We’ve worked in Allen twice. As general contractor, we took Fade & Style Barber Shop from a bare 1,500-square-foot shell to a working shop in six weeks. At Sayfani Coffee House, a cafe of about 2,000 square feet, we did the framing for another general contractor. Both jobs ran out of our office on Legacy Drive in Plano, about 25 minutes away, much of it on the Sam Rayburn Tollway.
Allen is a city of 113,447 people by the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate, and its commercial life runs along two highways: US 75 down the middle and SH 121 across the northwest edge. The retail is big. Visit Allen, the city’s visitor bureau, counts more than five million square feet of shopping. Most of the neighborhoods behind it were built after 1990. So an Allen owner is usually doing one of two things: fitting out a suite in one of those centers, or updating a house built in the 1990s or 2000s. We do both, commercial first.
Where Allen’s commercial space sits, and who leases it
Think of US 75 as Allen’s spine. At Bethany Drive sits Watters Creek, the commercial heart of the 500-acre Montgomery Farm development: 52 acres of retail, restaurants, and office space around a creekside village green. Up at Stacy Road, Allen Premium Outlets fills 820 West Stacy Road with more than 120 outlet stores. On East Stacy Road, The Village at Allen opened in November 2009 alongside the city’s arena, an open-air center with stores like Target, Nordstrom Rack, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Michaels.
Office growth is coming too. Allen EDC’s development list puts One Bethany at Watters Creek at more than 900,000 square feet of Class A office and describes The Farm in Allen as a 135-acre mixed-use district. Downtown, around Main Street and McDermott Drive, is the oldest part of the city.
The tenants we build for match our portfolio: barbers and salons, cafes, quick-service restaurants, wellness suites. See retail and salon build-outs and tenant improvements for scope.
One note for office-based companies. If you run a primary business (one that sells mostly outside the local economy) with 25 or fewer employees and two years in operation, the Allen EDC Small Business Grant Program can fund improvements to your current space, up to $35,000 to $50,000 depending on qualifications. Retail stores and restaurants aren’t eligible.
First generation or second generation?
Before you sign a lease, find out what’s really in the suite. A first-generation space is a shell: slab, demising walls, a utility stub or two. A second-generation space is somebody else’s old build-out, with ceilings, restrooms, and ductwork that may or may not suit you. Second generation looks cheaper. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the demolition and rerouting cost more than starting clean.
Fade & Style was first generation. We took the suite from shell condition to a finished shop: electrical and lighting layout, plumbing for the barber stations, flooring, paint, and full finish-out, with every subcontractor and city inspection coordinated by us.
Shell condition matters for scheduling here too. The City’s certificate of occupancy guideline says a shell building must have at least a temporary certificate of completion before any tenant finish-out inside it can get its own CO. In a brand-new center, part of your opening date belongs to the landlord.
Sayfani was a different kind of job for us. We did the framing, and another firm ran the project as general contractor, so the schedule, the inspections, and the finishes there were theirs, not ours.
Allen’s building stock, from Twin Creeks to StarCreek
Allen’s census numbers explain its houses. The city had 1,940 residents in 1970, 8,314 in 1980, and 18,309 in 1990. By 2020 it had 104,627. Do the math and the large majority of Allen homes went up after 1990.
The master-planned communities came in waves. Twin Creeks, the largest, covers 2,400 acres southwest of US 75 and SH 121, mostly between Exchange Parkway and McDermott Drive. Hillwood began developing it in 1993. Suncreek, along Alma Drive, filled in from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, mostly with two-story brick homes. StarCreek, a 529-acre community north of Stacy Road between SH 121 and US 75, is newer, built mostly in the late 2000s and 2010s. Near West Bethany Drive, Montgomery Farm mixes custom homes with preserved open land.
That spread shapes the remodel. A 1996 Twin Creeks house is 30 years old, and an untouched kitchen or primary bath shows it. A StarCreek house is young enough that the floor plan usually works, so the work there is finishes, fixtures, and the primary bath.
Allen’s commercial buildings split three ways too. Watters Creek is a lifestyle center, and its landlord will likely review your storefront and finishes before the city does. The Village at Allen is a power center built around big boxes, all dating from its 2009 opening, so a lot of what you’ll tour there is likely second generation. Allen Premium Outlets is an outlet center where suites get rebuilt as brands come and go; a 6,566-square-foot interior alteration there was registered with the state in 2025. Wherever you lease, read the work letter before you price anything.
