Georgetown Argued About Blue Hole Park For A Year. Construction Started In February.
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Walk down Rock Street toward the park entrance this month and you will notice something that was not there a year ago: fencing, staged equipment, and a gravel access ramp cut into the bank near the low dam. If you have been half-following the Blue Hole Park story through Facebook posts and city council recaps, you might still be picturing a debate that hasn't been settled. It has. Georgetown broke ground on the park's first real renovation in decades back in February 2026, and the $7.9 million project is now underway.
That gap between what most residents think is happening and what is actually happening is the reason this piece exists. The public conversation about Blue Hole ran hot for over a year, full of competing concept drawings and council members sparring over parking lots. That noise made the project look unresolved long after it was decided.
The fight over what to do with Blue Hole started in earnest in February 2025, when design firm Halff Associates brought two competing concepts to city council. One leaned into a low dam near reconfigured parking on Rock Street. The other prioritized the natural setting over infrastructure. District 6 council member Jake French argued for stripping out the parking and road work entirely, saying it fell outside what he saw as the point of the project. District 1's Amanda Parr pushed instead for a phased build that would keep some updated parking without blowing the budget. By June 2025, staff had blended the two into a single draft plan and brought it back for another round of public comment, gathered partly through an online survey and partly from conversations at the Red Poppy Festival.
Then, over Independence Day weekend 2025, the San Gabriel River did what it periodically does in this stretch of Williamson County. Flooding tore through the park, and the cleanup was still visible months later. Georgetown closed Blue Hole and its connecting trails on October 27, 2025, for about two weeks just to clear gravel deposits the flood had left on the riverbank. Parks and Recreation Director Kimberly Garrett, who has run the department for two decades and lived in Georgetown for three, put it plainly to a reporter that October: the water "comes through really fast," and over the years it has taken concrete, trail sections, light poles, and benches with it.
That flood did not derail the master plan. It reshaped it. The final development plan presented to council that October leaned harder into riverbank reinforcement and material choices built to survive the next flood rather than just look good until it.
The headline figure that got repeated across local coverage last fall was $10 million, and it is worth pinning down exactly where that number came from and what replaced it.
| Stage | Amount | What it represented |
|---|---|---|
| October 2025 council workshop | $10.15 million | Full estimate including design, construction, and contingencies, presented by Halff project manager Aaron Cooper |
| City's earmarked funding at that time | $7 million | Existing bond allocation, leaving a gap council debated closing |
| Confirmed construction budget, spring 2026 | $7.9 million | Figure cited in city documents at the May 12, 2026 council workshop, after Halff finished engineering design in January |
The number that matters now is the last one. Council trimmed the ambitious version down, engineering wrapped in January 2026, and construction started the following month on a budget nearly $2.25 million lighter than the original estimate. That is not a stalled project. That is a project that got smaller and then got real.
Strip away the concept-drawing language from those early meetings and here is what the finalized plan commits to:
That last item is the one worth explaining, because it tells you something about how the whole project was designed. At an October 2025 meeting, Cooper told council the team was "not recommending any sort of typical playground" equipment for the space. Standard playground structures do not hold up well in a floodplain, and Blue Hole sits squarely in one. Building something that has to be replaced every time the San Gabriel rises is a worse outcome than building something that was designed to take a flood in stride. That is the same logic behind the riverbank reinforcement and the material choices Cooper mentioned after the July 2025 flood. This is a park being rebuilt for the water it already knows it will see again, not the water everyone hopes it won't.
For context on scale: Blue Hole has been part of Georgetown's park system since the city acquired it in 1977, and in nearly five decades it had seen exactly two prior rounds of upgrades, one in the 1990s and another in the early 2000s. Whatever frustration residents felt watching the debate stretch through 2025 was frustration built on a genuinely long wait.
None of this means the park is off limits while the work continues. Georgetown Parks and Recreation is still running its Outdoor Adventure programs at Blue Hole this fall, exactly as scheduled.
If you want to be on the water before summer fully lets go, the department has a Blue Hole Full Moon Paddle set for 8 to 9:30 p.m. on September 26, and a sunset paddle the same evening from 6:30 to 8 p.m., both meeting at 100 Blue Hole Park and both open to beginners. Prefer something farther out but still close to home? The Willis Creek Paddle on October 17 runs from 8 a.m. to noon along a quieter stretch connected to Granger Lake, with transportation provided from the city's Parks and Recreation office on North College Street. Come January, the city restocks the Blue Hole with trout, which turns the coldest weeks of winter into a short, popular fishing window for anyone willing to bundle up.
Grab a meal before or after at El Monumento, right by the Rock Street entrance to the park, the same spot generations of Georgetown families have used as their landmark for finding the trailhead in the first place. Ellie Krieger, who has called Georgetown home for 30 years and used to bring her kids here for fishing derbies, told a reporter in early 2025 that the park still "defines Georgetown" to her family, and that she and her husband keep an eye on city updates specifically because they want to see how outdoor life here keeps changing. That is the same instinct worth having about a park you already love: watch what is actually confirmed, not what got argued about loudest.
If you have been assuming Blue Hole's future was still up in the air, it is worth updating that. The concept debates, the budget gaps, and the flood cleanup were real, but they already resolved into a funded, engineered, in-progress construction project. The next time you walk past the fencing on Rock Street, you are not looking at a maybe. You are looking at a $7.9 million answer to a question Georgetown spent over a year arguing about.
If you're the kind of person who pays attention to what's changing in a neighborhood you already call home, that instinct tends to serve you well beyond just the local park. The Right Team keeps a close eye on Georgetown and the rest of Central Texas for exactly that reason: because knowing what's actually happening, not just what got the most airtime, is how you make good decisions here over the long run. If you ever want to talk through what any of this means for your own plans in Georgetown, reach out and schedule a consultation.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Working with The Right Team means gaining lifelong advisors who care deeply about your success. We don’t just help you buy or sell—we stand beside you, advocate for you, and celebrate your journey every step of the way.