Pearl-style Co-Op Marketplace coming to New Braunfels in 2024
Investors in the restaurant, bar and shopping complex — complete with a splash pad for kids — include the family behind Krause’s Cafe.
Co-Op Marketplace is a restaurant and retail development coming to downtown New Braunfels in 2024, featuring more than 25,000 square feet of indoor space and a 4,000-square-foot outdoor space that includes an entertainment stage and a splash pad.
As the rising New Braunfels restaurant and bar scene continues to draw comparisons to Austin and San Antonio, it’s on track to get another boost: Co-Op Marketplace, a Pearl-style venue for restaurants, bars and specialty retailers, is in the works for downtown for fall 2024 from an investment group that includes the family behind Krause’s Cafe.
Construction is scheduled to begin next year on the 2.5-acre site at 210 S. Castell Ave., the former home of the agricultural supply and service organization New Braunfels Producers Co-Op, which has relocated a few miles south. The site still features much of the towering steel infrastructure used for grain storage and processing, including a 65-foot-tall silo that will serve as Co-Op Marketplace’s west entrance.
With more than 25,000 square feet of indoor space, Co-Op Marketplace will feature two main restaurant-and-bar buildings with about 6,000 square feet each, said Chris Snider, a spokesperson for the project who co-owns the nearby Krause’s Cafe along with his mother, Carol Snider, and sister Megan Lowe.
Carol Snider is one of the partners in the Co-Op Marketplace venture, along with attorney Mike Myers and real estate developer Fred Heimer.
The sprawling venue laid out with the aid of San Antonio-based Mogas + Gonzalez Associated Architects includes 4,000 square feet of park-style courtyard space, a live music stage and a splash pad for kids, plus a 2,000-square-foot building ideal for a coffee shop, Chris Snider said, as well as a 13,000-square-foot indoor marketplace for small artisan culinary shops and local retailers.
Co-Op Marketplace is a restaurant and retail development coming to downtown New Braunfels in 2024, featuring more than 25,000 square feet of indoor space and a 4,000-square-foot outdoor space that includes an entertainment stage and a splash pad.
Co-Op Marketplace is a restaurant and retail development coming to downtown New Braunfels in 2024, featuring more than 25,000 square feet of indoor space and a 4,000-square-foot outdoor space that includes an entertainment stage and a splash pad.
Leasing has yet to begin for the restaurant and retail spaces, he said, but scouting has begun for a “cross-section of regional, independent operators.”
The story of Co-Op Marketplace can’t be told without mentioning Krause’s Cafe, the popular revival of a decades-old German restaurant and biergarten that reopened in 2016, propelled by the energy of the late businessman and restaurateur Ron Snider, who died last year at 70.
It was Ron Snider who got the ball rolling on the Co-Op Marketplace project, along with Myers and Heimer. His wife, Carol Snider, has kept the momentum going. Her family also runs the New Braunfels Farmers Market, which they hope to relocate from the Krause’s parking lot to Co-Op Marketplace.
“In so many ways, I’m trying to honor what my dad envisioned for this site,” Chris Snider said.
Snider said he hopes the small spaces will attract the kinds of entrepreneurs looking to expand beyond the startup energy of farmers market stalls.
“Moving from a 10-by-10 foot tent to brick-and-mortar can be intimidating,” he said. “Giving our regional artisans and producers a place to enlarge their footprint would be a really cool experience.”
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