Legacy District

Plano, Texas

Catalyst personnel have a 20+ year history in the planning of the Legacy District, one of the most successful mixed-use development areas in the United States that serves as the center of activity for a 2600 acre corporate business park with multiple fortune 500 companies.  During their time at RTKL and more recently at Catalyst, our personnel generated a series of interconnected development plans centered on the mixing of employment with residential and retail uses along pleasant streetscapes and walkable urbanism.  This plan and programming strategy paved the way for an urban phenomenon that has generated a new central business district in the region with over 36 million sf of corporate and regional headquarters, 70,000 people living and working, multiple hotels, and 500,000 sf of shops and restaurants.

With the expansion of the Dallas North Tollway underway in the mid 1990’s, Catalyst personnel worked with Granite Properties on the planning of a signature business park that combined class A office, hotel, and restaurant properties around a central water feature and urban streetscape.  This development became Granite Park and established a market for multi-tenant office in the Legacy area.  Meanwhile, EDS (the former master land holding entity of Legacy Business Park) worked with Catalyst personnel to address the recent challenges faced by the business park’s tech-based companies which included their difficulty retaining young employees due to the single-dimensional experiences the corporate environment provided.  The combination of Granite’s market success, the dissatisfaction with the Legacy workplace experience, and the Tollway expansion created a new market opportunity to transform the vacant land surrounding the headquarters of EDS.  Catalyst personnel worked with EDS and Post Properties to prepare a programming and development strategy for the 150 acres centered on Legacy Drive to create a fully integrated walkable urban district that connected to the EDS headquarters and Granite Park while providing a place to live, work, eat and entertain for the broader community.  A charrette was then held with DPZ to create a planning vision, which Catalyst personnel further refined to become the Shops at Legacy master plan. Once all 10 phases of this plan were completed, focus was turned to the 200 acres surrounding the JC Penny’s headquarters across the Tollway.  Working with KDC and Columbus Realty, Karahan Companies engaged Catalyst to prepare the larger development strategy and master plan for this vacant property, and a specific site plan for the mixed-use town center expansion that has become Legacy West.  Pivotal to this expansion plan was the rerouting of Communication Parkway and Headquarters Drive from being a ring road to gridded street system, and the expansion of the mixed-use experience to both sides of the Tollroad in a manner that defined a new larger district within the City itself.  The success of these efforts has gained major market appeal, with multiple companies relocating to the District including Toyota Motor Company’s North American Headquarters.

Client: Karahan Companies, EDS, Post Properties

Awards: Dallas Business Journal Best Deal Award, NCTCOG Clide Award, ICSC Project Award

Status: 14 phases completed, adding over $2 Billion to the City’s tax base

Services: Master Planning