North Richland Hills is close to built out. The city’s Vision2030 land use plan counted 819 acres of vacant land left, about 7 percent of the city, and it was blunt about the rest: many major commercial corridors were developed between 1960 and 1990, before NRH had real standards for architecture, driveways, parking lots, or landscaping. So most commercial projects here start inside a building somebody else put up. A 1970s strip-center suite on Davis Boulevard. A former big box on Airport Freeway. A new shell at City Point, where North Hills Mall stood.
Houses follow the same pattern. The Census Bureau’s survey estimates put about a quarter of the city’s homes in the 1960s and 1970s and more than a fifth in the 1980s. That’s a lot of original floor plans and formal rooms nobody uses, in a city of 70,843 people by the bureau’s July 2025 estimate.
We’re MASACO Construction, a woman- and minority-owned general contractor on Legacy Drive in Plano, roughly 45 minutes from NRH City Hall. Commercial interiors come first, with a full home remodeling practice beside them. We haven’t completed a project inside North Richland Hills yet. Our nearest case study 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.
Boulevard 26, Loop 820, and Davis: where NRH does business
The Texas State Historical Association places the city on State Highways 26 and 183 and Loop 820, eight miles west of DFW Airport and eight miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth. Davis Boulevard and Rufe Snow Drive run north to south through it.
Boulevard 26 and City Point
Boulevard 26 is the old Grapevine Highway, and the land use plan calls its stretch south of Loop 820 “once a regional draw for Northeast Tarrant County.” The draw was North Hills Mall. It closed in 2004, was demolished in 2007, and in 2016 the city opened its new City Hall on part of the site, according to the city’s page answering residents’ questions.
The rest of the old mall land is City Point, a 52-acre development wrapped around City Hall, with 60,000 square feet of commercial space planned along City Point Drive between City Hall and the boulevard. Ground broke on that first commercial phase in May 2023. Lease there and you’re likely looking at true first-generation space: a slab, a storefront, and utility stubs.
Next door is the 176-bed Medical City North Hills hospital. In 2021 an investor bought a 39-year-old, 15,000-square-foot Class B office building at 4109 City Point Drive for its closeness to City Point and the hospital, then gave it a new facade, roof, and electrical system.
Loop 820 and Airport Freeway
The North Tarrant Express project widened Northeast Loop 820, and buildings along it keep getting second lives. For more than 40 years, 7301 NE Loop 820 was the city’s municipal complex. It was sold in 2019, and Platinum Music Complex moved into the 78,000-square-foot building, turning the council chambers into a performance stage, the offices into more than 100 rehearsal rooms, and the old jail into a film set.
On Airport Freeway, Malibu Jack’s converted a former At Home store at 8651 Airport Freeway into a 137,000-square-foot indoor theme park in 2025.
Davis Boulevard and the EZ Streets zone
The city’s EZ Streets program covers Davis Boulevard from Smithfield Road to Loop 820 and Boulevard 26 from Harwood Road to Loop 820. Both roads carry more than 30,000 cars a day, and the city describes the zone as the engine of its growth in the 1970s and 80s that “has now matured.” Qualifying projects, including tenants with landlord approval, can get faster reviews, reduced fees, and grants for exterior work.
Money is moving in. At Davis Boulevard and Lola Drive, a restaurant park announced in July 2025 pairs two full-service restaurants of 4,000 to 5,000 square feet each around a one-acre backyard. Farther north, TxDOT is building raised medians on Davis Boulevard from March 2026 to mid-2027, per the city’s street projects page, so check how customers will turn in before you sign there.
The two rail districts
Two of TEXRail’s eight stations are inside the city, the economic development office notes: Iron Horse, just north of Loop 820 and west of Rufe Snow Drive, and Smithfield, northeast of Davis and Mid-Cities Boulevard. Service started at the beginning of 2019. The city wrote a transit-oriented development code for both station areas in 2009 and revised it in 2013, so a storefront there has to satisfy that code as well as the landlord.
Second-generation suites and what a new use triggers
Most suites you’ll tour in NRH come with someone else’s walls, ceiling grid, restrooms, and rooftop units. That can save weeks, or hide a problem that appears only because your business differs from the last one.
The city’s 2024 fire code amendments say it plainly: no building or lease space may change use types without meeting all requirements of the code. The same amendments require sprinklers throughout new buildings of 6,000 square feet or more and existing buildings enlarged to that size, and fire walls don’t split one building into two for that count. The owner of Patriotic Pig, a barbecue restaurant on Rufe Snow Drive, told the city in 2025 that it couldn’t expand its dining room or add a patio without installing a sprinkler system throughout the entire building.
