The Quarter-Mile Gap That Keeps Old Town Spring and CityPlace From Being One Town

Ride the paved trail out from CityPlace Plaza this fall and you can go a surprising distance before you have to touch a road. The path winds past the ExxonMobil campus, threads through CityPlace's own 150 acres of preserve, and eventually links up with the Spring Creek Greenway, one of the longest continuous stretches of forested urban trail in the country. Keep going west toward I-45, though, and the pavement simply stops. Bike Houston's advocacy group has flagged this exact spot for years: a missing quarter-mile connection near the Exxon campus that would finally tie the CityPlace side of Spring to the historic downtown a few miles away. Until it closes, riders have to dismount and finish the trip on surface streets.

That quarter mile is a small thing on a map. It is also the reason Spring still functions like two separate towns that happen to share a name, especially this time of year, when both ends of the community have their busiest calendar of the year running at the same time and almost nobody is moving between them on foot or by bike.

Two Trail Networks, Not Yet One

The Spring Creek Greenway itself is not the problem. Harris County Precinct 4 has built out more than 17 miles of paved trail from Humble to a point just short of I-45, and CityPlace added its own three-mile segment connecting Rothwood Park to the Springwoods Village trail system back in 2021, a link celebrated with a ribbon cutting at CityPlace Plaza. On the ground, that means a rider starting at CityPlace can already cover eight miles of internal paths before merging onto the county greenway.

What's missing is the final stretch across I-45 into Old Town Spring proper. Bike Houston's ongoing campaign describes it as a quarter-mile gap tied up in negotiations near the ExxonMobil property, the kind of small, unglamorous infrastructure problem that never makes it into a marketing brochure but shapes how residents actually move through their own neighborhood. Right now, getting from one half of Spring to the other on two wheels means riding the trail as far as it goes, then finishing the trip on the shoulder of a state highway.

What's Actually New on the Old Town Spring End

Old Town Spring itself keeps doing what it has done since the 19th-century railroad depot days: adding one storefront and one supper spot at a time inside a compact, walkable historic core that now holds more than 100 shops.

The most recent addition with real staying power is Prohibition Texas, the Prohibition-era cocktail bar and eatery that relocated into a larger space in Old Town Spring earlier this year, according to Community Impact's April 2026 report. The move gave the bar an expanded bar area, a bigger dining room, and more menu options, a meaningful upgrade for a concept that had outgrown its original footprint.

Down the street, Wunsche Bros Cafe & Saloon still operates out of the oldest building in Old Town Spring, a Texas Historical Landmark dating to 1902 that now runs a rooftop bar with live music Thursday through Saturday. A few doors over, Envy Wine Room, tucked inside the Why Not Envy Me boutique, keeps its wine-and-shop hybrid running for anyone who wants a glass before continuing down the block. Corkscrew BBQ, meanwhile, has earned Michelin recognition in each of the first two years Texas restaurants have been rated, no small distinction for a barbecue spot working out of a historic railroad town.

Fall is also when the neighborhood leans hardest into its other identity: the Old Town Spring Ghost Walk, a lantern-guided evening tour that has run for years through the same streets that empty out after the shops close. It is one of the few times the historic core gets used the way it was originally built, as a place to walk after dark rather than just browse during the day.

What's Actually New on the CityPlace End

A few miles east, CityPlace is having a different kind of fall. The plaza at 1250 Lake Plaza Drive runs a steady rotation of outdoor fitness programming, including recurring HIIT on the Plaza sessions, and on September 26 it hosts Popsyfit's Run & Rave, a 5K built around a live DJ, a bike-led course, cold plunge stations, and complimentary Popsyfit popsicles and aguas frescas afterward. The event's stated goal, in the organizer's own words, is to bring The Woodlands and Spring fitness community together in one place, which says something about how CityPlace sees its own role: not just an office park, but a gathering point for a wider radius of residents.

The residential side is filling in too. Echo Lake, a 326-unit apartment community under development on a parcel just south of CityPlace, will give residents direct access to the same 150-acre nature preserve and hike-and-bike network that already threads through the district, with a private lake amenity planned for the southern end once construction reaches that phase. Nearby, The Market retail center at Spring Stuebner Road has filled out with Torchy's Tacos, Jinya Ramen, a newer Pokemoto, and Tarka Indian Kitchen, anchored by a Kroger, giving the CityPlace side its own walkable food option without needing to drive toward the historic downtown at all.

Fall in Spring, Side by Side

Why the Gap Still Matters Right Now

Both halves of Spring are, in effect, having their best season of the year at exactly the same time. Old Town Spring's ghost tours and its newly expanded Prohibition Texas are pulling evening foot traffic downtown, while CityPlace's plaza programming and the Popsyfit event are pulling a fitness-minded crowd out to Lake Plaza Drive on the same weekends. What almost nobody is doing is moving between the two on the trail system that already exists for eight miles on one side and seventeen on the other, because the connective tissue between them is a quarter mile of missing pavement near a corporate campus.

That gap is small enough that it could close in a single construction season once funding and right-of-way negotiations line up, and large enough that until it does, Spring will keep functioning as two separate evening-out options rather than one connected community. For a resident who already knows both ends of town, that is less an inconvenience than a genuine curiosity: the infrastructure for a single, walkable Spring already exists on both sides of the highway. It just doesn't touch yet.

Making the Most of Both Ends This Fall

Until that connection closes, the practical move is to treat the two halves as a planned loop rather than a single ride. Start at the Springwoods Village trailhead near Morning Dove Bend Lane and take CityPlace's own paths west to Rothwood Park, where the pavement currently ends. From there, a short drive or rideshare covers the remaining stretch into Old Town Spring, where the ghost tours run on select fall evenings and Prohibition Texas's larger space is worth the stop on the way back. On September 26, the order can flip: start the morning at Popsyfit's Run & Rave on CityPlace Plaza, then spend the afternoon walking the shops and patios that have made Old Town Spring a fixture for decades.

Neither half of Spring needs the other to have a good fall. But the fact that they're this close, and still this disconnected, is the kind of detail that only shows up once you've actually tried to get from one to the other on foot.

If you're already weighing what a move within Spring or the broader Houston suburbs might look like, The Link Property Group knows both ends of this community well enough to help you figure out which side fits how you actually want to live. Reach out for a consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.