Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

I had no idea this is the site of the old TI Campus, and I grew up around here.

I'm glad to hear older buildings aren't going to waste, and I'm also looking forward to more development in Plano along 75. I really thought the Collin Creek Mall was going to be next, but this site works for me as well.

This place isn't really going to be much of an 'urban village'. The whole site is going to be oriented towards the highway. Most of the parking lots are going to remain as parking lots except for new two parking garages that are adjacent to the single-family housing across Chase Oaks Blvd - creating a great view out their backyards! The new multi-family will go on currently undeveloped grass to the south east- next to the US75 and adjacent to nothing. The residents will have to cross a new huge surface parking lot to get to backside of the Ranch 99 grocery store to the south - so it's not really walkable to anywhere else.

In short, this is about the laziest design of reusing the existing buildings one could come up with.

If the city tells them to redesign it and put the multifamily to the east along Chase Oaks, then you might sort of create a neighborhood with walkable access to the Ranch 99 grocery store to the south and to the strip center and Asian grocery to the north. Finally some pedestrian improvements to the north would make it bikeable to the Cinemark Legacy Theatre across Legacy to the north.

If Plano does allow the design as presented, it will be the first multifamily housing along US75 in the city except for the trailer park.

The improvements they made to this plan are pretty solid, and an example of a good quality planning discussion. However I'm sort of surprised this passed -Plano has really shut down multi-family development in the past few months - hopefully Dallas will be able to pick up the slack.