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20 projects rebuilding Dallas — and what they mean for your family move

Published on August 20, 2026 · 16 min read

If you are planning a move from Brazil to the Dallas–Fort Worth area, you are arriving at an unusual moment. More than $30 billion of construction is underway across the region right now — new city centres, a theme park, the largest municipal park in the country, a Goldman Sachs campus, entire towns being built from bare farmland.

For a family choosing a neighbourhood, this is not just business news. Where the cranes are today tells you where the jobs, the schools, the grocery stores, the parks and the home prices will be three to five years from now — which is exactly the horizon most relocating families care about.

Below are the 20 projects that matter most, grouped by region, with a note on what each one actually means if you are the one choosing where to live.

Part 1: The northern corridor — Frisco, Prosper, Celina, McKinney

This is where most Brazilian families end up looking first, and for good reason: strong public schools, newer housing, and a heavy concentration of corporate relocations. It is also where the largest share of the region’s construction spending is going.

1. Fields — Frisco

2,544 acres · projected $12+ billion

The anchor of everything happening in north Frisco. Developed by Hunt Realty and The Karahan Companies on land bought from the Bert Fields estate, Fields is a master-planned community that will eventually hold more than 10,000 homes and 18 million square feet of commercial space.

It already contains the PGA of America headquarters, a 600-acre golf complex with two championship courses, a 500-room Omni resort, and a University of North Texas campus. Frisco is scheduled to host PGA Championships in 2027 and 2034 and a future Ryder Cup.

For your family: This is the highest-growth residential zone in the metroplex. New-construction homes, brand-new schools, and an employment base being built alongside the housing rather than an hour away.

2. Fields West — Frisco

55 acres · about $2 billion

The urban village at the heart of Fields, from the same developer who built Legacy West in Plano — the reference point everyone in DFW uses. More than 44 leases are signed, including Lululemon, Sephora, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Shake Shack, Nando’s and Mastro’s. As of mid-2026 it was roughly 75% pre-leased.

For your family: This becomes the “downtown” for north Frisco — the place you take visiting relatives, meet friends on a Saturday, and where teenagers get their first jobs.

3. Firefly Park — Frisco

217 acres · multi-billion

At the Dallas North Tollway and PGA Parkway, Wilks Development is building an urban village around a 45-acre destination park with trails, playgrounds and ponds. Plans include over 3 million square feet of Class A office, 400,000 square feet of retail and entertainment, 230 townhomes for sale, two residential towers (Aurora, 251 units; The Noc, 198 units), and Hotel Voeux. Master planning is by Amsterdam’s UNStudio, landscape by Sasaki of Boston.

Vertical construction started in summer 2025, with completion targeted for 2027.

For your family: European-style walkability is rare in Texas suburbs. If you are coming from São Paulo, Rio or Belo Horizonte and you will miss being able to walk somewhere, this is one of the few DFW projects designed around that.

4. The Mix — Frisco

28-acre first phase · $3 billion

On Lebanon Road at the Dallas North Tollway. When finished: 2 million square feet of office, 375,000 square feet of retail and dining, 3,299 residential units, a 9-acre central park, and over 3,000 underground parking spaces — unusual in Texas, and it means the ground level stays green instead of becoming asphalt.

Phase 1 broke ground in January 2025. Frisco’s first Whole Foods Market is under construction there. Exterior construction should finish by the end of 2028; later phases run to 2033.

For your family: A long build. Buying nearby means living with construction for several years, then owning next to a finished, high-demand district.

5. Grand Park — Frisco

1,011 acres · first phase $48.5 million

Frisco broke ground in April 2026 on a park larger than Central Park in New York. Phase I is targeted for completion in autumn 2027.

For your family: Municipal parks of this scale permanently lift the value of everything around them. Worth knowing where the boundaries fall before choosing a street.

6. Universal Kids Resort — Frisco

20 acres · open now

Universal’s first theme park designed specifically for young children opened on 1 July 2026. Seven themed lands built around SpongeBob, the Minions and Shrek, plus a 300-room hotel with an outdoor pool. Single-day tickets run roughly $55–$80 depending on the date; annual passes start near $130, and children under two enter free.

For your family: An annual pass costs less than two single-day tickets. If you have children under 10, this is one of the strongest quality-of-life arguments for living in Collin County — and a genuinely good reason for family in Brazil to come and visit.

7. Southstone Yards — Frisco

45 acres

Crow Holdings Development is building at Spring Creek and State Highway 121: over 1 million square feet of office, more than 1,000 urban living units and townhomes (including a 355-unit rental community by Lennar’s LMC), retail, restaurants, a hotel, and more than 9 acres of green space. Its centrepiece is a seven-storey, 235,000-square-foot mass timber office building — the first of its kind in North Texas.

