Plano’s Shops at Willow Bend, Haggard Farms projects spark traffic concerns

With two upcoming development projects, The Shops at Willow Bend and Haggard Farms, both breaking ground in West Plano near the Dallas North Tollway, residents are raising concerns about infrastructure.

While they understand the need for this revitalization, worries about how the projects will impact traffic in the area persist.

“I don’t think anybody has addressed the fact that these are two villages that are going to pop up at the same time,” said Bill France, who lives in the Glen Meadows development near The Shops at Willow Bend. “How will the infrastructure support this growth?”

As of April, redevelopment plans for The Shops at Willow Bend, located on the northwest corner of the Dallas North Tollway and W. Park Boulevard, include an 18-story hotel, a seven-story office building and three five-story buildings with 960 apartments. Dallas-based developer Centennial says the redevelopment will require multiple phases over about a 10-year period, but construction on the project is scheduled to begin in early 2025, pending needed approvals.

As of December 2021, the approved zoning change for the Haggard Farms project, a mixed-use development with a food and beverage and event venue called The Almanac, will allow for more than 700,000 square feet of office space, 700 multifamily units, a 98-room hotel, a retail village, a senior housing community and town homes. Dallas-based developer Stillwater Capital teamed up with the Haggard family for the development, located east of the Dallas North Tollway on Spring Creek Parkway, that will pay homage to the property’s heritage. The first $20 million, 189,000 square-foot development is scheduled to open at the end of 2024, per planning documents Stillwater Capital filed with the state.

Developers, in conjunction with Plano, say they are working to make sure traffic is handled appropriately, according to Brian Shewski, the city’s transportation engineering manager. The North Texas Tollway Authority says it is also mindful of the future developments in Plano, along with upcoming projects in nearby cities that will impact traffic on the Dallas North Tollway.

Because developers want higher density, it’s rare for a development to bring in less traffic, Shewski said. But mixed-use spaces tend to generate internal capture, or trips within a site, such as going to an apartment and then a restaurant or retail store on the site.

“You go through a process to basically do a trip generation of how many trips were generated by the site. Say if it’s just only office building, then all the traffic that’s coming to the office building is coming from the outside,” Shewski said. “It’s coming from somewhere else, but when you put in apartment complexes and retail and restaurant-type facilities, there’s a lot of internal capture. It could be up to 30%.”

Multifamily housing, for example, typically generates more trips per acre than single-family housing, Shewski said. That’s why, in part, Plano required traffic impact studies for both the Haggard Farms and The Shops at Willow Bend projects. The studies have been run by the developers’ traffic consultants.

Shewski said the city submitted comments back for the Haggard Farms project, and the consultant resubmitted, but Plano has not received a response from the consultants of The Shops at Willow Bend after it submitted comments back for the project in April.

Michael Platt, SVP mixed-use development for Centennial, said Centennial has hired a world-class traffic engineering firm to perform an in-depth traffic impact analysis (TIA) of the proposed redevelopment.

“As a result of the findings of this report, Centennial is working closely with the Plano planning staff and engineering departments to propose modest infrastructure improvements, where necessary, to ensure proper vehicular flow,” Platt said.

The Haggard Farms property developer and its traffic consultant, Shewski said, have addressed Plano’s traffic concerns with the exception of the new Pinecrest Drive, Pinehaven Drive and Spring Creek Parkway intersection. Pinecrest Drive currently dead-ends at Spring Creek Parkway. Pinehaven, a new development roadway, will start there and extend to Parkwood Boulevard.

Shewski said the traffic impact study prepared by the developer’s traffic consultant mentioned that a new traffic signal is necessary in order for the new Pinehaven, Pinecrest and Spring Creek intersection to handle the future traffic loads.

“The issue that we have right now is the developer and the developer’s consultant are trying to get Oncor to approve putting a traffic signal in at that location,” Shewski said. “And right now, Oncor is kind of wavering as to whether they’re going to approve it or not because the traffic signals are literally directly underneath these power lines. …These are very high power, 345 kilovolt transmission lines.”

An existing traffic signal at Preston Road and Commonsgate Boulevard, due east of the Pinecrest and Spring Creek intersection, is also directly underneath Oncor’s 345 kilovolt transmission line, Shewski said.

The city doesn’t know which direction Oncor, one of Plano’s electricity providers, is going to go, Shewski said, but the traffic signal concern is holding up plans right now.

“If that signal can’t get approved, then we’re going to have to rethink how that intersection is configured,” Shewski said. “It won’t be a full opening. … We’ll probably have to only allow right turns in and right turns out at the location, but otherwise, we’ve been working with them on all the access points off of Parkwood, off of Spring Creek. There’s one off of Windhaven Parkway.”

Regarding the traffic impacts of the Haggard Farms project, the city has extra capacity on Parkwood Boulevard, Spring Creek Parkway and Windhaven Parkway to absorb the new traffic being generated by the upcoming development.

Gary Williams, an architect and resident of Glenhollow Estates, said he doesn’t think the Haggard Farms project will impact traffic much.

“There’s a lot of internal roads, and there’s multiple ways of accessing and exiting that property,” Williams said. “It’s a big development, but I think it’s got a lot of things that are positive.”

But Williams is concerned about The Shops at Willow Bend redevelopment.

“There’s a lot of cars that are going to exit onto Plano Parkway and Park Boulevard. ... That’s a busy intersection right there,” Williams said. “At 5 o’clock when rush hour starts, you have cars sitting in the intersection waiting to get through there. And if you add all of those people to that area, there needs to be multiple ways for people to get out. Otherwise, that’s going to be a real bottleneck.”

Residents like France wonder what NTTA’s plan is for the Dallas North Tollway with additional projects like Frisco’s 2,500 acre Fields development cropping up nearby.

Michael Rey, media relations manager for NTTA, said the organization is always planning and working to handle future traffic demand because growth and development follow the creation and expansion of NTTA toll roads.

Rey said that NTTA has expanded the DNT with additional lanes between Belt Line Road in Addison and the Sam Rayburn Tollway in Plano.

“Work is currently underway to expand the DNT to four lanes in each direction between the SRT and U.S. 380 in the Frisco area,” Rey said. " As part of that project, we will improve ramping and access to the Fields and ‘Star’ development areas by mid-2025. NTTA also recently opened the new DNT bridge over U.S. 380.”

NTTA, Rey said, is also concluding the planning stage on a major project that will extend the DNT main lanes about 6 miles from U.S. 380 in Frisco/Prosper to FM 428 in Celina. The extension is estimated to open to traffic in 2028.

“In each NTTA project, we continue to partner with cities (including Plano and Frisco) to discuss future development and ways to make improvements,” Rey said.

Yet, France questions what will really happen when both projects land.

“Is the tollway going to be a parking lot?” France said. “You’re going to need a flying car to go 1 mile.”