North Texas Is Building Homes Faster Than Fire Stations Can Follow

The closest city fire station to Robson Ranch in Denton, TX, averages nine minutes to reach the front gate—more than twice the local fire department’s goal of four minutes.The 55-and-older gated community is home to 4,500 people, with about 3,200 completed homes out of as many as 7,500 planned. And it’s just one example of the sprawling new developments reshaping the Dallas–Fort Worth area.New-construction listings across the metro rose 14.4% in 2025 compared with a year earlier, according to data from Realtor.com®. But much of that growth has taken root on the metro’s outer edge, where new development can extend beyond the reach of existing public infrastructure.At a February work session, Denton Fire Chief Kenneth Hedges showed the City Council what that looks like on the ground. The four-minute response zone from Station 7, the closest city station to Robson Ranch, stopped about 2 miles east of the development.“Nothing to the southwest is covered within four minutes or less at this point,” Hedges said. About half of the emergency calls in the area during the previous fiscal year had come from Robson Ranch, he added.Denton had known for years that southwest growth would eventuall...