{"id":13559,"date":"2025-10-21T08:14:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/13559\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T08:14:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:14:17","slug":"controversial-street-closure-forces-popular-houston-country-bar-to-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/13559\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial street closure forces popular Houston country bar to move"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ultra Texas restaurant and entertainment venue The Rustic<\/a> is packing up its spurs and moving (south) west from Downtown Houston to \u2026 Downtown Houston. The chain co-owned by country star Pat Green announced Monday it is leaving its 1836\u00a0Polk St. home ahead of a controversial move<\/a> by the city to abandon it.<\/p>\n

The Rustic will relocate from Polk to 1718 Jackson St., less than a mile away, according to Monday’s announcement. The new location, which gets it away from the Interstate 45 expansion that is in its early stages, would be “right next to the expanded wing of the George R. Brown Convention Center and even closer to the Toyota Center,” per to the press release.<\/p>\n

The Rustic’s new home will have everything the old one did: live music, food, cold beer on a friday night. But it will also have expanded on-site parking and a dedicated rideshare pick-up and drop-off area.<\/p>\n

“This is a temporary pause with a purpose,” Rustic CEO and co-founder Josh Sepkowitz said. “By relocating just next door, The Rustic reinforces its long\u2011term commitment to the Houston community, as well as the downtown hospitality and live music scene.”<\/p>\n

The move was months in the making, as Chron reported back in February. The Polk Street closure, specifically the portion of the road between between Chartres and Avenida De Las Americas, is part of the George R. Brown Convention Center’s multibillion dollar effort to expand four block south.<\/p>\n

Much like the I-45 expansion happening next door, the GRB’s growth has drawn critics. LINK Houston told Axios the street is one of few in Houston that accommodates all sorts of transit, from walking to cycling to bus riding to driving. Losing it would be a significant disruption to all three, LINK argued. Residents in East End told KPRC-TV that big construction has historically targeted them, and losing Polk is losing a “critical route” to downtown.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Houston First and other supporters of the plan say the GRB’s expansion is critical to its and downtown’s future. Additionally, they have talked about a plan to convert Leeland Street into a two-way road to accommodate bus routes, and have indicated willingness to meet with the community address other concerns.<\/p>\n

Houston voted near-unanimously to abandon Polk Street<\/a> last week. The Rustic’s Polk location will close at the end of the year and reopen at its new Jackson home in 2026.<\/p>\n

More Food & Drink<\/p>\n

Debate | Houston’s beef with coffee in a paper cup spills over<\/a>
Popular | Texas chicken restaurant chain snags top U.S. ranking<\/a>
Nightlife | Houston drinking trend is redefining the local hangout<\/a>
Business | ‘Closed’ signs seen at controversial Houston restaurant<\/a><\/p>\n

For more food news and features from Chron,\u00a0sign up for The Feed newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally published at Controversial street closure forces popular Houston country bar to move<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultra Texas restaurant and entertainment venue The Rustic is packing up its spurs and moving (south) west from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11232,4904,11231,56,58,57,11233,5078,11230],"class_list":["post-13559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-controversial-move","tag-downtown-houston","tag-george-r-brown","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-live-music-venue","tag-polk-street","tag-texas-restaurant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}