With home construction booming, Celina ISD grabs building site to ‘prepare for the future’

Another prime property in Celina has changed hands.

Builders and developers are buying thousands of acres for new residential communities in the Celina area.

And to prepare for all the new rooftops, the Celina Independent School District has snapped up a more than 80-acre site just east of the route of the planned Dallas North Tollway extension.

The property in Northwest Celina is located east of Centurion American’s Legacy Hills development, which is planned for more than 7,000 single-family homes.

“The district has been very proactive in planning and acquiring school sites to better serve the community as Celina experiences tremendous single-family home development,” said real estate broker Rex Glendenning, who handled the sale. “The district is currently operating one high school but has acquired two future high school sites since 2020 and is in the process of acquiring a fourth future site.

“As I’ve learned through my 40 years of land brokerage, great school systems are the backbone of any great community.”

Celina was one of North Texas’ top homebuilding markets in 2021 with more than 1,500 single-family home starts, according to data from Residential Strategies Inc.

In the last year, builders have acquired land in Celina and surrounding Denton and Collin counties to construct thousands more homes.

Glendenning and Caleb Lavey of Rex Real Estate brokered the land sale on FM 455.

“We recognize the growth we had anticipated for years is now upon us, and we need to prepare for the future,” Celina Independent School District Superintendent Tom Maglisceau said in a statement.

- Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor, Dallas Morning News