Celina is the fastest-growing city in the United States, and the Census Bureau has now said so twice. Its population jumped 24.6% between July 2024 and July 2025, to an estimated 64,427, and it held the same national title in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau). In 2000 the whole town had 1,861 residents and 135 businesses (Handbook of Texas).
So nearly everything you’d build or remodel here is new. Except the part that’s more than a century old. A 1911 brick square sits in the middle, and subdivisions, retail pads, and a tollway extension are closing in around it.
MASACO Construction works out of 7950 Legacy Drive in Plano, about 35 minutes south of the square. We’re a woman- and minority-owned general contractor, commercial first, and we’ve already built in Celina. Cielo Beauty Bar is a 2,600-square-foot luxury salon we delivered in eight weeks as general contractor, with plumbing for the wash stations, a custom lighting design, and high-end finishes held inside a controlled budget.
Where Celina’s new commercial space is going up
Celina’s commercial map has four layers, moving at very different speeds.
Preston Road. State Highway 289 runs north and south through the city, with downtown just west of it. The Celina Economic Development Corporation calls it the city’s central and most active commercial corridor, suited to retail, restaurants, medical offices, and professional services (Celina EDC). Given how new Celina is, expect a cold shell there more often than somebody’s old restaurant.
The Dallas North Tollway. NTTA’s Phase 4 extends the Tollway 13.7 miles north of US 380, and Phase 4A, to FM 428, is scheduled to open in late 2027. By February 2026, bridge decks were finished at Light Farms Way and Frontier Parkway (NTTA progress report). The EDC is pitching the corridor for corporate offices, mixed-use districts, destination retail, and hotels.
The Outer Loop and Legacy Hills. The EDC lists the planned 55-mile Collin County Outer Loop as the next east and west connector. Centurion American’s Legacy Hills covers about 3,200 acres at Legacy Drive and Celina Parkway, with roughly 7,000 single-family homes and 100 acres of retail, restaurant, and entertainment space planned (Centurion American).
Downtown. The city is building its own anchor on the square. The Celina Government Center at 100 North Colorado Street is registered with the state as a four-story, 87,300-square-foot building with a basement, a public library, city offices, meeting space, and an occupied roof deck (TDLR project record).
In a new center, the shell sets your start date
Most Celina tenants lease first-generation space: a new shell with a slab, demising walls, and utility stubs. The city’s shell building and tenant finish-out process says your finish-out permit can’t be issued until the shell has a Certificate of Completion. Even a temporary one needs Building, Fire, and Health (where it applies) to approve life safety, plus a punch list from Planning, Engineering, and Public Works.
One shortcut: if the same contractor and subcontractors build both, the city can link the permits and issue yours early. Your CO still waits for the shell’s final.
So part of your opening date belongs to the landlord’s builder. Ask where the shell stands before you announce a grand opening. Our tenant improvements page covers how we scope a finish-out.
What a salon needs in week one
Cielo shows where salon money goes. Wash stations need drains, water lines, and venting set before a wall closes, and custom lighting needs its circuits fixed just as early. We coordinated those two scopes so the finish work went in once and stayed clean, and chose materials that kept the look while protecting cost. It opened on time and within budget. Our retail and salon build-outs page explains how we sequence those trades.
Celina’s building stock, from 1911 brick to 2020s slabs
Three kinds of building make up Celina, and each asks something different of a contractor.
The square. The oldest commercial blocks downtown date to 1911 and the years right after. A tenant there inherits brick walls, old storefront framing, and whatever the last several owners did inside. Plan on discoveries behind the plaster.
The farm-town edge. A block east of the square, metal-sided buildings and grain storage still line the older streets. The city wants that character kept, not erased.
Everything since 2000. Celina had 1,737 residents in 1990 and 1,861 in 2000. It has added more than 62,000 people since, so most of its homes and nearly all of its shopping centers went up after 2000, the bulk in the last decade.
Those homes sit mostly in master-planned communities. Light Farms, out where the Tollway crosses Light Farms Way, is easy to spot by its water tower, and the city’s inspection guide writes a fence setback exception just for it. Mustang Lakes, built around 14 stocked lakes, sits just north of US 380 where Celina, Prosper, and McKinney meet. Legacy Hills and Lilyana are newer still.
That age profile cuts both ways. Very little in a Celina house needs fixing. Very little was customized, either.
Permits, plan review, and the CO in Celina
Who issues it. The City of Celina Building Services Division, at 112 North Colorado Street, permits and inspects homes and businesses. You need a permit to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, convert, move, or demolish any building in the city limits.