Call the fire marshal’s office about your use before you sign the lease, not after the drawings are done.
Example: a dance studio in a retail suite
Dance studios are a common second life for a strip-center suite. The finish-out comes down to three things.
- The floor. A sprung wood floor raises the finished surface a few inches, creating a step at the storefront door and the restroom that still has to be accessible. We design that transition rather than improvise it.
- The walls. A mirror wall needs solid backing, mechanical clips, and a new spot for the outlets and thermostat that were there. Barres carry real loads, so blocking goes between the studs before drywall.
- The noise. In an older center, the wall between suites sometimes stops at the ceiling grid instead of the roof deck. We check before pricing, then extend and insulate it and hang an acoustic ceiling so the neighbors don’t hear your evening class.
A room full of dancers also loads the rooftop unit far harder than a clothing store did, so we check its capacity early. At $50,000 or more, the project must be registered with TDLR for accessibility review; below that, it still has to meet the Texas Accessibility Standards.
We’ve built rooms like this. At Calibration Brain & Body in Frisco, we converted 4,250 square feet into a wellness and media studio on an expedited five-week schedule, with a podcast studio, acoustic panels, a custom front desk, and a water filtration fountain. Our tenant improvements and retail and salon build-outs pages cover how we scope suites like these.
NRH permits, inspections, and the certificate of occupancy
Permits start in one office. The Building Inspection Department, on the first floor of City Hall at 4301 City Point Drive, issues permits and inspects new construction, additions, and remodels for homes and businesses. It enforces the 2024 International Codes and the 2023 National Electrical Code, with local amendments in Chapter 98 of the city code.
It’s paperless: plans dropped off or mailed in can’t be accepted. A contractor new to NRH needs a business license application approved in the e-portal before pulling a first permit. Depending on the job, Building Inspections, the Fire Department, Engineering, and Public Works may all review the plans, and the city’s CO instructions estimate about 15 business days for commercial review.
The CO comes last, and fire comes before building
The permit information page requires a certificate of occupancy for every new business, a change in use, a change in business name, and a change in owner. Alter anything structural, electrical, plumbing, or mechanical in a commercial space and you’ll need a commercial remodel permit first.
For the CO application, you’ll upload a floor plan, the owner’s or on-site agent’s Texas driver’s license, and an original Texas sales tax permit listing an NRH address in ZIP code 76180, 76182, 76117, or 76053. You’ll also sign a temporary power letter; if the power is off, the city does a walk-through of the electrical system and then has Oncor energize the space for 30 days.
Then the order matters:
- Fire inspection. Must be completed and approved before you can even request the building inspection.
- Food service approval, if you serve food.
- Building inspection. Then the CO issues.
The city lists what commonly delays a CO, and some of it isn’t inside the suite at all: faded parking lot striping, exposed wiring, extension cords used as permanent wiring, and burned-out exit lights. And where only one exit is required, a sign by the front door reading “This door to remain unlocked during business hours” in letters at least an inch tall lets that door skip panic hardware.
In North Richland Hills, the fire marshal signs off before the building inspector. Book that inspection first.
Restaurants and cafes answer to NRH Consumer Health
NRH runs its own health department. The Consumer Health Division’s process for opening a food establishment says no construction starts until plan review is approved, and it spells out rules that shape the drawings: hot water at every sink reaching 100 to 120 degrees within 20 seconds, a grease trap located outside the building when one is required, and separate prep sinks if you cut vegetables or handle raw meat. Painted concrete floors aren’t allowed in food areas.
The Consumer Health CO checklist adds the finish line: no food may come into the building until Consumer Health issues a Green Tag, and you should call for a preliminary walk-through one to two weeks before your planned opening.
Remodeling a restaurant that’s already open? The division’s construction and food safety guide says you need the health inspector’s approval to stay open during construction, and you may be limited to a shorter menu or drive-thru service. That’s familiar ground. At Pizza Twist, we installed a full kitchen and utility connections while the restaurant kept serving, phasing the work around its hours. Our restaurant construction page goes deeper on hoods, grease, and equipment layouts.
One more local rule: Section 98-61 of the city code bars outdoor construction overnight, on Sundays, and on six named holidays, with written appeals to the building official.
Remodeling NRH houses from the 1960s and 1970s
The city’s history page starts with a dairy farm. In 1952 Clarence Jones began subdividing his 268-acre farm around what’s now Cummings Drive, and in 1953 those 268 acres and 500 residents incorporated as North Richland Hills. The population was 8,662 in 1960, 16,514 in 1970, and 30,592 by 1980. NRH grew north from there, so the oldest houses sit mostly in the south, around Loop 820. From 2015 through 2020 the city even paid 20 percent grants, up to $10,000, toward renovations of owner-occupied homes inside the loop.