For your family: Rental inventory in south Frisco, which matters if you want to rent for a year before buying. That is the approach we recommend to most families arriving from Brazil.

8. Ramble — Celina

$4 billion · 4,200 homes

Hillwood Communities — the Perot family’s residential developer — opened the first phase of Ramble in Celina in 2026. It is a two-decade buildout of roughly 4,200 homes.

Celina is currently one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It was farmland ten years ago.

For your family: Lower entry prices than Frisco or Prosper, brand-new schools, and a longer commute for now. A real trade-off worth weighing honestly, rather than assuming north is always better.

9. Long Branch — McKinney

155 acres · $1.3 billion

Approved in 2025 at the north-west corner of US-75 and the future 380 bypass. Creation, with Horizon Capital Holdings and Vaulter, is planning about 1,600 apartments, 135,000 square feet of retail including a 65,000-square-foot grocery anchor, a 318,600-square-foot office campus, a 100-room hotel, and six acres of green space with 6,000 linear feet of trails. Four phases over roughly a decade.

For your family: McKinney offers a real historic downtown — genuinely walkable, with a town square — which is uncommon in this region, and often feels more familiar to families arriving from Brazil.

Part 2: Central Dallas — Uptown and downtown

10. Goldman Sachs campus — downtown Dallas

$500 million

Between the American Airlines Center and the Perot Museum, Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot campus on three acres, developed by Hunt Realty and Hillwood. It will hold more than 5,000 employees. The exterior should be complete by the end of 2026, with employees moving in by 2028.

It is not happening in isolation. Bank of America has leased 238,000 square feet nearby, and JPMorgan Private Bank, Charles Schwab and Vanguard have all expanded in the region.

For your family: If anyone in your household works in finance, technology or operations, this is the single most important item on this list. Dallas is becoming a genuine financial centre, and these are jobs that sponsor visas.

11. The Knox — Knox Street, Dallas

4 acres · 1 million sq ft

A joint venture of MSD Partners, Trammell Crow, The Retail Connection and Highland Park Village Associates, opening in 2026 beside the Katy Trail. It includes a 140-room Auberge Resorts hotel, 48 ultra-luxury condominiums, a 27-storey building with 173 apartments, 150,000 square feet of office, over 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, and a half-acre park connected to the trail.

For your family: The luxury end of the Dallas market. Relevant if you are relocating as an executive, or simply want to know where to take clients to dinner.

12. Bank of America Plaza — downtown Dallas

$409 million

The 72-storey tower with the neon-green outline — the tallest building in Dallas — is being reworked by Mike Hoque and Mike Ablon. Office space drops from 1.8 million to 1.5 million renovated square feet, and 280 four-star-plus hotel rooms are being added along with street-level retail and restaurants. Dallas approved up to $103 million in TIF incentives in October 2025.

For your family: A signal, more than a destination. Downtown Dallas is converting from an empty-after-6pm office district into somewhere people actually live.

13. Newpark Dallas

20 acres · $3.5 billion

Hoque Global and Lanoha Real Estate are building a district on the parking lots behind City Hall. The first tower, One Newpark, is 38 storeys and roughly $400 million: 225,000 square feet of office, 268 mixed-income apartments and 245 hotel rooms.

Note “mixed-income” — a rare feature in downtown Dallas projects.

For your family: New downtown rental inventory at a range of price points, arriving alongside the convention centre rebuild next door.

14. Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center rebuild

$3.7 billion

Approved by Dallas voters in 2022, with construction started in 2024 and completion targeted for 2029. The 1973 building is being demolished and rebuilt, with the existing arena renovated and kept. The plan reconnects downtown Dallas to South Dallas — the old building physically severed the two — and the region needs 3,500 to 4,000 additional hotel rooms to meet the demand it will create. More than three dozen events are already booked for 2029 and beyond.

For your family: Thousands of construction jobs now, and a long-term boost to hospitality, food service and event work — the sectors where many newly arrived families find their first employment.

Part 3: Southern Dallas — the part most newcomers overlook

Southern Dallas has been under-invested for decades. That is changing, and it is where the value is least discovered.

15. Hensley Field

738 acres · about $390 million

The former Naval Air Station Dallas on Mountain Creek Lake, next to Grand Prairie. The city-approved master plan calls for more than 6,800 homes, waterfront trails and new parks in a walkable layout. A $92 million environmental clean-up is part of the work; TIF revenue is projected at $198–243 million over two decades.

For your family: Waterfront living inside Dallas city limits at prices nowhere near the lakefront costs on the north side. A long timeline, but worth watching.