Which codes. Celina enforces the 2024 International Codes with North Central Texas Council of Governments amendments, plus the 2023 National Electrical Code. The City Council passed the adopting ordinance, No. 2026-003, on January 13, 2026, and applications and inspections have followed the 2024 editions since February 2026 (Ordinance 2026-003).
Who can pull it. Every contractor registers with the city before applying, and commercial contractors list the City of Celina as certificate holder on their insurance (Contractor Registration).
How long review takes. Plans are reviewed in the order received, and the city’s stated goal is 10 business days or less to comments or approval (City of Celina). County, state, or federal clearances are on the applicant.
How long a permit lives. It expires on day 181 if no inspection has happened or the work shows no progress. The general contractor requests inspections in sequence, and the daily cutoff is 3:30 p.m.
The CO, and the real cost of changing a use
Celina’s certificate of occupancy sheet requires a new CO for a new building, a remodeled or enlarged space, any new use or tenant, and even a new tenant name or owner. Utilities are released in the new tenant’s name once it’s issued, and the Post Office wants a current CO before it delivers mail.
If you’re converting space, read this line twice:
“For example, a building that was designed and constructed as an office or a retail use will typically not comply with city requirements for a restaurant, daycare facility or church.”
From the City of Celina’s certificate of occupancy information sheet.
The sheet adds that a fire protection system may be required and could be costly, and suggests taking plans to a plans examiner before you sign. A temporary CO is possible once Building and Fire approve every life safety item and only minor engineering or planning issues remain.
Celina’s 6,000 square foot sprinkler line
This local rule changes budgets. Celina’s fire code amendment requires sprinklers throughout any building of 6,000 square feet or more, any building enlarged to that size, and any existing building whose remodels, over any period of time, add up to 6,000 square feet. Fire walls don’t create separate buildings, and area is measured at the drip line, awnings included.
A speculative building with no known tenant gets sprinklers designed to Ordinary Hazard Group II. Downtown, the Downtown Code lets the Building Official modify the new-construction sprinkler requirement in Patio Commons.
Celina counts remodels cumulatively. Ask the landlord how much of the building has already been renovated before you sign the lease.
Fire systems run through the Fire Marshal’s Office. Most fire permits need a third-party plan review first, a State of Texas licensed contractor does the installation, and inspections requested through the MGO Connect portal before 3:30 p.m. are generally scheduled within two business days.
Restaurants, health review, and the state’s $50,000 line
Food service adds the city’s Health & Food Safety division, which reviews plans and runs unannounced inspections under the Texas Food Establishment Rules. Its plan submittal requirements ask for an equipment floor plan, finish schedules, a grease interceptor location, and indirect drain details. All refrigeration and cooking equipment, microwaves included, must be commercial grade. Our restaurant construction page covers food-service builds.
Texas adds one more check. Under TDLR’s accessibility rules, a project with a total estimated cost of $50,000 or more is registered and submitted for review, and smaller projects still have to meet the Texas Accessibility Standards.
Building near the square: the Downtown Code
Downtown has its own rulebook. Celina adopted its Downtown Code on May 11, 2021, with six districts: Patio Commons, The Bricks, The Verandas, Entertainment, Preston Streams, and Gateway East. Patio Commons is the gathering heart, with one- and two-story buildings at the right-of-way, ground floors at least 12 feet floor to floor, and shops below homes or offices.
What the code asks of a building:
- A Historic Texas style in neutral and earth tones
- Brick, stone, limited stucco, or fiber cement, with metal only as an accent
- Windows divided into multiple panes, so they don’t read as holes in the wall
- No internally lit plastic box signs, though individually lit letters are allowed
A 2023 addendum ties commercial exteriors to main street buildings of the 1890s through the 1930s, with higher scrutiny the closer you get to the original square. In the Historic District, any change needs a Certificate of Appropriateness. Drive-thrus are prohibited downtown, and Patio Commons is exempt from non-residential parking minimums.
There’s money on the table, too. The city’s Downtown Enhancement Programs cut building permit fees 100% for commercial work on the Historic Square and 75% elsewhere in the zone. A matching grant covers half the cost of facade, lighting, art, or seating work, up to $25,000 and subject to available funds, if it’s approved before work starts.
Remodeling a Celina home that’s barely broken in
The typical Celina house isn’t old. It’s builder grade. That changes the job.
Kitchens. The usual ask is more storage and a better work triangle, not a rescue. Moving or adding an island sink? Celina’s plumbing amendment calls for a loop vent with a foot vent below the floor, and the city’s inspection guide says no air admittance valves (Helpful Tips). On a slab, that means cutting concrete, so we lock the island layout before demolition. See kitchen remodeling.
