General Contractor in Carrollton, TX: Build-Outs, Remodels

Carrollton fits a 1900s town square, three passenger rail lines, and the Metroplex’s third-largest industrial park into about 37 square miles. It also boomed a generation before Frisco or Allen did. The city went from 13,855 residents in 1970 to 82,169 in 1990, according to the Handbook of Texas, and the houses, shopping centers, and warehouses from that rush are now 30 to 50 years old.

The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimate puts Carrollton at 134,562 people across three counties: about 83,000 in Denton County, about 51,000 in Dallas County, and fewer than 700 in Collin. So a project here is usually a second act. A restaurant moving into another tenant’s kitchen. An office front inside a warehouse. A 1980s house whose kitchen has never been touched.

We’re MASACO Construction, a woman- and minority-owned general contractor at 7950 Legacy Drive in Plano, about 20 minutes away on the Bush Turnpike. We’re commercial first, with a full residential remodeling practice beside it. We haven’t built in Carrollton yet. Our nearest restaurant job is Pizza Twist in Irving, a 2,000 SF franchise build-out with a full kitchen installation and new utility connections, finished in 6 to 8 weeks while the restaurant stayed open around its service hours.

MASACO’s nearest restaurant project, Pizza Twist in Irving: a 2,000 SF build-out completed while the restaurant kept serving.

I-35E, the Bush Turnpike, and three rail lines

Interstate 35E runs up the west side of the city, the President George Bush Turnpike crosses the middle, and the City’s transportation profile lists DART Green Line stops at North Carrollton/Frankford, Trinity Mills, and Downtown Carrollton. Trinity Mills is also the southern end of the Denton County A-train. Then, on October 25, 2025, DART opened the 26-mile Silver Line, 10 stations from Plano to DFW Airport, with a ribbon-cutting at Downtown Carrollton.

Green Line trains at Downtown Carrollton Station in 2019. The Silver Line to DFW Airport now stops here too.

The station districts. In 2005 the City rezoned the land around the Downtown Carrollton and Trinity Mills stations with a form-based code that pulls buildings up to the sidewalk. Near where I-35E meets the Bush Turnpike, Trinity Mills Station finished its apartments in December 2025 and is marketing 125,000 square feet of Class A office plus 21,000 square feet of retail and amenity space.

Koreatown. At Old Denton Road and the Bush Turnpike, a corner that emptied out after the Mervyn’s and Bally Total Fitness bankruptcies came back as Koreatown. Axios reported that H Mart opened in the former Mervyn’s in 2008, 99 Ranch followed where a Hobby Lobby had been, and dozens of businesses have since filled all four corners. The mayor told Axios that intersection brings in millions of dollars in tax revenue a year.

Nearly everything there went into buildings designed for some other tenant. That’s the normal starting point for a restaurant build-out in Carrollton, and it’s why we price a suite only after we’ve seen what the last tenant left above the ceiling grid. Our restaurant construction page covers the kitchen side.

The industrial parks. The City counts seven business parks. Valwood Industrial Park alone covers more than 2,200 acres, with more than 26 million square feet in 500 buildings and over 1,500 tenants. When a distributor moves into one of those buildings, the warehouse often works as delivered. The office front, break room, restrooms, and showroom are the build-out, and we run that scope like any other office build-out.

Carrollton’s building stock, from the square to the 1980s boom

Downtown is the oldest layer. George Myers and his brother J.S. filed plats for the east and south sides of the square in 1900 and the west side in 1901, and by 1908 three railroads crossed just north of it. The town made its own brick, too. The City’s history of Carrollton says the Carrollton Pressed Brick Company opened around 1904 northeast of the square, and its bricks, stamped “CARROLLTON,” went into the Gravley Hardware store on the square and the Vandergriff building on its southwest corner.

Buildings that age are usually load-bearing brick with storefronts that have been redone more than once, and a downtown tenant tends to inherit decades of patched wiring and plumbing.

Brick storefronts on West Main Street, one of the four streets that frame the Carrollton square.

The City pays to put tenants in those buildings. Its Historic Downtown retail rehab grant covers the blocks between Belt Line Road, the DART right-of-way, Vandergriff, and I-35E, and it can fund up to 100% of eligible improvements, capped at $1 million, for commercial buildings older than 20 years, interior and exterior finishes included. Applications need renderings, a budget, and the lease, and the City Council votes on each one.

Then came the boom. The Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey counts 56,799 housing units in Carrollton: 10,749 built in the 1970s, 13,835 in the 1980s, and 8,886 in the 1990s. That’s almost 59% of the city’s housing from three decades. The median home was built in 1989, and only about 2,500 units have gone up since 2020.

In Carrollton, the typical remodel starts with a house permitted under a code the City retired a generation ago.

The City’s record of adopted codes shows it. From 1976 until 2002, Carrollton’s building code was an edition of the Uniform Building Code, so a house permitted in 1984 went up under the 1979 edition. Your remodel today gets reviewed under the 2024 International codes.

