Colleyville isn’t adding people. The Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate puts the city at 25,727 residents, slightly below its 2020 base of 26,049, and the comprehensive plan caps density at 1.8 dwelling units per net acre. So most building here is rebuilding: kitchens and primary baths in houses from the 1980s and 1990s, additions on lots of 20,000 to 40,000 square feet, and storefronts on Colleyville Boulevard turning over from one tenant to the next.
We’re a commercial-first general contractor with a full residential practice, based on Legacy Drive in Plano. Colleyville is about 40 minutes southwest of us on the Sam Rayburn Tollway and SH 121, longer at rush hour. We don’t have a finished project in Colleyville yet. Our nearest is Pizza Twist in Irving, on the other side of DFW Airport: a 2,000-square-foot franchise restaurant we built out in six to eight weeks while it kept serving customers.
SH 26 and the shopping centers along it
State Highway 26, signed as Colleyville Boulevard, is the city’s commercial spine. A city fact sheet lists a traffic count of 35,198 on SH 26, and 26 of the 45 commercial properties on the city’s commercial bus tour carry a Colleyville Boulevard address.
Colleyville Downs sits at the southeast corner of SH 26 and Glade Road, 201,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. In 2013 it was carrying a vacant Albertsons. The city partnered with Centennial Real Estate on an $18 million redevelopment over 2013 and 2014, and Whole Foods opened there in July 2014, the first one in northeast Tarrant County.
Town Center Colleyville is a lifestyle center anchored by Market Street, with suites in the 5500 and 5600 blocks of the boulevard. State accessibility filings show its suites being rebuilt for new uses; one 2013 project there is described as a tenant finish-out from retail to restaurant. Baylor Scott & White runs an emergency hospital across from the Market Street center, at Colleyville Boulevard and Church Street.
The Village at Colleyville, around City Hall on Main Street and Village Lane, mixes shops, offices, and homes. It had a hard run through the SH 26 construction years and the pandemic office slump. The city’s economic development director reported retail and restaurant occupancy there climbing from 63% in January 2025 to 88.3% in January 2026.
Expect a second-generation suite
The city’s latest economic development update puts overall occupancy at 93%, retail occupancy at 96%, and median market rent at $27 a square foot. In a market that full, a bare first-generation shell is rare. What you’ll tour is somebody else’s build-out: their walls, ceiling grid, restrooms, and rooftop units.
That’s fine if the old use is close to yours. A retail box becoming a restaurant or a clinic usually needs new drain lines under the slab, and a restaurant adds a hood. That’s where budgets break. Before you price tenant improvements, get the ceiling opened.
Our restaurant construction page covers kitchens, hoods, and grease waste.
City grants that change the math
Colleyville pays businesses to improve the boulevard. The BEST program funds new signs, exterior paint, landscaping, and other exterior work, favoring projects with real SH 26 frontage and quality materials, and approval takes at least two City Council meetings. The SIGN program covers half of a new sign, up to $5,000. And SAFER matches up to $50,000 toward a fire sprinkler system in an existing commercial or mixed-use building.
Apply before work starts. The SIGN rules say outright that work already begun won’t be funded.
Brick, stone, and quiet colors on the boulevard
The commercial design standards in Chapter 6 of the Land Development Code apply to new commercial and institutional buildings, and to additions or alterations worth more than half the building’s improvement value on the certified tax roll. At least 90% of each exterior wall, not counting doors and windows, has to be clay-fired brick, native stone, cast stone, or a mix. Stucco and EIFS are capped at 10%. Concrete block and split-face block aren’t allowed at all. Colors have to be natural and subtle, brighter trim is limited to 10% of the wall, and when an existing commercial building is repainted, the new colors must follow the same rule.
Read that repainting clause before you commit to a bold brand color.
Colleyville’s 2024 fire code amendments require sprinklers in any building of 6,000 square feet or more, including an existing building enlarged past that size, and fire walls don’t divide it into separate buildings for that count. Adding or relocating more than 20 sprinkler heads in a tenant space takes sprinkler plans from a licensed fire protection contractor, reviewed by the Fire Marshal.
Permits, plan review, and the CO in Colleyville
Colleyville Building Inspections works out of City Hall at 100 Main Street, and everything runs through the city’s online CSS portal: contractor registration, applications, plan uploads, and inspection requests. Under Ordinance O-25-2317, adopted January 22, 2025, the city’s adopted codes became the 2024 International Codes and the 2023 National Electrical Code on April 1, 2025.
A commercial remodel submittal names the general contractor and MEP subcontractors, and adds a COMcheck energy report, an asbestos survey, and proof the plans went out for accessibility review. Under TDLR’s rules, projects with an estimated cost of $50,000 or more are registered and reviewed by the state; smaller ones still have to meet the Texas Accessibility Standards.