Houses from those decades share habits. A closed-off kitchen. Small baths. And often a formal dining room off the entry that gets used twice a year. One fix we like: turn it into a library with floor-to-ceiling built-ins, a rolling ladder, and real lighting.
Here’s how NRH treats that project. The built-ins count as cabinets and trim, which need no permit. New circuits for picture lights or sconces do, since any electrical work needs one, and so does adding a wall to close in the room. A remodel application asks for a site plan, a scope of work, framing and trade plans, and before and after drawings showing every door and window with its sill height, U-factor, and solar heat gain rating. Open an exterior wall and the city wants energy code reports too.
Opening the kitchen to the family room is a kitchen remodeling job with structural questions, and when the kitchen, baths, floors, and lighting all need work, whole-home remodeling under one plan beats four separate jobs. And if a bath remodel turns up a slab leak, the city wants the plumber’s video or photo documentation of any repair that’s only reachable under the foundation.
Newer areas have their own rules. HomeTown, the Town Center district between Mid-Cities Boulevard and Boulevard 26, has run on its own regulating plan since 1999, last revised in 2015, so read it before planning exterior work there.
Smithfield and Iron Horse, two stops on the Cotton Belt
Historic Smithfield
Smithfield is older than the city around it. A Texas Historical Commission marker at the Smithfield Cemetery records that around 1876 Eli Smith donated part of his farmland to a community then called Zion, for a Methodist church and cemetery, and residents renamed the place Smithfield to honor him. On Main Street, the Smithfield Masonic Lodge put up its first building in 1876 and used it until 1981, according to the lodge’s marker. NRH had annexed Smithfield by 1960.
Today the TEXRail platform anchors the district. The city bought 3.52 acres straddling that 400-foot platform in 2021, and in 2025 it was negotiating to bring a Patriotic Pig chophouse and event center there. Main Street between Amundson Drive and Amundson Road was rebuilt in concrete and reopened in August 2026.
Iron Horse
The Iron Horse station sits off Iron Horse Boulevard, on land that grew up industrial. Prestige Ameritech, which the city calls the nation’s largest medical mask manufacturer, has long operated on Iron Horse Boulevard, and a $4.2 million federal grant paid for most of the reconstruction of the boulevard from York Street to Rufe Snow Drive, which broke ground in 2023. Around the station, townhomes and apartments now back up to the rail line.
Running an NRH project from walkthrough to CO
Every job follows our process. We walk the space with you, then show you 3D renderings before we put a number on anything. The proposal is fixed in scope, broken out by trade, with allowances written down where you still have choices. One project manager runs construction and sends written photo updates every week, and we book fire, health, and building inspections in the order NRH wants them. At handover you get as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO on commercial work, and warranties. After that, we still answer the phone.
MASACO is led by Sara Bannat, Founder and CEO, and Mahmoud Abu Saad, COO. Weighing a studio lease in a Davis Boulevard center, a shell at City Point, or a library where your 1970s dining room used to be? Book a consultation. Bring the lease or the floor plan, and we’ll tell you plainly what North Richland Hills will ask for.
Building in North Richland Hills: what to know.
North Richland Hills began as a 268-acre dairy farm incorporated in 1953 and reached 30,592 residents by 1980, so much of its housing and the commercial corridors along Davis Boulevard and Boulevard 26 date from the 1960s to the 1980s. New space is concentrated in a few places: City Point on the old North Hills Mall site, HomeTown, and the transit districts around the Smithfield and Iron Horse TEXRail stations. The city's Building Inspection Department at 4301 City Point Drive issues permits and certificates of occupancy under the 2024 International Codes, all filed through its online e-portal.
North Richland Hills neighborhoods and districts.
- HomeTown
- HomeTown Canal District
- Historic Smithfield
- Smithfield TOD
- Iron Horse TOD
- City Point
- Skyline Homes Addition
- Urban Trails
- Iron Horse Commons
- Boulevard 26 corridor
- Davis Boulevard corridor
- Rufe Snow Drive corridor
- Mid-Cities Boulevard
North Richland Hills on the map.
Open North Richland Hills, TX in Google Maps
Photo credits
- Trinity Metro Station NRH.jpg by DerekAyala27, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- NRH sign.png by Smarty9108, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- TEXRail NRH Smithfield 2018 - 4.jpg by Danazar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- TEXRail Iron Horse Nov 2019 1.jpg by Danazar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