The shopping centers aged with the houses, and the City’s economic development office says it’s working to redevelop aging retail centers. Lease a suite in one and check the age of the rooftop units, whether the restrooms meet today’s accessibility standards, and what’s left of the last tenant’s ceiling and ductwork before you commit to a layout. That’s the core of a tenant improvement budget here.

Illustrative: a 1980s strip center trading its shingle mansard for new storefront glass, a steel canopy, and a stucco parapet.

Permits, plan review, and the CO in Carrollton

Building Inspection sits on the first floor of City Hall at 1945 East Jackson Road, but applications, fees, and inspection requests all run through the online CityServe Portal. Inspectors make one trip a day: book before 7:00 a.m. for a same-day inspection, and expect none on Friday afternoons.

Carrollton adopted the 2024 International codes and the 2023 National Electrical Code, with local amendments in Ordinances 4265 and 4290, effective September 1, 2025.

The City’s Building Inspection FAQs require a permit to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish, or change the occupancy of a building, or to replace any electrical, gas, mechanical, or plumbing system. When several trades are involved, everything goes on one permit, with the general contractor and every registered subcontractor assigned to it. The fee schedule charges remodels and finish-outs $6 per $1,000 of valuation, with a $125 minimum, and starting work before the permit adds an investigation fee equal to the permit fee.

A commercial finish-out needs signed and sealed drawings showing existing and proposed conditions, energy compliance reports, and evidence of an asbestos survey, per the City’s submittal requirements, which also ask for your TDLR registration number. Under TDLR’s rules, a project with a total estimated cost of $50,000 or more is registered with the state for accessibility review, so on a build-out that size we register before the City submittal goes in.

The finish-out permit is your CO application

“You should not apply for a separate finish-out permit and C.O. permit. Finish-out permits automatically generate a C.O.”

From the City of Carrollton Building Inspection FAQs.

Carrollton requires a new certificate of occupancy whenever a new business moves in, an existing business changes its name or owner, or a tenant subleases part of its space; the City then issues one CO listing both tenants. A shell building never receives a CO, and an issued CO doesn’t expire. The Post Office won’t start mail delivery without a copy, so your CO date is also your mail date.

Restaurants: Environmental Services and the grease trap

Food adds a second review. The City’s food safety staff review plans for every new or remodeled food business alongside Building Inspection, and the City’s food establishment requirements are specific:

• Plans must be approved before work starts on a new kitchen, an extensive remodel, a significant menu change, or a change of ownership.
• A new owner must meet current requirements, whatever the previous owner’s equipment and facilities were.
• Kitchens with a grill, griddle, fryer, range, oven, broiler, smoker, or wok need at least a 1,000-gallon grease trap; light food prep needs 500 gallons.
• Hand sinks must sit within 25 linear feet of every prep, service, and utensil washing area.
• The food permit is valid only with a valid CO, and it’s renewed every year.

That ownership rule is the trap in a second-generation kitchen. Buying an operating restaurant doesn’t grandfather its old grease trap or hand sink layout, so we confirm what the City will require before you close.

The Fire Marshal: hoods and suite numbers

The Fire Marshal’s Office, in the Gravley Center on West Belt Line Road downtown, issues separate fire permits for sprinklers, alarms, access control, and kitchen hood suppression. Its hood suppression guide, updated in September 2026, aims to finish plan review within 15 business days. It puts the manual pull station 10 to 20 feet from the hood, a Class K extinguisher within 30 feet, and a local alarm in the kitchen and seating area if the building has no fire alarm system. Woks are on its list of covered equipment, which matters near Koreatown.

One rule surprises tenants who split a space. The Fire Marshal assigns every suite number from a complete floor plan, and the office’s general contractor guide says alphabetic suite numbers aren’t permitted, so “Suite 100A” won’t fly. Multi-tenant buildings also need a Knox 4400 series vault, and the same guide warns that field tests on interior finishes may be required before the CO.

We’ve lived that last point. At Fade & Style in Allen, the PVC wall system at the barber stations needed extra fire marshal test documentation before the city would issue the CO. We got the compliance data from the supplier, worked it through with the city, and the shop opened on its original date.

Nearby in Allen: Fade & Style, where the station-wall finish needed fire test documentation before the CO.

Remodeling a Carrollton home from the 1970s, 80s, or 90s

Houses from these decades are often brick on a concrete slab, many with the garage off a rear alley and a kitchen closed off from the family room. That kitchen usually dates the house, and opening it up is the classic fix. Carrollton is direct about what that takes: remove a wall and the permit application needs either evidence that the wall isn’t load-bearing or engineered structural plans. Our kitchen remodeling work starts with that answer.

Bathrooms from the same era tend to be small, with a combined tub and shower, and the drains run through the slab. Trading the tub for a walk-in shower means cutting concrete, so in bathroom remodeling we lock every drain location before demolition. Check the pipes while the walls are open: polybutylene supply line went into many U.S. homes built from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.

