Small Towns, Big Growth: When It Comes To Development In Melissa, Patience Is A Virtue

Every town has a story to tell and nowhere is that more true than in the rapidly changing and growing Dallas-Fort Worth area. This story is the latest installment in our bimonthly limited series, Small Towns, Big Growth, which will profile communities undergoing rapid expansion.

Every city in North Texas describes its growth strategy differently. Some wish to welcome developers with open arms, while others prefer to be more selective. Melissa lands somewhere in between. The city has warmed to development over the years, but policymakers maintain a strategy of careful deliberation when choosing who to work with.

“We have to be OK with patience,” City Manager Jason Little said. “Sometimes it’s a mutually exclusive perspective to say, ‘I want the best quality, and I want it now,’ because those things don’t always align. As a community, collectively, we’ve been OK with trying to find the things that represent us well in the long term.”

The city of Melissa, located 35 miles north of Downtown Dallas, is one of the fastest-growing communities in North Texas. Its population increased by 196% to close to 14,000 residents in the decade leading up to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While some North Texas suburbs have seen building permits slow in recent years, Melissa is among a handful that has seen an increase. Melissa issued 925 single-family home permits in 2021, an increase of 93% compared to 2019, according to the city.

Unlike other cities north of DFW where growth is driven primarily by affordability, Melissa’s expansion is more closely linked to the founding of its first high school in 2004 as well as the influence of then-Mayor David Dorman, who had a more progressive view of development than his predecessors, according to Doug Zadow, president of the city’s 4B Economic Development Corp. Several years after his departure from city council, Dorman was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for bribing a real estate broker.  

“We had a very progressive mayor who started all the infrastructure it was going to take to develop,” Zadow said. “He had a vision, and by ’05-’06, we had really good infrastructure with about 16 developments started.”

Despite the mayor’s pro-growth attitude, strict building regulations and negative views of certain types of development slowed progress in the early years of Melissa’s expansion. Zadow said it took years to convince policymakers that diverse housing options were integral to the success of the city.

“The first time we had multifamily come here, we denied it, turned it down — it was freaking everybody out that we might actually have apartments here someday,” Zadow said. “You can’t sustain a city on just single-family, you’re going to have to have some density.”

At 22 square miles — about 8 miles of which is in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction — Melissa’s planning area leaves little room for error. Today, the city is about 20% built out, according to Little. Despite a shift in perspective toward multifamily, Zadow said the city remains selective when it comes to approving projects. Though he said the city is “getting flooded, somewhat” with multifamily development proposals, if residents are strongly opposed to a development, Zadow said officials are likely to turn it down. There are two existing multifamily properties in Melissa and two more underway, Zadow said.

“We listen to the citizens, and if it gets to be something they don’t like, we will say no,” he said. “We will say no a lot, and that’s probably the difference between us and some of these other cities.”

Single-family development, on the other hand, has thrived in Melissa. Some of the early residential projects that kick-started growth in Melissa included Hillwood’s Liberty subdivision and L109’s North Creek subdivision. 

“That really created a lot of momentum for the community as we entered that real heavy transitional phase from the early 2000s,” Little said. “They really helped set Melissa apart as an emerging market with their investments.”

Commercial development followed, with a handful of notable names planting their flags in the city. Melissa Village, a mixed-use development off Highway 121, is around 40% built out and includes a Starbucks and a CVS among other popular retailers. A recently announced medical office component will bring its build-out closer to 50%, Little said.

Then, in 2019, Buc-ee’s opened a 50K SF travel center off U.S. 75. According to Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, the store attracts 14,000 to 16,000 customers to the city per day.

“Those two [developments] in very different ways are setting tones for different corridors,” Little said. “We will probably go back to them as starting the vision for what Melissa’s commercial sector will look like.”   

Another major win came in mid-March when H-E-B announced plans to buy land in Melissa for its next North Texas location. Zadow said the store will anchor a 43-acre mixed-use development near the intersection of U.S. 75 and Highway 121. This is expected to be a major harbinger for continued growth in the city, Little said.

“We are starting to see the larger players in various sectors identify Melissa and see value the way we see value in our community,” Little said. “Having H-E-B as a potential development in Melissa is a big kudo to the long-term vision and strategic priorities we’ve been implementing for the last 15 years.”

Growth in Melissa is expected to continue as more residents move to the city for its school district, Zadow said. Melissa Independent School District recently invested $21.3M in its Championship Center, a 134K SF complex that is the largest athletic practice facility in Texas. The center will also include a 25K SF Texas Health Resources rehabilitation clinic.

Looking to the future, Little said his main goal is to attract investment that aligns with the interests of residents and businesses. Many people move to Melissa to escape the chaos of city life, and Little is keenly aware of that reality when considering new projects.

“Where we are as a community, growth is inevitable,” he said. “So we either accept it and mold it around the values of the community or let it overtake the community.”

CORRECTION, MARCH 31, 3:32 P.M. CT: A previous version of this article misstated the economic impact of the Championship Center.