‘It’s Truly A Need Now To Survive’: Mixed-Use Projects Chase Population As DFW Grows Northward
With population growth in the northern suburbs continuing to outpace that of Dallas County, mixed-use developments have become increasingly popular and prevalent as developers follow new residents and their wallets.
Gone are the days of standalone office buildings, strip malls and apartment complexes as projects are now focused on creating spaces where patrons can live, work, dine and enjoy themselves. Developers and economic planners say offering more things to residents where they live is do or die as the region grows.
“[Mixed-use] is not a new concept, but it's now become a very popular concept,” Maher Maso, principal at Ryan and former mayor of Frisco, told Bisnow. “It has become no longer a want — it's truly a need now to survive and to grow and to thrive. Whether you're a city or a developer or resident, you need mixed-use.”
The success of the luxury-focused Legacy West development in Plano and Frisco’s Dallas Cowboys-centric The Star development have spurred further mixed-use projects along the Dallas North Tollway and in the northern suburbs as Dallas’ population continues to shift to the north.
Earlier this week, Frisco City Council approved $182M in improvements to the city-owned Toyota Stadium that will turn it into the centerpiece of a mixed-use sports and entertainment district. And real estate investment firm Old Prosper Partners closed on a deal Tuesday for 2,452 acres north of McKinney, with plans to build a massive mixed-use development, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Population numbers released this year by the U.S. Census Bureau show 8.1M people now reside in the North Texas region. But the population growth in Collin, Denton and Tarrant counties outpaced Dallas County in 2023 by more than six times, five times and three times, respectively.
Dallas County added only 4,300 people in 2023 and lost more residents than all but seven other counties nationwide, D Magazine reported earlier this year. By contrast, Collin County added 28,886 newcomers.
Mixed-use projects further and further afield have become must-adds as those new residents don’t want to travel long distances to work and find entertainment, shopping or restaurants.
The bulk of mixed-use developments include a heavy office component, and the trend of satellite offices is continuing throughout the suburbs. According to a second-quarter office market report, several suburbs are gaining fast ground on Dallas' existing inventory of office space.
At the end of June, Los Colinas led the region with more than 35M SF of office inventory, per data from Avison Young. And while the Dallas CBD was next with nearly 27M SF, the Upper Tollway-West Plano, Richardson-Plano and Quorum-Bent Tree areas along the tollway were each nipping at its heels.
The Frisco - The Colony area also trailed only Uptown Dallas in office space under development in the report. Uptown has more than 2.2M SF in the pipeline, while Frisco-The Colony has over 1.8M SF on the way.
The densification of the Metroplex is not new, but the pace is quickening. according to one study that found population density grew 17% between 2010 and 2020, according to Rice University. The shift has moved the center of gravity away from the city's core and into its suburbs and exurbs.
Still, Downtown Dallas Inc. President and CEO Jennifer Scripps said it’s hard to compete with the experiences and attractions like the Dallas Museum of Art, the AT&T Discovery District and the Nasher Sculpture Center. All are in close proximity to office spaces in the city, exactly the setting developers are trying to achieve with mixed-use projects.
“We've been doing mixed-use for 100 years in Downtown Dallas,” Scripps said. “This kind of a living is increasingly compelling in lots of places. The ability to live and work close together, and to walk places, or hop on a bike and get from one location to another easily [is important].”
Gensler principal Barry Hand, who led the master planning and architecture for Legacy West and is overseeing another project, Fields West, agreed that the Dallas Central Business District will always be a competitive place for office.
But as more office space is added to the suburbs, he said, developers are having more success with projects that include residential, retail, restaurant and entertainment attractions.
“What the sports teams and mixed-use developers are learning is that they can create cool, urban places with a mixed-use density, and that brings value because you're bringing 18-hour days, as opposed to a single-use occupancy development that might get used eight hours a day or 12 hours a day,” Hand said. “If you can broaden that time span in the day, then you're bringing more revenue to these properties.”
The $2B Fields West project from Legacy West developer The Karahan Cos. is already underway on 55 acres in Frisco. So is the Firefly Park development, which will include 3M SF of office space, a hotel, 400K SF of retail and dining, townhomes and multifamily units, and a 45-acre park.
“We're starting to see mixed-use plans that have more and more single-family housing integrated around the perimeters,” Hand said. “And that's really going back to the way we built towns 100 years ago into truly walkable villages.”
The Collin Creek Mall redevelopment in Plano will include over 1M SF of office space, townhomes and more on a 100-acre-plus site located along the Central Expressway corridor.
Prosper Town Council also approved plans for the 35-acre mixed-use Prosper Arts District development earlier this year.
Hand said the Prosper Arts District project is a great example of the latest trend he has seen in mixed-use projects – creating art installations that people will travel to see.
“In the more competitive markets, the operators are getting really sophisticated with [creating an] experience,” Hand said. “And if that means digital art or physical, large-scale sculpture, we're seeing a lot of that being integrated into the brand expression of these developments.”
With an annual growth rate that has been between 9% and 13% for the last half-decade, Prosper is a town on a rapid rise. Prosper Economic Development Corp. Executive Director Mary Ann Moon said the Prosper Arts District project will be unique, but she stressed the town will continue to be very strategic with its planning.
“Our council is very focused on building our downtown to make it a destination, to give visitors and the residents an opportunity to shop at newer stores but also come downtown and enjoy the historical aspects of a community,” Moon said.
“We've had a lot of investment there, and we'll continue to have that. We're not yet certain what our tollway corridor is going to look like. I don't know that that's where the center of all activity is.”
Hand said he believes the mixed-use trend is here to stay, and projects will continue up the tollway corridor as well as along the Highway 75 corridor all the way north to Sherman.
That’s a forecast Maso agreed with because developments with multiple attractions and uses keep consumers from needing to travel to another city. But creating a flourishing development takes collaboration, he said.
“Ultimately, for mixed-use projects to be successful, everyone needs a seat at the table and to participate – that includes the developer, the users, the cities and the residents,” Maso said. “You can't just snap your fingers and hope they happen. They're more complex [and] they're more expensive, but they have better quality of life and they have better sustainability.”
