General Contractor in Keller, TX

Keller is nearly full. The city’s 2021 Future Land Use Plan counted just 1.9 of its 18.4 square miles as vacant, and the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate of 46,078 residents sits a few hundred above the 45,758 it started the decade with. So building in Keller mostly means rebuilding. A second-generation suite on Keller Parkway. A primary bath in a house from the 1990s. An addition on a lot measured in acres.

That shifts what you need from a contractor: fewer blank shells, more existing walls, two zoning districts with their own design codes, and a permit office that checks for a recorded plat before it issues anything.

We’re a woman- and minority-owned general contractor on Legacy Drive in Plano, about 45 minutes east of Keller Town Hall. Commercial build-outs come first for us, and we run a full residential remodeling practice beside them. We haven’t finished a project in Keller yet. Our closest completed work is Pizza Twist in Irving, a 2,000-square-foot franchise restaurant we built out in six to eight weeks, phased around service hours so it never had to close.

Nearby in Irving: Pizza Twist, a 2,000 SF restaurant build-out MASACO completed while the restaurant stayed open.

Six roads carry most of Keller’s commerce

The land use plan names them: Keller Parkway (FM 1709), Main Street (US 377), Davis Boulevard (FM 1938), North Tarrant Parkway, Keller-Smithfield Road, and Rufe Snow Drive. Main Street traces most of the city’s western edge. Keller Parkway cuts across the middle, roughly splitting Keller into a north half and a south half.

The plan’s list of the biggest employers on those roads tells you what the buildings look like: Keller ISD, the City, Lowe’s, Sam’s Club, Home Depot, Kohl’s, and Kroger. Big boxes and grocery anchors ringed by strip centers and pad sites, with offices, medical offices among them, in between.

Keller Town Center

Town Center grew up on Keller Parkway around Town Hall. The city’s parks history records that the 101-acre Parks at Town Center opened in 2002 in conjunction with Keller Town Hall. The land use plan describes a stroll up Town Center Lane past a hotel, restaurants, and spas, with Arthouse residents watching events on the Town Hall lawn from their balconies.

The Town Center zoning district is strict about the shell. Walls other than glass must be all masonry, at least 75% of it brick, stone, or cast stone, with stucco only above 10 feet. Facades need a masonry pier every 25 feet with storefront glass between, roofs are standing-seam metal, stone, or tile, and buildings stop at two stories and 35 feet without council approval.

North Main Street and Center Stage

Keller’s newest commercial ground is on North Main, home to the city’s largest block of undeveloped land. Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone #2, which takes in most of what’s left, covers that corridor from the northern city limits to Wall Price-Keller Road, and the plan counts on revenue from Center Stage to help fund it. Realty Capital Management and Greystar broke ground on that 38-acre mixed-use project at US 377 and Mount Gilead Road in July 2021, with 24,000 square feet of commercial space in phase one, Community Impact reported. That’s the likeliest place in Keller to find a first-generation shell.

Parcels on the east side of US 377 from Johnson Road north to Marshall Ridge Parkway also fall under the US 377 North Overlay, which allows retail, office, restaurants without a drive-thru, and minor emergency clinics by right but puts a drive-thru restaurant behind a Specific Use Permit.

Everywhere else, assume second generation

With so little land left, most suites you’ll tour already hold a previous tenant’s walls, ceiling grid, restrooms, and rooftop units. That can save weeks, or hide a drain line in the wrong place for a cafe. Before we price tenant improvements in Keller, we open the ceiling, read the lease exhibit, and confirm who owns the mechanical equipment.

Old Town Keller plays by its own code

Keller began as a railroad townsite. The state historical marker near Bear Creek Road and US 377 records that druggist H.W. Wood set aside 40 acres on July 19, 1881, for a village named Athol, and that within a year it was renamed Keller for John C. Keller, a Texas & Pacific construction foreman.

Most of that townsite is now the Old Town Keller district, bounded by Johnson Road, the Union Pacific tracks, and Bear Creek. The code splits it in two. The Main Street Subdistrict, every lot fronting Main Street or Keller Parkway, is meant to read as continuous storefronts: deep, long, narrow shops of one or two stories with flat roofs. The Neighborhood Subdistrict behind it mixes Minimal Traditional houses with Tudor touches, bungalows, Craftsman houses, American Foursquares, and ranches.

Here’s what the district asks of a project:

• Site plan review at 25%. A change of use, or a commercial remodel costing 25% or more of the building’s Tarrant Appraisal District value, needs site plan approval with design review. So does a home addition past that line.
• A short materials list. Brick, stone, stucco, fiber cement, and concrete. Split-face block only in the bottom 3 feet. Awnings in metal or canvas, never vinyl or plastic. Colors in earth tones of red, tan, brown, and off-white.
• Brick sidewalks. That same 25% remodel means swapping a concrete Main Street sidewalk for brick pavers matching South Main’s.
• Hidden equipment. Walls must rise high enough to screen rooftop units from the street.

