Terrell isn’t ready to greenlight one of the largest master-planned communities pitched in North Texas.
City council members postponed a vote on Terra Nova, a proposed 1,550-acre community from Plano-based Main Square Development this week, after a tense meeting where residents aired concerns about scale, infrastructure and whether the developer can deliver on promises. The council will revisit the plan in November, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
The project calls for 3,600 single-family homes, 1,200 multifamily units, 145 acres of parks and a 50-acre downtown-style district dubbed Terra Nova Village, all located mostly empty land bordered by Griffith Avenue, Poetry Road and County Road 245. Hugo Morales, Main Square’s president, has pitched it as a community designed to elevate Terrell’s appeal while integrating into the city’s existing fabric.
For Morales, who founded Main Square last year after two decades with Kimley Horn, the project is a bet on both his startup firm and Terrell.
But skeptics aren’t sold. Most respondents to a city survey were not in favor of the development. City Staff received two petitions with about 80 signatures not in favor.
A resident who spoke at the meeting, Pamela Robertson, urged phased approvals rather than a blanket sign-off.
“It’s a first-time development for this developer,” she said, warning against rubber-stamping a plan that could take up to two decades to build out. Her fear is that Terrell could end up replicating the rapid, infrastructure-straining growth of cities like Forney, Prosper and Princeton.
Those examples loom large. Princeton, the fastest-growing city in the U.S. this year, recently slammed the brakes on residential permits through a temporary moratorium to buy time for roads and utilities to catch up.
Terrell officials appeared mindful of that precedent. Chris Snapp, the city’s development director, told council members that traffic impact studies will be updated at each stage of Terra Nova’s 14-to-16-phase rollout to hold the developer accountable.
Morales said the scale of Terra Nova would be a strength rather than a risk to Terrell’s growth.
“It’s much easier to create a good community when you have a larger area of land,” he told the chamber, rather than piecemeal developments.
The project embodies some tension playing out across fast-growing Dallas suburbs as well as in the urban core, between the need for housing and the capacity of local governments to manage rapid expansion.— Eric Weilbacher
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