Permits, plan review, and the CO in Allen
The City of Allen’s Building and Permitting Division, at 305 Century Parkway, handles permitting, construction plan review, and inspections for homes and businesses. Everything is filed through the city’s online Citizen Self-Service portal. Every contractor working in Allen registers with the city for $50 a year.
The codes just changed. Allen adopted the 2024 International Code Council codes, effective September 26, 2026, and applications received on or after that date are reviewed under the 2024 building, residential, energy, fire, plumbing, mechanical, and fuel gas codes, with the 2023 National Electrical Code. Drawings started before that date need a second look.
On the commercial side, the city’s list of work exempt from permits is short: painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, countertops and similar finish work, plus movable fixtures, racks, and partitions no taller than 5 feet 9 inches. Move a full-height wall, add a circuit, or set a new sink, and you’re into permit territory.
The certificate of occupancy comes before the first sale
“No tenant may stock or conduct any business activity unless a temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy has been issued.”
From the City of Allen’s certificate of occupancy guideline.
The same guideline says a final building inspection ticket is not a CO. Allen requires a new certificate for a new building, an alteration or remodel, a new business in an existing space, a change of ownership, and even a change of name. The CO application goes in at the same time as the building permit, with a copy of your sales tax certificate and a floor plan of the whole suite. The tenant or business owner signs it, not the contractor. Tenant finish-outs then need sign-off from the Fire Department and Building Inspections, plus Environmental Health if you serve food.
We prepare the floor plan and the package. You sign. That’s the split.
Cafes and restaurants: Environmental Health review
Food adds an office. Allen’s Environmental Health Division wants plans before any construction, remodel, change of ownership, or change in food type, and those plans ride along with the building permit or CO application. Its restaurant construction and remodeling guidelines are specific:
- Menu, operation description, equipment schedules, and spec sheets
- Grease trap sizing, water heater calculations, finish schedules, and a reflected ceiling plan
- Smooth, light-colored floors in prep and service areas, with no sealed concrete or VCT
- At least one three-compartment sink, even if you have a dishwasher
- A separate dump sink at bars, juice bars, drink stations, and coffee stations
- Hand sinks within 25 feet in each prep and service area
The health permit is valid only alongside a valid CO, and it runs for one year. Since August 1, 2026, the Environmental Health Division takes health permit applications only through the online portal, no paper and no checks.
A coffee bar packs brewing equipment, refrigeration, ice, a dump sink, hand sinks, and a three-compartment sink into a small footprint, so get the rough-in wrong and you’re cutting the slab twice. Our restaurant construction page covers food-service builds in depth.
Allen’s fire marshal checks finishes, not just sprinklers
The Allen Fire Department’s Fire Marshal’s Office, at 310 Century Parkway, reviews fire protection plans and runs its own final inspection before a CO. Since November 1, 2025, it has used third-party plan review for systems like hood suppression, new fire alarm systems, and sprinkler modifications over 10 heads. The contractor pays the reviewer directly, on top of the city’s permit fees.
The fire department’s commercial final inspection checklist is where small things trip up openings: exit and emergency lights on a dedicated breaker with a breaker lock, suite numbers over the front and rear doors, a State Fire Marshal’s Office tag on every extinguisher (new ones included), a key for the Knox Box handed to the inspector, and no deadbolts or slide bolts on secondary exits. A barber shop can miss its date over a breaker lock.
Finishes get scrutiny too. Under the building code, interior wall and ceiling finishes are classed A, B, or C by flame-spread testing, and the test report is how you prove a product’s class. At Fade & Style, the PVC wall system on the station walls needed additional fire marshal testing documentation before the city would issue the certificate of occupancy. We worked directly with the supplier and city officials to get the compliance data in hand, and the shop still opened on its original completion date.
Get the test reports for any unusual wall or ceiling finish before you order it, not after the inspector asks.
State accessibility review at $50,000 and up
Texas adds a layer the city doesn’t run. Under the Texas Architectural Barriers Act, TDLR’s rules say a project with a total estimated cost of $50,000 or more is registered with the state and gets an accessibility plan review before inspection. Smaller projects still have to meet the Texas Accessibility Standards. On a bigger suite, schedule registration, review, and the accessibility inspection from day one.
Remodeling an Allen home built in the 1990s or 2000s
Kitchens first. In a late-1990s Twin Creeks or Suncreek house, the kitchen is often the room that dates the whole home: original cabinets, tired counters, a small island or none, and lighting that was cheap when it went in. Kitchen remodeling there usually means new cabinets and counters, a reworked island, real task lighting, and sometimes opening a wall to the family room, with an engineer involved if it’s load-bearing.
