Craig Ranch

Master Planner David Craig welcomed us into his experience center which he built to sell the vision of his development to buyers, investors and city officials.

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10 years in the making, this development is well on its way toward completion as a stand alone city, named after founder David Craig. Every site on the property is branded "the hospital at Craig Ranch", "the TPC at Craig Ranch" etc.

While the naming convention is a little off putting to some of the team, the development speaks for itself and the "Monuments" to mark the entrance to his project do serve the purpose of creating a sense of arrival. He had to accumulate a large amount of land to make this a viable development and has installed $500m worth of infrastructure into the project. This money will come out to him in a modified TIF called a 380 Tax incentive. It is basically the same as a TIF, but has far fewer restrictions on what the money gained can be used for.

The deal is that the City of Frisco does not charge him tax on the land, and will pay him back in the future from the proceeds of the 380 instrument. This I feel was a masterful piece of negotiation as he has basically bought the infrastructure from the city with their own future earnings. These earnings would of course not exist if the development did not go forward.

The development includes everything necessary for a traditional lifestyle, including hiking/biking paths, a medical district, an industrial/office district, a residential district and various amenities including health and lifestyle plus a golf course.

Mr. Craig is well connected with many different high profile sports players and has managed to brand off portions of the project as Olympic training grounds.

He has had a very hard time getting the zoning requirements for this "New Urbanism" concept wherein a downtown area is introduced into sub-urban areas. When he started there was no residential zoning at all, and now there is high density zoning that is flexible in areas to allow the city to change over time to match the market.

School districts are under Allen and Frisco Independent School Districts. McKinney, the city that this development falls in has made some deals with them to give ad-velorum tax benefits to those districts to ensure they don't drain the other cities.

The sum of it all is that this developer is trying very hard to create a place where you can enjoy the benefits of a CBD without any of the congestion, live and work in a place that is large, but small enough to seem like home and essentially never have to leave.

Mr. Craig and the City of McKinney are hopeful that this project will be a long term one and eventually turn into its own vibrant and successful city.