Monument signs are allowed only in the slice of the Main Street Subdistrict north of Keller Parkway.

In Old Town, the 25% threshold decides your schedule. Cross it and a site plan goes in before a permit does.

The city will help pay for the outside. Keller’s Facade Improvement Grant reimburses up to $10,000 for exterior work the public can see, such as storefronts, windows, awnings, lighting, and paint. Interiors don’t qualify, and the application has to be complete and verified before construction begins.

Homes from a 30-year wave, often on big lots

Keller grew in one long push. The Texas State Historical Association counts 13,683 residents in 1990 and 27,345 in 2000, and the land use plan puts 1980 under 5,000. The 2020 census counted 45,776. So the house you’d remodel here most likely went up between the mid 1980s and the late 2000s, and about 98% of Keller’s housing is detached single-family.

Lot size is the other half of the story. In the plan’s 2018 count of 15,460 residential lots, the most common size was 8,400 to 11,999 square feet. Yet lots of 36,000 square feet or more, under 15% of the count, covered more than half of all residential acreage, and 542 lots ran two acres or larger. Small horse and cattle farms still operate inside city limits.

Longhorns along North Tarrant Parkway in 2015. Keller’s land use plan still counts small cattle and horse farms inside the city.

Salon suites in Keller start with a Specific Use Permit

Planning a salon-suite building? Read Keller’s definitions before the listings. The code defines a spa as an establishment offering grooming, massage, or cosmetology services by people licensed in Texas. In March 2024 the City Council voted 4 to 2 for code changes that set that definition and sent future spa applicants through an SUP, and the Town Center chart proposed with them folded “barber shop or beauty salon” into spa.

Today a spa is an SUP use in the Neighborhood Service, Retail, Town Center, and Old Town Keller districts. Each SUP goes to the Planning and Zoning Commission and then City Council, with a public hearing at both. Ask Community Development how your concept is classified before you sign, and put both hearing dates in the schedule.

Then comes the build-out, mostly plumbing and power. Every studio needs a shampoo bowl with hot water and a drain, which in an older retail slab means saw-cut trenches. Each chair wants outlets for dryers and hot tools, the water heater has to keep up with a dozen bowls at once, and the corridor needs exit signs and emergency lights for the fire inspection.

Illustrative: a salon-suites corridor of private studios, each with a styling chair, mirror, and shampoo bowl.

We’ve built that kind of space. At Cielo Beauty Bar in Celina we delivered a 2,600 SF salon in eight weeks with wash-station plumbing, custom lighting, and high-end finishes inside a controlled budget. Our retail and salon build-out page covers how we plan plumbing and power before framing.

MASACO’s project in Celina: reception at Cielo Beauty Bar, a 2,600 SF salon built in 8 weeks.

Permits, plats, and the CO at Keller Town Hall

Building Services works from Town Hall at 1100 Bear Creek Parkway, Monday through Thursday. It’s closed Fridays, so a Friday inspection request has to be in by noon Thursday. Since June 17, 2024, applications, plan review, contractor registration, and payments all run through one online system. No paper. The adopted codes are the 2021 International Codes, the 2018 energy code, and the 2020 National Electrical Code, in effect since February 25, 2022.

Three permit rules catch people off guard:

1. The plat comes first. No building permit is issued until an approved final plat is filed, including for tracts that match their Tarrant Appraisal District records but were never formally platted. Older acreage is where this bites.
2. A contractor applying for you files a notarized owner affidavit.
3. Reviews go in the order received and don’t start until the application is complete and the fees are paid.

For a commercial remodel, Keller’s checklist asks for sealed drawings, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing plans with riser diagrams, a COMcheck energy report, and an asbestos survey for every renovation. A permit on a shell building means each tenant applies for its own CO later. If the project costs $50,000 or more, the drawings also go to TDLR for accessibility review.

The CO runs power, fire, then building

Keller requires a certificate of occupancy for a new or structurally altered building, a change of use classification, and a change in business, ownership, or management. On its own it costs $50; after a permitted remodel it’s free. The inspections go in order: a permanent power inspection if the electricity was disconnected, then the Fire Department, then Building Services. If the gas was off too, a master plumber pulls a permit and the line gets a pressure test at a minimum of 10 pounds.

The fire side has its own CO checklist: extinguishers within 75 feet of travel, 4-inch address numbers out front and on rear doors, meters, and AC disconnects, a suite key for the Knox box if the building has one, exit signs, emergency lighting, and a fully labeled panel. The city’s new business guide says to call Keller Fire-Rescue early: even an existing space may need sprinklers or alarms.

Restaurants and cafes answer to the county

Tarrant County Public Health regulates food establishments in Keller. The city sends food businesses to the county for a separate permit and inspections, then asks for proof of a passing health inspection before it issues the CO. Our restaurant construction page covers hoods, grease waste, and the equipment plan.

