Rex Glendenning Scoops up 815 Acres Along I-35

5 February 2026

Rex Glendenning is dreaming up thousands of homes along Interstate 35 in North Texas near the small town of Gainesville, just shy of the Oklahoma border.

Glendenning and his wife, Sherese, closed last Friday on Pace Ranch, an 815-acre tract in Cooke County, through their entity Old Chisholm Trail Partners. The Dallas Morning News reported that the terms of the deal were not disclosed. The property, which stretches along I-35, had been marketed to multiple buyers before the Glendennings struck a deal with the Pace family, which owned the land for more than 75 years.

The site sits about 70 miles north of Downtown Dallas and roughly 65 miles from Downtown Fort Worth — territory that until recently sat beyond the immediate reach of large-scale suburban development, according to the publication.

Glendenning envisions a mixed-use project that could bring thousands of residential units as well as sizable industry to the area. Early concepts call for the northern 400 acres to be developed with housing, while portions of the southern acreage could be carved out for logistics or industrial uses.

Plans are still being made, but Glendenning told the outlet that the site could support between 800 and 1,000 single-family homes, along with 2,000 to 3,000 apartments. Talks are also underway with grocery operators.

“The I-35 corridor is experiencing significant growth in the logistics sector from the Fort Worth Alliance area through Denton and Sanger,” Glendenning told the outlet. “We feel the Gainesville area is next in line for the right development and project. I’d rather be early to the party than late.”

Caleb Lavey of Glendenning’s Frisco-based firm Rex Real Estate handled negotiations on the transaction.

Glendenning’s newly acquired land sits just north of a proposed 1,000-acre BNSF Railway logistics park planned between Sanger and Valley View, and just last week H-E-B closed on roughly 600 acres in Cooke County also near Valley View, about 60 miles north of Fort Worth and 17 miles from Denton.

Rex Real Estate is focused on land along the region’s fast-growing “Golden Corridor” near the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road. Glendenning’s resume includes working with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on a logistics land assembly in Sanger, where Blue Star Land and Crossland Development pieced together about 278 acres along I-35 in 2021.

Glenndenning also announced in September that he plans to move Rex Real Estate out of Frisco and back to Celina, closer to some of the brokerage’s newest projects. Glendenning is eyeing a mass timber office building of 40,000 to 60,000 square feet for the new headquarters. He hopes to start construction in the fall. Celina is about 40 miles north of Downtown Dallas and has a population of about 30,000.

— Eric Weilbacher