Primary baths are the other big one. A lot of baths from that era were built around a corner garden tub nobody uses, with a cramped shower beside it. We pull the tub and build a walk-in shower in that footprint; bathroom remodeling covers the full scope. These houses sit on concrete slabs, so moving a drain means cutting the slab, and we decide where every drain goes before demolition, not during it.
When the kitchen, both baths, the flooring, and the lighting all need work, a whole-home remodel under one permit and one schedule usually beats three separate projects.
Here’s how Allen handles the paperwork on a house. A remodel or addition needs a building permit application, plan review, and construction plans with a plot or site plan, and electrical and plumbing work goes through an over-the-counter trade permit. The city’s residential services page lists what’s exempt, like replacing windows or doors without changing the structural opening, or a detached storage shed up to 120 square feet. The city’s advice to homeowners is blunt: make sure your contractor has applied for and received a permit before starting work. Construction is allowed from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
HOA communities add their own step. Exterior changes and additions in places like Twin Creeks or StarCreek usually need the association’s approval first, on the association’s calendar. We schedule that review from the first meeting, and we design additions to the 2024 residential and energy codes the city now enforces.
Three Allen landmarks every local knows
The stadium at the top of this page is Eagle Stadium, Allen High School’s 18,000-seat stadium, which opened in 2012. Here are three more.
The 1874 stone dam on Cottonwood Creek
In 1874 the Houston and Texas Central Railway built a stone dam across Cottonwood Creek to water its steam locomotives, along with a pump house and an elevated tank. The Texas Historical Commission records the Allen Water Station as a State Antiquities Landmark, and it’s listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It sits on the creek just north of Exchange Parkway.
The Allen Heritage Center on Main Street
At 100 East Main Street, the Allen Heritage Center is a replica of the town’s original Houston and Texas Central depot, the railroad stop Allen grew up around. Nearby, on February 22, 1878, Sam Bass and his gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in Texas.
Downtown is finally moving. The city rezoned the old Central Business District as the Downtown District in January 2023, and in March 2026 the City Council approved agreements for a $17 million Downtown Catalyst Project near McDermott Drive and Allen Drive: restaurants, retail, and a central park, with the original fire station and the “Blue House,” once Allen’s early library, preserved. Own or lease downtown? This is the window to build.
Credit Union of Texas Event Center
The city-owned arena at 200 East Stacy Road opened on November 6, 2009, as the Allen Event Center, the same day as The Village at Allen around it. It’s home to the Allen Americans hockey team and took its current name under a naming-rights deal in 2021.
How an Allen project runs with MASACO
Every job follows the same six steps, laid out on our process page.
- Understand. We walk the suite or the house with you.
- Visualize. You see 3D renderings before we price anything.
- Plan. A fixed-scope proposal organized by trade, with allowances spelled out.
- Execute. One project manager and a written photo update every week. We handle the Allen permit filings and coordinate fire, health, and TDLR review where they apply.
- Deliver. A close-out package: as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO, and warranties.
- Support. We stay reachable after handover.
Allen is a 25-minute drive for us, and we’ve already taken real clients through its permits, fire marshal, and CO. Signing a lease at Watters Creek, opening a cafe on Stacy Road, or finally fixing a 1990s Twin Creeks kitchen? Book a consultation. We’ll walk the space with you and come back with a plan you can hold us to.
Building in Allen: what to know.
Allen grew from 18,309 residents in 1990 to 104,627 in 2020, so most of its houses were built after 1990, in master-planned communities like Twin Creeks, where development began in 1993, and newer ones like StarCreek north of Stacy Road. Commercial space concentrates along US 75, from Watters Creek at Bethany Drive north to The Village at Allen and Allen Premium Outlets on Stacy Road. The City of Allen Building and Permitting Division at 305 Century Parkway issues building permits and certificates of occupancy, and it reviews applications received since September 26, 2026 under the 2024 international codes.
Allen neighborhoods and districts.
- Twin Creeks
- StarCreek
- Montgomery Farm
- Suncreek
- Waterford Parks
- Watters Crossing
- Saddleridge
- Ridgeview Crossing
- Quail Run
- Downtown Allen
- Watters Creek
- The Village at Allen
- Allen Premium Outlets area
- The Farm in Allen
Allen on the map.
Photo credits
- Eagle Stadium (Allen, Texas) - August 2026.jpg by Ranch9613, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Allen, Texas Train Water Station.JPG by MeekMark, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Allen Texas Heritage Center.jpg by Jphill19, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Allen Event Center - 23 February 2013.jpg (cropped) by Dravecky, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
