DFW’s next suburban growth wave is forming west of Fort Worth

Parker County and Weatherford are beginning to display the demographic, economic and infrastructure signals that once beamed in on Collin County as North Texas’ next great suburban market. For most of the past three decades, the North Texas growth story came with a compass direction: North. Plano became Frisco. Frisco became Prosper. Prosper pushed toward Celina. Highways, corporate campuses, master-planned communities and highly rated school districts created a powerful development machine that transformed Collin County from a collection of small towns and open farmland into one of America’s most important suburban economies. That northern expansion remains formidable. Collin County is still adding residents, jobs and corporate investment at a scale few counties in the country can match. But mature growth markets eventually create their own constraints. Land becomes expensive. Entitlements become more complicated. Infrastructure struggles to keep pace. Competition intensifies. Every major builder, developer and capital source begins chasing the same remaining tracts. What was once a frontier morphs into an established, and increasingly crowded, market. That is why the more interes...