THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Celina leaders cherish country charm, amid exponential housing growth
Just 15 minutes away from Frisco, the city has become a hotbed for residential development.
Celina’s population has almost quadrupled since 2010, and that growth is expected to continue as developers and investors gobble up thousands of acres along the future expansion of the Dallas North Tollway.
The key to Celina’s rapid growth and developer interest has been connectivity, with Preston Road running through the city in addition to the tollway. Celina is just a 15-minute drive to Frisco, about 30 minutes to planned semiconductor plants in Sherman and about 45 minutes to downtown Dallas.
“You can be anywhere you want to be basically in an hour,” touts mayor Sean Terry. “I think that makes us kind of special.”
Terry has been mayor for a decade and has long-standing ties to the area. His dad was a coach in Prosper and in Gunter, and he had family in Celina. He moved back to Celina in 1998 after going to Texas A&M, joined the volunteer fire department and got involved in politics in 2006.
Downtown is known as the “heartbeat of the city,” said Terry, who remembers meeting friends on Celina’s square when growing up.
“If you were looking for your friends and you couldn’t get a hold of them on the house phone, most times they would be up at the square,” Terry said. Celina “has always been known for quality schools, but then also having a great downtown and that heartbeat to keep people coming down to.”
From 2022 to 2026, the Celina Economic Development Corp. expects the population just within the city limits to grow from around 30,000 to almost 54,000 residents, At full buildout, it is estimated that Celina will have a population of around 380,000. The city adopted a comprehensive plan in 2021 with a goal of keeping the city’s character alive even with rapid growth.
“It was really what you might think of as a small-town farming community — very school-centered, very church-centered — that’s one of the reasons we moved here,” said Kyle Rose, a Celina resident since 2001 and board president of the Celina Economic Development Corp. “We work really hard to maintain the small-town charm.”
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