concepts, the team behind Reservoir, The Whiskey Garden, and Shot:30, partnered with chef David Hollister, whose résumé includes Wild Acre and Gas Monkey Bar 'N Grill, and Drew Boatman, known locally for Rusty Nickel and Star Cafe. Their concept runs one commissary kitchen behind three chef stalls: Hollister's chicken-focused Le Cluck, a pizza and Italian truck from chef Alex Drury, who currently cooks at Colonial Country Club and previously worked at Tre Mogli and Piattello Italian Kitchen, and a third stall offering a rotating cuisine concept. Thirty-six televisions split across two zones handle sports and live music at the same time, with an indoor-outdoor patio adding a third layer for anyone who just wants a table outside.
The name itself is a small tribute. Drinks N' Such was chosen to honor Raymond "Ray" Hernandez, a longtime hospitality veteran and friend of the ownership group who died unexpectedly in 2023, because "drinks and such" was the phrase he used every time he texted the group about going out.
Next door at 2836 Stanley, Rusty Nickel Icehouse was already drawing a crowd for live music and outdoor drinks before Drinks N' Such arrived. The two businesses now sit shoulder to shoulder on a block that, eighteen months ago, had a coffee trailer and a standalone bar. That is a meaningfully different retail mix than what Berry Street currently offers while its own storefronts sit behind construction fencing. For a deeper look at where Colonial's broader market stands this year, our overview of the neighborhood's luxury segment covers the pricing side of that shift.
The Calendar Compounding It
None of this has landed in a quiet season. TCU's 2026 schedule opened away from Fort Worth entirely, with the Aer Lingus College Football Classic sending the Horned Frogs to Dublin to face North Carolina on August 29. That trip pushed the first true home Saturday later than usual, to September 12 against Grambling State, followed by Arkansas State on September 19. Since that second game, the corridor has been in a five-week gap, with the next home date not arriving until West Virginia visits on October 24. The heaviest stretch follows fast after that: Kansas on October 31 and Kansas State on November 14, plus games against BYU and Utah rounding out seven home dates for the season. A full breakdown of that slate and what it means for game-day traffic is in our earlier look at TCU's home schedule.
The practical effect for Colonial is that this year's calendar front-loaded a longer gap than usual, thanks to the Dublin trip delaying the home opener, and that gap is the stretch happening right now. Anyone who found the construction detours manageable through September should expect the combination of game-day traffic and the ongoing work on Berry to compound once West Virginia arrives in late October.
Three dates worth keeping in mind for the rest of the season:
- October 24: West Virginia, the next home game after the current five-week gap
- October 24 through November 14: three home Saturdays in four weeks, the busiest run on the schedule
- Ongoing through the fall: Berry Street construction between Cockrell and Greene, with no announced completion date for the retail component beyond the design approval issued in July
What It Means Walking Out the Door This Fall
Berry Street will eventually get its retail back. The 25,000 square feet approved for 2950 West Berry is designed to function as an extension of the university district once it opens, with restaurants and street-level amenities built into the same complex that is currently the source of the disruption. That is a future season's story, not this one.
For now, Stanley Avenue adds another dinner option in Colonial, and the two blocks between it and Berry are where the parking headaches and lane shifts actually live. Jon's Grille and Perrotti's Pizza are still exactly where they have always been. So is the crane.
If you are thinking about what a corridor in transition like this means for timing a move in or out of Colonial, Duwe-Olsen Real Estate Group knows this stretch of Fort Worth block by block and is glad to talk through it.