Pantries. Plenty of builder pantries start with wire shelving. Swapping it for built-in shelving to the ceiling, an appliance counter, and a tile floor is a contained project you’ll use daily. New circuits go through the city’s residential trade permit.
Bathrooms. Celina’s amended residential code calls for blocking at one toilet and one tub or shower at grade level, so grab bars can go in later. It costs almost nothing while a wall is open. See bathroom remodeling.
Additions. The city’s addition and remodel packet is specific. A new roof can’t anchor to brick or other veneer. Adding onto a post-tension slab needs engineered foundation plans, and building on top of an existing slab needs an engineer’s letter. Any home over 6,000 square feet of conditioned space needs fire sprinklers, which can catch a big house that grows past the line. See home additions.
HOAs and downtown. If your community has architectural review, that approval is separate from the city permit, and we schedule it from day one. Near the square, the Downtown Code wants a faux-historic look drawn from 1890s to 1930s homes and lets existing homes expand with like materials.
If the kitchen, both baths, and the floors are all on your list, one project with one permit spares you from living through three remodels. That’s our whole-home remodeling practice.
Three Celina landmarks a local would show you
The square J. Fred Smith built
The storefronts at the top of this page face Celina’s historic square. In 1902 the town moved a mile north to meet the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas Railway, and residents did it by putting homes and businesses on rollers and pulling them across muddy fields. In 1911 J. Fred Smith built buildings around a new town square, which the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation credits with creating the first “shopping center” in the state. Celina became a Preserve America Community in August 2004. By 1915 it also had the county’s first road built only for automobiles, Celina Pike.
The Nelson Hotel building at 222 West Walnut
Richard Tinsley Peterman built it in 1914, about twelve years after the town moved to the rail line, with a grocery downstairs and rental space upstairs. Charlie Spergon Nelson’s family bought it in 1922, lived on the first floor, and ran a hotel for railroad travelers on the second. The hotel stayed in Nelson family hands until 1976 (Texas Historical Commission). Today the parapet still reads “Nelson Hotel Bldg. Est. 1914,” over new storefront glass and a steel canopy.
Grain storage on North Louisiana Drive
A block from the square, North Louisiana Drive still shows the farm town Celina was before the subdivisions: metal-sided buildings, a big grain tank, and the city’s water tower. The Downtown Code treats that as an asset. It asks new Entertainment District buildings to be “industrial chic” while staying Historic Texas in style, mixing brick, stone, metal, glass, and wood to complement the historic silos and railway features.
How a Celina project runs with MASACO
Every job follows the six steps on our process page.
- Understand. We tour the space and check what governs it: a Downtown Code district, an HOA, or an unfinished shell.
- Visualize. 3D renderings come first, pricing second. Downtown, they double as the elevations staff will want.
- Plan. A fixed-scope proposal broken out by trade, with allowances, third-party fire review, and TDLR registration where needed.
- Execute. One project manager, written photo updates every week, and inspections called in order before the 3:30 p.m. cutoff.
- Deliver. As-built drawings, permit and inspection records, the certificate of occupancy, and warranties in one close-out package.
- Support. One point of contact at MASACO after you move in.
Leasing a shell on Preston Road, renovating a storefront near the square, or ready to rip out the wire shelving in a Light Farms pantry? Book a consultation. We’ll drive up from Plano, walk it with you, and send back a design and a fixed-scope proposal priced trade by trade.
Building in Celina: what to know.
Celina had 1,861 residents in 2000 and an estimated 64,427 in July 2025, so almost every home and shopping center outside the brick square J. Fred Smith built in 1911 went up after 2000. New commercial space is spreading along Preston Road and toward the Dallas North Tollway extension, which NTTA plans to open to FM 428 in late 2027. The City of Celina Building Services Division at 112 North Colorado Street permits and inspects work under the 2024 international codes, in force since February 2026, plus a local rule that sprinklers any building of 6,000 square feet or more.
Celina neighborhoods and districts.
- Historic Downtown Square
- Patio Commons
- The Bricks
- Entertainment District
- Preston Streams
- Light Farms
- Mustang Lakes
- Legacy Hills
- Lilyana
- Preston Road (SH 289) corridor
- Dallas North Tollway corridor
- Collin County Outer Loop corridor (planned)
Celina on the map.
Open Celina, TX in Google Maps
Photo credits
- Celina, Texas.jpg by Nicolas Henderson from Coppell, Texas, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Light Farms Water Tower.jpg (cropped) by Michael.Rihani, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Celina 123.jpg (cropped) by Erod1997, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Celina, Texas (2013).jpg by Nicolas Henderson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
