Search "Waterway Village Gulf Shores" and you'll land on travel guides promising a fully connected, walkable downtown coming soon, with completion dates ranging from winter 2026 to January 2027 depending which site you land on. What most of those posts skip over is the part that actually matters if you already live a short drive from this stretch of the Intracoastal: nearly everything worth showing up for down there has been open for months, some of it for years, and none of it is waiting on a bridge to start serving dinner.
For anyone inside the gates at Waterways, that distinction is the useful one. You don't need the crossing finished to order oysters, catch live music at the brewery, or browse a Sunday market. You need to know what's actually running this week and what's still steel and concrete.
What's Already Open For Dinner
The south side of Waterway Village, the stretch anchored around East 2nd Street and East 24th Avenue, has functioned as a working dining district for a while now. None of it is hypothetical.
- Tacky Jack's is the anchor most people already know, famous for the Farmer's Omelet, listed among Alabama's 100 Dishes to Eat Before You Die, and for the colorful duct tape wall where regulars leave messages.
- Acme Oyster House covers the chargrilled oyster and po'boy end of the menu, with the kind of loud, lively room built for a Friday night.
- Big Beach Brewing handles the craft beer side, with a rotating live music schedule that makes it a legitimate answer to "what are we doing tonight."
- The Sloop leans into waterfront seafood in a quieter setting, good for a table where you can actually hear the person across from you.
- Galway Irish Public House at 2301 East 2nd Street is the newest addition, opened by Susan Ellis, Scott Keel, and Jonathan Langston, the same trio behind Bleus Burger before it grew from a food truck into a brick and mortar. The building itself has a small history worth knowing: it was originally permitted for a wine bar called Waterway Wines before the plans shifted to the Irish pub concept that's there now.
Beyond food, the Gulf Coast Arts Alliance's studio and Steven Dark's Pottery Central give the district a daytime reason to stop in that has nothing to do with a meal. And every Sunday morning from 9 to 2, the Waterway Village Farmers Market sets up in the public parking lot with produce and local artisans, a smaller and more neighborhood-feeling alternative to driving out to Foley for groceries.
None of this required a bridge to exist. All of it is reachable today by car, same as it's been.
Where The Bridge Actually Stands
The pedestrian bridge gets talked about like a bonus amenity, but it's really a replacement. When the state widened Highway 59 to add a third southbound lane, the project eliminated the pedestrian lane that used to let people cross the W.C. Holmes Bridge on foot. The $24 million pedestrian bridge, funded through a mix of the federal BUILD Grant and the city's general fund, exists to restore that crossing in a form that doesn't put walkers and cyclists next to highway traffic.
City engineer Jenny Wolfschlag explained the intent behind the design earlier this year:
"This bridge will allow for pedestrians and bicyclists to safely travel without having to intermingle with the traffic on the Highway 59 bridge. It will also allow residents and tourists alike to park on one side of the bridge or the other and they would be able to walk to businesses that are on the other side of the bridge."
The structure itself is two towers, each 75 feet tall with 144 stairs and an elevator built to fit bikes, connected by a span with a structural glass floor that lets people look straight down at the water while they cross.
As of the city's own construction update in March, the project had reached 53.6 percent of its original contract time, with crews pouring vertical sections of the bridge columns and continuing curb, sidewalk, and entrance work on both sides of the crossing. By late July, the south tower was reportedly nearing completion with only electrical work remaining, while the north tower was still receiving steel framing and wall panels. The glass floor was still slated to go in that fall, and paving crews weren't expected back on site until the main bridge superstructure was fully set in place.
Two Completion Dates, And Why Neither One Is The Whole Story
Here's where the confusion online actually comes from. One city page still lists an original target of winter 2026. Travel blogs updated as recently as this spring cite January 2027. Both numbers are floating around because both were accurate at different points in the process, and neither has been formally updated to reflect where construction actually sits today.
What the city's own summer updates show is a project still moving through sequential phases: towers first, then the glass span, then final paving, with the plazas on each landing layered in alongside. That's not a delay so much as a normal build sequence for a structure this specific, but it does mean nobody, including the city, has posted a firm reopening date that accounts for every remaining step.
The practical takeaway for anyone living nearby is simple. Stop treating a ribbon cutting as the signal to start visiting. The kitchens, the brewery, the pub, and the market aren't operating on the bridge's timeline. They're open now.
The Quieter Piece: Two Plazas Paid For By Offshore Energy Revenue
Less talked about than the bridge itself are the two pedestrian plazas going in in on each landing, at the corners of East 25th Avenue and East 2nd Street on one side and East 24th Avenue and Alabama 180 on the other. These are funded by a $3.6 million grant through the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, part of a larger $45 million package Governor Kay Ivey announced for 23 coastal projects. The plazas will bring shade trees, seating, restrooms, and open event space to both sides of the water, meant to function as gathering spots for festivals and markets once complete.
Design work on the plazas began last fall, with construction targeted to break ground this past spring. The city's spring updates describing ongoing curb, sidewalk, and roadway work on both sides of the crossing suggest that groundwork has been underway alongside the bridge itself. When both plazas are finished, they'll effectively double the usable outdoor space in the district, independent of whether the bridge deck above them is open yet.
What This Means If You're Already Living Here This Fall
If you're inside Waterways and trying to decide what to do with a Tuesday night or a Sunday morning, none of this requires waiting. The market runs every Sunday if you want produce without the drive to Foley. Dinner is a five-restaurant rotation that's already fully staffed and open, from oysters at Acme to a pint at Galway. The bridge, whenever it actually opens, mainly adds LuLu's and the north bank to the map. It doesn't unlock anything that isn't already sitting south of the water waiting for you tonight.
We'll keep tracking the bridge's real progress rather than repeating whatever completion date shows up first in a search result. If you're curious what else is changing in this pocket of Gulf Shores, or you want a closer look at what's happening inside the gates at Waterways of the Gulf Shore, the Scarbrough Team is happy to walk you through it. Schedule a Consultation whenever you're ready.