When the kitchen, baths, floors, and lighting all need work, a whole-home remodel under one permit beats three separate projects. Popcorn ceilings, wall-to-wall carpet, and a red brick fireplace wall tend to come as a set in these houses, and they’re easier to deal with in one pass than one room at a time.

Illustrative: a 1980s living room after a whole-home update, with the popcorn ceiling gone and the brick fireplace wall refaced in slate.

For home additions, the City wants a plot plan or survey, an engineer-designed foundation plan, an engineer’s letter on soil and design codes, wall bracing plans, and energy code compliance. Any foundation repair needs a permit regardless of value.

Smaller jobs are simpler. The City’s remodels and additions page says painting, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, and countertops don’t need a permit, and neither does replacing a door or window with one of the same size. A homeowner can work on their own homestead, but anyone else doing remodeling, plumbing, mechanical, or electrical work must be registered with the City.

In Carrollton’s five Neighborhood Empowerment Zones, permit fees are waived on renovations and repairs, residential and commercial. Owner-occupied homes there can also apply for the Single Family Rehabilitation Incentive, up to 25% of approved exterior work and capped at $20,000 a year, for items like street-facing facade work, energy-efficient windows and doors, and front porches. City Council has to approve the agreement before work starts, and the work must finish within 12 months.

Three Carrollton landmarks

The square and its gazebo

The gazebo at the top of this page stands where a spring once flowed through the middle of the square, which Broadway, Fourth Avenue, Elm Street, and West Main Street frame. The first gazebo went up in 1921 and hosted band concerts, political speeches, and Saturday dances. The City finished rehabilitating the square in 2015, moving parking to the outer edges and adding seating, lighting, and a lawn, a project the City’s downtown page says was a Texas Downtown Association awards finalist.

The Plaza Theater on Fourth Avenue

Mrs. A.R. Lowrey and her son John built the Plaza Theater at 1115 Fourth Avenue after buying the building. According to the City’s historical designations, it opened on December 23, 1949, and ran continuously until December 31, 1994.

The Plaza Theater at 1115 Fourth Avenue, which opened on December 23, 1949.

The A.W. Perry Homestead Museum

At 1509 North Perry Road, the Perry homestead is a one-and-a-half-story house DeWitt Clinton Perry built in 1909 with some of the lumber and stone from his parents’ 1850s farmhouse on the same land, per its Texas Historical Commission marker. Pearl Gravley gave the house and ten acres to the City in 1975.

In 2025 the City unveiled a restored museum after a project the City Council funded with more than $500,000: significant electrical upgrades, restored siding, porch, and awning, added accessible entry with a mechanical lift, and interior work on wallpaper, flooring, carpentry, and windows. Tours are free.

The A.W. Perry Homestead Museum in 2019, before the City’s 2025 restoration.

How a Carrollton project runs with MASACO

Koreatown kitchen, Valwood office front, or a 1980s house off Josey Lane, the job follows the same process. We walk the space and read the lease or HOA rules. You see 3D renderings before we price anything, and the proposal is fixed in scope and organized by trade, with allowances spelled out. One project manager runs the job and sends a written photo update every week, and we coordinate the City permit, Environmental Services, the Fire Marshal, and TDLR where they apply. You finish with as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO, and warranties, and we stay reachable after handover.

MASACO is led by Sara Bannat, Founder and CEO, and Mahmoud Abu Saad, COO, and we’re a Goldman Sachs Preferred Vendor. Looking for a general contractor in Carrollton, TX, for a restaurant suite, a downtown storefront, or home remodeling? Book a consultation. Bring the lease, the listing, or the HOA guidelines, and we’ll tell you what Carrollton will ask for before you spend a dollar on construction.

Building in Carrollton: what to know.

Carrollton grew from 13,855 residents in 1970 to 82,169 in 1990, and about 59% of its homes were built between 1970 and 1999, so most remodels here start with a house that is 30 to 50 years old. Commercial space follows I-35E, the President George Bush Turnpike, and the DART rail lines, from the brick storefronts on the downtown square to Koreatown at Old Denton Road and the 2,200-plus acres of Valwood Industrial Park. The City's Building Inspection division at 1945 East Jackson Road issues permits and certificates of occupancy through the CityServe Portal and has reviewed work under the 2024 codes since September 1, 2025.

Carrollton neighborhoods and districts.

• Downtown Carrollton (the square)
• Koreatown (Old Denton Road at the Bush Turnpike)
• Trinity Mills Station
• Valwood Industrial Park
• Frankford Trade Center
• Savoy of Josey Ranch
• The Country Place
• High Meadow of Indian Creek
• Rosemeade Heights
• Oak Hills
• Woodlake
• The Highlands
• Nottingham Estates
• Woodcreek

Carrollton on the map.

Open Carrollton, TX in Google Maps