Restauranteur Erin Wade, owner of Vinaigrette's Austin location, now also owns the 1950's-era building housing the restaurant on property shaded by Live Oak trees. 

What you need to know: In a Feb. 20 news release, the restaurant owner announced that she purchased the property on which her restaurant sits, as well as plans to expand the space with two new concepts: Tiny's, serving coffee and light bites, and the Live Oak Farmer's Market, bringing a bi-weekly market of local growers and makers to the neighborhood. 

About the business: Vinaigrette Austin was opened in 2016 by Wade, preceded by the original Santa Fe, N.M. location in 2008 and Albuquerque, N.M. in 2012. The restaurant offers a variety of salads, with "bright and zingy", savory or lightly sweet flavors, as well as beer, wine, cocktails and mocktails. The Austin location's brunch menu also includes omelettes, pastries and other breakfast fare.   

Community members marked the completion of recent preservation efforts for an historic cabin built by Henry Green Madison, Austin's first African American council member, during a February ribbon-cutting at Rosewood Park.

The background: The original cabin was built in the 1860s and later enclosed in a larger structure where it was hidden for decades; it was only rediscovered by a demolition crew in the 1960s and then given to the city by its property owner. A few years later in 1973, the cabin was relocated, reassembled and rededicated in its current home at Rosewood Park in East Austin.

What's happening: Recent restoration efforts, led by the city and Austin Parks Foundation, came together after a 2021 site assessment found the Madison cabin's wood was deteriorating. The project kicked off in late 2024 and construction was completed last summer through hundreds of thousands of dollars in public and private support. Local officials joined Valerie Lott, a Madison descendant, for this year's ribbon-cutting.

The focus of a national initiative to build climate resilience at the local level in Central Texas will focus on three specific climate hazards, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions announced in February.

What you need to know: The Feb. 18 announcement states that the triple threat of extreme heat, wildfires and flooding in the area will be the focus of the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator hub in the area. This comes after months of meetings with area leaders, assessment of area disasters and other information gathering.

What they're saying: This accelerator program will be the first through the CCES to include flooding, according the news release.  

"Although the harmful impacts of any of these hazards alone can be very significant, the compounding impacts when they overlap can be devastating," the release states. "Extreme heat can amplify wildfire risk, and heavy rainfall immediately following wildfire can increase erosion and flooding due to soil and vegetation changes."

Check out six upcoming or ongoing transportation projects around the Austin metro.

Upcoming projects
Austin Light Rail
Project: The 10-mile rail system will initially feature 15 stations along the alignment and all-electric trains running every five to 10 minutes throughout most of the day.
Update: Austin Transit Partnership approved a $60 million design-build contract for the first phase of the project Feb. 18.

• Timeline: construction expected to begin in 2027
• Cost: $7.1 billion
• Funding source: federal grants and infrastructure loans, Project Connect revenues, city taxes

• Timeline: 2026-28 (Phase 1A)
• Cost: $30 million (Phase 1A)
• Funding sources: federal funding, city of Leander (Phase 1A)