16. University Hills

270 acres · $1 billion

Hoque Global broke ground in May 2025 at I-20 and Lancaster Road, next to the UNT at Dallas campus. Plans include hundreds of single-family homes, roughly 1,500 apartments, 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, a town centre with a new hotel brand, a mixed-use stadium, and more than 50 acres of green space. D.R. Horton and Lennar have committed to nearly 600 lots. The city approved almost $36 million in TIF financing.

The developer’s stated goal is for Southern Dallas to become “the next Frisco”.

For your family: New-construction homes from national builders, next to a university, at southern-Dallas prices. Worth a serious look for a first purchase.

17. Reimagine RedBird

Peter Brodsky’s conversion of a dying mall into a working town centre. Already delivered: the Palladium RedBird Class A apartments, the DEC entrepreneur incubator, a Chime Solutions call centre with about 1,000 living-wage jobs, and UT Southwestern leasing 150,000 square feet. A paediatric healthcare facility, a Tom Thumb grocery store and a Courtyard by Marriott — the area’s first branded hotel — are in progress.

For your family: Healthcare access is a real, practical relocation issue. RedBird is bringing UT Southwestern and children’s services into a part of the city that had one health system serving it.

18. Halperin Park — Oak Cliff

Open now

A deck park built over I-35E in Oak Cliff, opened 9 May 2026. It caps the highway that split the neighbourhood and stitches it back together.

For your family: Already open, free, and one of the best places in Dallas to see how the city is thinking about repairing old damage.

19. Fair Park revival

277 acres

Dallas took over Fair Park operations in September 2025 after financial problems at the nonprofit that had run it. In February 2026 the City Council approved development of an 18-acre community park on what is currently parking — estimated at $40 million, with about $33 million raised, including roughly $13 million from a federal Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership grant.

Fair Park is home to the State Fair of Texas and the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the United States.

For your family: Take the family to the State Fair in the autumn. It is the most Texan thing available, and a genuinely useful cultural crash course.

20. Dallas Inland Port

7,500+ acres · 30,000+ jobs

Across five cities in southern Dallas County, at the crossing of I-20, I-35E and I-45. It includes a 360-acre Union Pacific intermodal terminal connected to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a BNSF intermodal facility, Lancaster Airport, and Foreign Trade Zone No. 039. It supports more than 30,000 jobs today and continues to grow.

For your family: If your background is in logistics, supply chain, manufacturing or distribution, this is your job market — and housing nearby is a fraction of north-suburb prices.

What this actually means when you are choosing where to live

Follow the employer, not the marketing. The Goldman Sachs campus, the Dallas Inland Port and the corporate offices at Fields and The Mix are the projects that create the salaries that support everything else. Start with where the household’s work will be, then work outward.

Understand the timeline before you buy. “Under construction” can mean opening next spring or opening in 2033. A home next to Firefly Park is next to something finishing in 2027. A home next to The Mix is next to a construction site until 2028, with later phases into 2033. Both can be good decisions — but they are different decisions.

School zones move. In Celina, Prosper, Frisco and McKinney, districts are opening new campuses continually and redrawing attendance boundaries as they do. Never assume the campus a home is zoned to today is the one it will be zoned to in three years. Verify directly with the district, in writing, before signing anything.

Rent first if you can. DFW is much larger and more varied than it looks on a map, and the difference between Celina and Oak Cliff is not just distance. A twelve-month lease is inexpensive insurance against a purchase you would regret.

Do not skip southern Dallas. University Hills, Hensley Field, RedBird and the Inland Port are where the largest price gaps sit today. They also carry more risk: longer timelines, fewer completed amenities, and neighbourhoods still in transition. That is exactly why the prices are lower. Visit at different times of day and decide for yourself.

Commute honestly. A home in Celina with a job in Uptown Dallas is a real 60 to 90 minutes each way in traffic. Drive the route at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning before you commit — not on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Closing

Dallas is not simply growing outward the way it did in the 1990s and 2000s. It is being rebuilt in several places simultaneously — a genuine downtown, a second urban core in Frisco, and, for the first time in decades, meaningful investment in the southern half of the city.

For a family arriving from Brazil in 2026, this means more options than earlier arrivals had, but also more homework. The right neighbourhood depends on where your work is, how old your children are, whether you are renting or buying, and how much construction noise you are willing to live beside while an area matures.

If you would like help matching these areas to your family’s specific situation — schools, visa timing, budget, commute — that is exactly the conversation we have with families every week. Get in touch and let’s map it to your move.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute real estate, investment, legal or tax advice. Project details, costs and timelines are drawn from public reporting and developer announcements as of August 2026 and are subject to change. Verify current information with the relevant city, school district or developer before making any decision.