Celina's New Bargain: Give Up the State's Housing Rights, Get Annexed

Two items on Celina's Nov. 10 City Council agenda tell you more about the future of North Collin County land than most market reports. One shows what a fast-growing city now asks a developer to give up before it will annex a tract. The other puts a real appraised number on raw land along Preston Road.

The Celina Stone Deal

The Celina Stone tract is about 40 acres at the northeast corner of FM 455 and the future J Fred Smith Parkway, the planned road along County Road 57. It sits in Celina's extraterritorial jurisdiction, the area just outside city limits, under a pre-annexation agreement that runs to August 2035, according to the city staff memo as reported by Celina.news. The developer named in the agreement is DLH Capital LLC.

The proposed development agreement would annex the land and zone it for commercial, office, retail and the city's light industrial district. It calls for:

At least 10 acres of commercial use, generally at the corner
One gas station allowed without a special permit
Up to 10 acres of self-storage allowed without a special permit, kept off the corner
No apartments

Planning & Zoning recommended approval 5-0 in September, and staff recommends approval.

Here is the part I want investors to notice. The council tabled this deal in October. The revised version adds a waiver of the developer's rights under SB 840 and SB 15, two housing laws the Texas Legislature passed in 2025. In return, the city would waive up to half of the project's roadway impact fees, capped at the developer's verified cost of building the off-site road work, and help get a TxDOT permit for the FM 455 intersection.

What Those Two Laws Do

Both laws took effect Sept. 1, 2025, and both change what an owner can build without asking permission.

SB 840 requires covered cities to allow apartments and mixed-use residential projects in zoning districts that allow office, commercial, retail or warehouse uses. A city can't cap density below 36 units per acre, cap height below 45 feet, or require more than one parking space per unit for those projects.

SB 15 says that on an unplatted tract of five acres or more zoned for single-family, a covered city can't require lots bigger than 3,000 square feet, wider than 30 feet or deeper than 75 feet.

Both laws apply only to cities with more than 150,000 people in a county with more than 300,000. McKinney and Frisco are well past that line. McKinney created a new R3 zoning category for small lots where SB 15 requires them.

Celina isn't there yet. The North Central Texas Council of Governments estimates Celina at 78,647 people in 2026, up 16,813 in a single year. That's about half the threshold. My read is that Celina is planning for the day it crosses 150,000. Commercial zoning on that corner would otherwise turn into a back door for apartments the moment the law applies, and this waiver closes that door now, in writing, while the city still has leverage.

What It Means for Land Owners

The waiver has a price, and Celina is paying it. The developer would get up to half its roadway impact fees waived, plus city help with TxDOT. To me, that says a commercial developer valued the fee relief and the intersection more than the right to pivot to residential later. I'd expect other edge cities to ask for the same waiver.

Check the paperwork, not just the zoning map. A commercial tract that looks like it could carry 36 units per acre under SB 840 may carry a development agreement or deed restriction that takes that option away. If you're paying for the residential upside, make sure it actually exists.

Annexation is now a negotiation. Since the 2023 ETJ law, owners have more ways to leave a city's reach. Cities that want the land are trading fee waivers and permit help for the rules they want. If your tract sits in an ETJ, know what you hold before you sign anything.

The Stallcup Numbers

The second item is a pair of right-of-way deals for Stallcup Boulevard between Preston Road and the Serenade neighborhood. Two owners would donate 100-foot strips for the road's first two lanes. In return, neither would have to build the other two lanes when its land develops.

Preston Road 40 Ltd. would dedicate 3.04 acres, appraised in September at $1.8 million. That works out to about $592,000 an acre, or roughly $13.59 per square foot. The two lanes on its stretch are estimated at $3,108,281.
FSA & S Collin County LLC would dedicate 1.956 acres, appraised at $860,000, or about $440,000 an acre, roughly $10.09 per square foot. Its lanes are estimated at $1,080,657.

Right-of-way appraisals aren't sale comps, so I wouldn't price a tract off them alone. But they're independent, recent and public, and they show where appraisers put Preston-area development land in Celina this fall. They also show the math behind these deals. Together the owners give up about $2.66 million of land and skip about $4.19 million of road building. The city says it isn't waiving their impact fees, and staff expects those fees to cover at least part of that gap.

The Bottom Line

Celina was the nation's fastest-growing city of 20,000-plus in the latest Census Bureau estimates, and it's writing tomorrow's rules into today's contracts. If you hold land on the edge of Celina, Prosper or McKinney, the value of that land depends as much on the agreements tied to it as on the zoning.

Note: both items were on the Nov. 10 agenda; check the city's posted results for the final votes.

If you're interested in more on this topic, call or text me at 214-714-5638 or email Dan@CooperLandCompany.com.

Dan Cooper, Cooper Land Company, Prosper, Texas

Sources

Celina.news, "Developer would give up rights under two new state housing laws to bring 40 acres at FM 455 into the city," Nov. 9, 2026 (citing city staff memo): https://celina.news/article/developer-would-give-up-rights-under-two-new-state-housing-laws-to-bring-40-acres-at-fm-455-into-the-city
Celina.news, "Stallcup Boulevard land deals would swap $2.66 million in right of way for relief from building the road's outer lanes," Nov. 8, 2026 (citing city engineering memos): https://celina.news/article/stallcup-boulevard-land-deals-would-swap-2-66-million-in-right-of-way-for-relief-from-building-the-road-s-outer-lanes
Texas Legislature, SB 840 (89th Regular Session), enrolled text: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00840F.PDF
Texas Legislature, SB 15 (89th Regular Session), enrolled text: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/SB00015F.HTM
City of McKinney, SB 840 and SB 15 FAQs: https://www.mckinneytexas.org/m/faq?cat=122
NCTCOG, 2026 Population Estimates (May 2026): https://nctcog-prod-xbyk-2025.nctcog.org/getContentAsset/df4a9a68-ef2a-4833-ba81-3b4bfcd4b310/dfc3d011-8f63-43f6-9ed8-4b444333a1d0/Figure-4-Population-figures-and-tables.pdf?language=en-US
U.S. Census Bureau via Celina.news, "Celina is again the fastest-growing city in the country": https://celina.news/article/celina-is-again-the-fastest-growing-city-in-the-country-now-bigger-than-sherman-and-little-elm

Header photo: Nicolas Henderson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (resized). Downtown Celina, May 2013. Illustrative; not the Celina Stone tract or Stallcup Boulevard sites discussed in this article.