Keller’s construction hours run 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends, but inside work in an enclosed nonresidential building is exempt. That leaves room for night shifts on a finish-out beside a tenant that’s still open.

Remodeling a Keller house from the 1990s or 2000s

Houses from Keller’s growth years tend to need the same things. Kitchens built around a cooktop peninsula and honey oak cabinets. Primary bathrooms with a corner garden tub nobody uses. And the first rooms a guest sees, the two-story entry and the powder room, still in builder-grade tile and brass. When most of the house needs work, a whole-home remodel under one permit beats four jobs.

Keller’s remodel and addition checklist asks for elevations and a roof plan showing proposed materials, a floor plan, and an electrical plan. New conditioned space adds the city’s energy compliance path form at submittal and a compliance certificate before the final can be scheduled. And when a major remodel touches the water supply, Public Works must complete a customer service inspection before the final.

Illustrative: a powder room and front entry refresh in a two-story home of the kind built across Keller in the 2000s.

Additions on big lots

Acreage invites home additions, and Keller’s requirements scale with size. The site plan lists the square footage of every hard surface. At 400 square feet an addition needs an engineered foundation plan and a sealed letter stating it was designed to the 2021 residential code for that site’s soil. At 500 square feet it also needs a grading plan from a licensed engineer. And taking down any tree requires a permit.

In the SF-36 district, the zone written for semi-rural lots of 36,000 square feet and up, main buildings can cover 30% of the lot and all buildings, drives, and parking together 50%. You get two detached accessory buildings, and one over 1,200 square feet needs an SUP. A guest house or in-law quarters takes an SUP and at least 1.5 acres.

The two-car garage on an SF-36 lot has to stay a garage. Keller’s code bars converting it to living space, so plan the bonus room somewhere else.

Three Keller landmarks locals give directions by

Keller Town Hall and The Parks at Town Center

The photo at the top of this page looks across a lake at Town Hall, home to Building Services, Community Development, and Economic Development. The park and the building opened together in 2002, and the lawn hosts Town Center’s year-round community events.

The Rock Gym

The Civil Works Administration built the Keller Recreation Center, known as the Rock Gym, in 1933 and 1934 from native sandstone and petrified wood for $16,000, according to the Living New Deal. It held two basketball courts, a stage, and a fireplace for heat. Bonds in 1992 and 1995 put $3.2 million into renovating it and the elementary school beside it. That campus is now the Keller ISD Education Center, at Keller Parkway and College Street, where Keller’s school has stood since 1898, per the city’s history.

The Rock Gym, built of sandstone and petrified wood by the Civil Works Administration in 1933 and 1934.

The old water tower and Veterans Memorial Park

At the northeast corner of Main Street and Keller Parkway, the old water tower stands over Keller Veterans Memorial Park. The memorial, dedicated on November 8, 2008, lists known Keller veterans on seven granite pillars under Darrel Davis’s eagle sculpture, Protector of Freedom, according to a Texas House resolution.

The old water tower at Main Street and Keller Parkway, beside the Keller Veterans Memorial.

How a Keller project runs with MASACO

Every job follows the same process. We walk the suite or house with you and pull the plat, zoning, and any overlay. You see 3D renderings before we price anything, then a fixed-scope proposal organized by trade with allowances written out. One project manager runs construction and sends written photo updates weekly. At handover you get as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO on commercial work, and warranties. And we stay reachable after that.

We’re led by Sara Bannat, Founder and CEO, and Mahmoud Abu Saad, COO, and we’re a Goldman Sachs Preferred Vendor. Weighing a salon-suite lease in Town Center, a storefront in Old Town, or an addition on a Marshall Ridge or Saddlebrook Estates lot? Book a consultation. Bring the lease, the survey, or the plat, and we’ll tell you plainly what Keller will ask for.

Building in Keller: what to know.

Keller went from fewer than 5,000 residents in 1980 to 45,776 at the 2020 census, and its 2021 land use plan found barely a tenth of the city still vacant, so most work here is remodeling homes from the 1980s to the 2000s, adding onto lots of an acre or more, and refitting second-generation suites along Keller Parkway (FM 1709) and Main Street (US 377). Old Town Keller and Keller Town Center each carry their own design rules. Building Services at Keller Town Hall issues permits and certificates of occupancy under the 2021 International Codes and is closed on Fridays.

Keller neighborhoods and districts.

• Old Town Keller
• Keller Town Center
• Keller Center Stage
• Marshall Ridge
• Saddlebrook Estates
• Overton Ridge
• Lakes of Highland Oaks
• Bourland Oaks
• Meadows at Bear Creek
• Samantha Springs Estates
• Willis Coves
• Chase Oaks

Keller on the map.

Open Keller, TX in Google Maps