Work hours are tight: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday, holidays included, and no construction on Sundays.
The CO is its own review
“The application submittal for a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) is not an approval that allows for immediate occupancy.”
City of Colleyville, Certificate of Occupancy Guidelines
Colleyville wants a new CO for a new tenant, a change of use, a change of ownership, or even a new business name. The business owner signs the application and pays a $100 nonrefundable fee, with a business plan, a floor plan, a copy of the lease, and, for a retailer, a Texas sales and use tax permit showing a Colleyville, Texas 76034 address. Building Inspections, Planning, Fire, and Police each review it.
Building and fire inspections are done separately, not together. Once both pass, you can occupy; the printed certificate follows in about ten business days. One exception helps office tenants: individual offices leased as executive suites skip the new CO when no meter account changes, unless they’re medical offices. A clinic gets its own CO, every time.
Cafes, restaurants, and alcohol
Food answers to the county. Tarrant County Public Health regulates food establishments in Colleyville, and the city’s commercial guidelines tell applicants to send food-service plans straight to the county. Its plan review packet asks for the menu, equipment spec sheets, and a scaled floor plan showing plumbing, electrical, and ventilation.
Alcohol is a city question. Serving or selling it takes a Special Use Permit from the City Council, separate from the state TABC license, so get that hearing on the calendar before you sign a lease that depends on a bar. A grease duct and hood also get their own light test inspection, which has to pass before the above-ceiling inspection.
Big lots and old oaks: how Colleyville was built
Colleyville grew late, and it grew on big lots. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the city incorporated on January 10, 1956, had 1,491 residents in 1964, reached 12,724 by 1990, and 19,636 by 2000. In the early 1980s the town split over whether to hold out for expensive single-family homes on large lots or allow smaller lots and apartments. Today’s rules show which side carried the day. The current comprehensive plan, Destination Colleyville, still sets out to preserve high-quality, large lot, natural setting neighborhoods.
The zoning schedule makes that concrete. An R-20 lot must be at least 20,000 square feet, R-40 needs 40,000, and the RE estate district needs 80,000. Coverage limits run the other way: buildings can cover 30% of an R-20 lot but only 20% of an R-40 or RE lot, and total impervious surface tops out at 60% and 50%.
Many of those lots sit inside homeowners associations. The city’s GIS maps more than 90 HOA areas, from Woodland Hills and Highland Meadows to Ross Downs Estates, Montclair Parc, and Tara Plantation.
Put the growth curve and the zoning together and you get the usual Colleyville remodel: a house from somewhere between the 1970s and the 2000s, on a lot with room for a pool, a guest house, or a long single-story addition. And trees. Colleyville sits in the Eastern Cross Timbers, where post oak and blackjack oak once dominated, and it has regulated tree removal since 1993.
Home remodeling in Colleyville, room by room
Kitchens in big 1980s and 1990s houses are often large but broken up: a peninsula where an island belongs, a built-in desk nobody uses, soffits boxing in the upper cabinets. Opening that up is usually the heart of kitchen remodeling in a house like that. One local rule helps. Colleyville allows air admittance valves on island and bar sinks without the building official’s advance approval, which makes a new island sink one of the simpler plumbing moves in town.
Primary baths are the other room we’d expect to touch in a house that age. On a slab foundation, moving a drain means cutting concrete. Colleyville wants that pipe bedded in sand and sleeved where it passes under a footing, and the inspector won’t do a plumbing rough when the trench is too wet. Our bathroom remodeling page covers the rest of the scope.
When the kitchen, baths, floors, and lighting all need work, a whole-home remodel under one permit beats three separate jobs. Colleyville charges $1 per square foot of project area plus a $150 plan review fee for a remodel, with the trade permits included, and its stated goal is to finish residential plan review within seven working days of a complete submittal.
Additions run into coverage, drainage, and trees
Every addition is submitted with an impervious coverage worksheet that totals roof, driveway, patio, pool, and deck area against the lot. Patio covers count as additions. The city also wants a drainage plan showing that the new hard surface won’t push water onto your neighbors, and the City Engineer can require an engineered grading design.
Foundations over 500 square feet need an engineered design with a soils report.
One rule went away. Until June 6, 2023, Colleyville required a fire sprinkler system once a house reached 6,000 square feet of conditioned space or 7,500 square feet under roof. That requirement no longer applies to any residential work.
Trees can move the footprint. Homestead lots are exempt from most of the tree rules, but the city’s urban forestry chapter treats a house expanded by more than half its square footage as non-homestead. When an addition equals 50% or more of the existing footprint, at least half of the protected tree canopy outside the footprint plus a 10-foot buffer has to stay. Protected trees start at 6 inches in diameter at breast height, and mesquite, hackberry, and eastern redcedar don’t count.
