March 6th, 2008
Signs of the Times: Crossing a dry hole

By BILL PETERSON
Senior Correspondent

KYLE — The old Dry Hole Road was built around the site of a well, which ended up not producing water. Come to think of it, the road wasn’t much of a road, either.

Winding and jagged, funneling into a one-lane bridge over a creek before meeting with an Interstate-35 access road on the west side of the highway, Dry Hole Road not so long ago was little more than a back path from Kohler’s Crossing through the demilitarized zone between Buda and Kyle, connecting area residents to the broader civilization.

In 2004, Home Depot decided to build near one end of Dry Hole Road at Exit 217 along IH-35, which traditionally was considered Buda area and had by then been annexed into Kyle. Suddenly, Dry Hole Road was to be more traveled.

Friday, the city and Hays County unveiled a remodeling of the road, renaming it “Kyle Crossing.” For $1.4 million, about two-thirds paid by the county and one-third by the city, the road improvement is part of an arterial surge in the northern portion of Kyle, which includes RSI, Inc., the Hays CISD Performing Arts Center (PAC) and Plum Creek’s coming town center project with the PAC on its southeast corner.

Kohler’s Crossing, the road on which the PAC is located, will eventually extend all the way to the Interstate, which should feature one-way access roads within five years. The one-lane bridge on Kyle Crossing will be expanded.

City officials hope the improved Kyle Crossing will create new interest in the Kyle Town Center area. Kyle Town Center is anchored by Home Depot, but that northeast corner of Kyle’s so-called “Golden Triangle” has yet to take off, due largely to infrastructure issues. The triangle basically is composed of IH-35 from Exit 217 to Exit 215 (site of the H-E-B Plus and the coming Seton Hospital project), as well as Kyle Parkway and Kohler’s Crossing.

Senior correspondent BILL PETERSON is editor of www.HaysHighway.com where this story was originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership with Newstreamz.com.