Small Town Gunter is in The Path of The Dallas Area’s Northward Growth
GUNTER — Heading up Preston Road north of Celina, you roll over a hill and there’s Gunter. Founded as a railroad whistle stop more than a century ago, the Grayson County town has a population of only about 2,500. But Gunter is on the main line of growth spreading north from Dallas.
Real estate investors and developers are already scrambling to grab big farm tracts just south of town.
Taylor Ranch, a 500-acre property southwest of Gunter, just sold to one of North Texas’ biggest community builders. Other big tracts between Gunter and Celina have sold in the last couple of years and are planned for development. Gunter City Manager Rick Chaffin said everybody in town is bracing for the boom.
“We are just waiting for it to hit,” Chaffin said. “It’s just a matter of when and how big.” The “when” may be sooner than expected.
With two huge semiconductor plant investments announced just north of Gunter in Sherman, thousands of new people will be coming to that area of Grayson County.
“The growth is going to be coming to Gunter from both directions — north and south,” said real estate broker Rex Glendenning, who has handled some of the biggest land sales in Dallas’ northern suburbs. “Gunter is kind of what Celina was 15 years ago.
“I believe Gunter is the next shining star.”
Glendenning said the extension of the Dallas North Tollway service roads north of Prosper and Celina is opening up that area.
This summer, construction started to the southwest of Gunter on the 3,200-acre Legacy Hills development in Celina, which is planned for 7,000 houses. It’s a project of Centurion American Development Group, the same developer that just bought Taylor Ranch.
“The toll road extension is the only reason Legacy Hills is happening,” Glendenning said. “When people realize they can drive from downtown Dallas all the way up to Gunter, it’s going to make a difference.”
Gunter got its start in the late 1800s as a stop on a major north-south transportation line — the railroad instead of the toll road. Cattleman John Gunter donated land for the town along the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas Railway. By the Roaring Twenties, Gunter had grown to have 50 businesses, a school and several churches. But big fires in the 1930s and 1940s destroyed most of those buildings. Today, most of the businesses in Gunter line Preston Road, as do the town’s elementary and high schools.
Chaffin said 30% to 40% of the town’s residents have lived there five years or less. Thousands of folks are expected to move to the area over the coming decade, Chaffin said.
“We are trying to protect the quality of life,” he said. “We don’t want to be just another mass of subdivisions. We want to create communities and neighborhoods.”
The biggest master-planned community in Gunter now is the Bridges at Preston Crossing, a golf course-residential development planned for more than 350 single-family homes. Mattamy Homes is marketing new houses in the Bridges priced from around $530,000 to more than $700,000. Gutman Custom Homes is also building in the Bridges.
“We’re in the country, but our land values are very high,” Chaffin said. “We have the highest average income per capita in the county.”
Land developers have created municipal utility districts south of Gunter to support tens of thousands of new homes, he said.
“We are going to see ramping up of growth, and it’s going to head to Gunter,” said Ted Wilson, principal with Dallas-based housing analyst Residential Strategies. “The planning is in place, and the land has transferred from farmers to investors and developers.”
Wilson said he’s seen the same growth pattern up Preston Road to Prosper and Celina.
“I remember 20 years ago, everybody was talking about what was going to happen in Frisco, and look at Frisco today,” he said. “Gunter is just the next rung on the ladder.”
Source: The Dallas Morning News - Steve Brown