The HOA comes last on paper but early on the calendar. The city’s own homeowners association page warns buyers that an association “will probably exercise control over how you use your property.” Plan home additions around that review from the first meeting.
Guest quarters and pool houses have limits
Big lots invite accessory buildings, and Colleyville caps them: three per lot, and together no more than 4% of the lot area, though lots of 80,000 square feet or more skip the three-building limit. An accessory dwelling can’t be larger than half the main house, the lot’s accessory allowance, or 1,200 square feet, whichever is smallest, and it can’t be rented. Anything bigger needs a Special Use Permit. Any accessory building within 10 feet of the house counts as attached and has to meet the main setbacks.
On a 20,000-square-foot lot, 4% is 800 square feet for every accessory building combined. That’s a pool house or a casita. Usually not both.
Three Colleyville landmarks worth knowing
The building at the top of this page is City Hall, at 100 Main Street in The Village. By its entrance, a 1983 state marker tells how Dr. L.H. Colley, a physician in the Bransford community, suggested the name Colleyville in 1914, when Walter G. Couch opened a grocery near the Colleys’ home.
The Bidault House on Glade Road
At 1416 Glade Road, French-born farmer and winemaker Anthlem Bidault built his house from molded concrete blocks, starting in 1905 and finishing six years later. During World War I, French soldiers stationed at Camp Bowie near Fort Worth were entertained there. The Texas Historical Commission made it a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1980.
That designation carries weight. An owner who wants to change a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark’s exterior has to notify the commission in writing at least 60 days ahead. And the material Bidault chose, concrete block, is now barred from new commercial facades in Colleyville.
Colleyville Heritage High School
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD opened Colleyville Heritage High School at 5401 Heritage Avenue in 1996, while the city was on its way from 12,724 residents to 19,636. It’s a National Blue Ribbon school.
St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church on John McCain Road
Eight families of Egyptian heritage started St. Mary in 1973. They bought five acres in Colleyville in 1984, broke ground in July 1985, and saw the church consecrated in 1989 as the first Coptic Orthodox church in DFW. Since 1995 it has been the parish seat of the Diocese of the Southern United States. The church’s history says a new church opened on the campus at 1110 John McCain Road in December 2010, beside the original sanctuary, now a chapel, and a Sunday school building followed in 2020. Four building phases on one site.
How a Colleyville project runs with MASACO
It starts with a walk-through of your house or suite. You see 3D renderings before we put a price on anything. Next comes a fixed-scope proposal organized by trade, with every allowance written out.
During construction you have one project manager and a written photo update each week. We file in the CSS portal, prepare the county health submittal and the TDLR registration where they apply, and schedule every inspection, which in Colleyville means requesting it online by 7 a.m. At handover you get a close-out package: as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO on commercial work, and warranties. After that, we’re still a phone call away. The full sequence is on our process page.
Colleyville is a 40-minute drive for us, and we plan site visits around that. Weighing a primary suite addition behind a Ross Downs house, a new kitchen in Woodland Hills, or a second-generation suite on Colleyville Boulevard? Book a consultation. We’ll meet you on site, look at the lot or the lease, and tell you plainly what the city will ask for.
Building in Colleyville: what to know.
Colleyville grew from 1,491 residents in 1964 to 19,636 in 2000, and its single family zoning districts require 15,000 to 80,000 square feet per lot, so most residential work here is remodeling, additions, and guest quarters on established homesites. Commercial space lines Colleyville Boulevard (SH 26), from Colleyville Downs at Glade Road to Town Center Colleyville and The Village at Colleyville around City Hall. Colleyville Building Inspections at 100 Main Street issues permits and certificates of occupancy under the 2024 international codes, in effect since April 1, 2025.
Colleyville neighborhoods and districts.
- Woodland Hills
- Highland Meadows
- Ross Downs Estates
- Montclair Parc
- Tara Plantation
- Saddlebrook
- Mill Creek
- Remington Park
- Woodbriar Estates
- Monticello
- The Village at Colleyville
- Colleyville Downs
- Town Center Colleyville
- Colleyville Boulevard (SH 26) corridor
Colleyville on the map.
Open Colleyville, TX in Google Maps
Photo credits
- Colleyville City Hall-July 2018.jpeg by Iheartdfw at English Wikipedia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Bidault House Colleyvile (1 of 1).jpg by Renelibrary, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Colleyville Heritage High School.jpg by IDidThisThing, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church, Colleyville TX 1 of 2.jpg by Joe Castleman (Gyrofrog), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
