Walk South Congress this month and the changes are impossible to miss even if you can't name them yet. The old Freddo coffee shop is now Walter's Tavern, a sports bar with a haunted-house bent. The South Congress Hotel has sat closed since the end of May, partway through a year-long renovation. And the storefront where Cove sold sundresses and swimwear for a decade sits dark, its inventory now arranged under different lighting on South Lamar instead.
Recent changes include closures, relocations and new openings on and around South Congress. Some businesses have moved to other parts of Austin, while others have closed or announced plans to close. The examples below show several of those changes.
Cove Moves to South Lamar
Cove's move is one example of the changes on the corridor. After ten years on South Congress, the women's clothing boutique relocated to 2151 South Lamar Boulevard this spring, trading a street built for foot traffic for one built for parking.
"South Congress was amazing for us, but it was never really ours, it was for everyone passing through," founder and CEO Rebecca Barlin said in the announcement, as reported by CultureMap. "South Lamar lets us be who we actually are: a boutique for the girl who loves to get dressed up, loves to travel and is always on the hunt for that next piece she can't stop wearing."
The business cited free parking as a selling point for its new South Lamar location.
What Left South Congress and South Lamar This Year
The 2026 departures include several different changes:
- Limbo Jewelry and Triple Z Threadz, two independent shops that had operated on South Congress for more than two decades, announced in December that they'd close at the end of January.
- Tiny Grocer closed its South Congress flagship on August 23 and is relocating to a spot off East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a different part of town entirely, this fall.
- Taste of Ethiopia, on South Congress for 12 years, is closing when its lease expires September 30. Owners Woinee Mariam and Solomon Hailu told local reporters that rent and operating costs have run three to four times what they paid several years ago. Their original Pflugerville location stays open while they look for another Austin address.
- Half Price Books closed its South Lamar store in March and is rebuilding at 2607 South First Street, operating from a temporary spot in the meantime.
- Sfingiday, the artisan gift shop that expanded to South Lamar from Seattle in 2022, announced plans to close once its lease ran out in early July.
The outcomes vary: some businesses have relocated, some have closed, and Taste of Ethiopia's owners cited rent and operating costs as reasons for leaving South Congress.
What's Moving In Behind Them
The replacements tell the other half of the story. Duck Camp, a hunting and fishing apparel brand, opened a flagship store in South Austin this spring with a live-music launch event. Walter's Tavern took over the old Freddo space off South Congress Avenue with a concept built around nightlife. And the single biggest change is still a year out: the South Congress Hotel, the block-long boutique property that Austin Monthly named Best of ATX as recently as 2024, closed its doors to guests on May 31 and laid off most of its 126 employees. It reopens in spring 2027 as The Standard, Austin, the international hospitality brand's first new United States property in more than a decade.
The Merchants Association Has Been Counting
None of this started in 2026. Brandon Hodges, who owns Big Top Candy Shop and Monkey See Monkey Do on South Congress and leads the South Congress Merchants Association, has been tracking the shift for years and puts real numbers on it. By his count, roughly a third of the businesses operating on South Congress in 2020 are gone today. Two of the shops that left, the Good Company and the Sunroom, told reporters their rent had climbed more than 500 percent before they closed. Hodges has also been careful to note that around two-thirds of current storefronts are still locally owned, so the read isn't a wholesale swap to national chains. Together, these figures describe closures as well as continued local ownership on the corridor.
For residents of Bouldin Creek, Travis Heights, and nearby areas, the changes include businesses relocating to South Lamar or South First as well as closures and announced closures.
Recent Business Changes to Note
Here is the current status of several businesses mentioned above. Tiny Grocer's South Congress flagship closed August 23, and the store is headed to a spot off East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard this fall. Sfingiday's lease was set to run out in early July. Cove has relocated to South Lamar, where it cited free parking as a selling point. Taste of Ethiopia's South Congress location is scheduled to close September 30; the owners' Pflugerville restaurant will remain open.
The hotel renovation is another change on the corridor, alongside the business relocations and closures outlined above.
South Austin's daily life includes the walk to Auditorium Shores, the ACL Music Festival crowds in Zilker Park each October, and the hike-and-bike trail along Lady Bird Lake. The changes described here concern business locations and the South Congress Hotel's renovation.
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