Sherman is growing fast. The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 city estimates put the city at 43,693 people in its 2020 base and 52,417 by July 2025, up about 20 percent in five years. Chips are a big part of the story. Texas Instruments’ Sherman site is a potential $40 billion investment with plans for up to four connected 300-millimeter wafer fabs, and its first fab, SM1, went into production three and a half years after ground broke in May 2022.
Here’s where we stand, plainly. MASACO works out of Legacy Drive in Plano, roughly 47 miles and close to an hour south on US 75, and we haven’t built a project in Sherman yet. Our closest finished job is Cielo Beauty Bar in Celina, a 2,600-square-foot luxury salon we delivered in eight weeks. We don’t build fabs. We build what comes after them: restaurant and shop finish-outs, offices and clinics, and remodels of the houses new employees buy.
Sherman is also old. It’s the Grayson County seat, moved to its present site in 1848 and incorporated in 1858, so a job here can mean 19th century brick on the courthouse square as easily as a fresh suite on the highway.
US 75 and Texoma Parkway: where Sherman tenants lease
The city’s own history page names the crossroads of US 75 and US 82 as the anchor of its road network, and that’s where the retail went. On the north side, Sherman Town Center lines US 75, with Target on Town Center Road. Sherman Commons sits along North US 75 too, and the south end of town has new shell buildings of its own.
Texas makes this easy to read. Under TDLR’s accessibility rules, any project costing $50,000 or more gets registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for review, and those filings are public. A few recent Sherman ones show the range:
- A 2,004-square-foot Jersey Mike’s at Sherman Commons, registered in 2024 as a finish-out of a new retail shell strip center space.
- A 2,325-square-foot Chipotle at 3514 South Highway 75, a new tenant finish-out of a shell building built by others.
- Cowboy Chicken at 3811 North Highway 75, filed as a second generation finish-out for a restaurant.
- A 6,000-square-foot vacant suite at Sherman Town Center, divided into two spaces for future tenants in 2019 and 2020.
Texoma Parkway is the other commercial street, and its filings read differently. They’re renovations. At 5637 Texoma Parkway, Two Brothers Hibachi registered new lighting, floor finishes, wall coverings, and plumbing fixtures “at existing locations.” Jack in the Box at 2133 Texoma Parkway filed to renovate an existing restaurant too.
That phrase, at existing locations, is the whole case for a second generation lease. Keep the drains where they are and the budget stays put. Move a sink line across a slab and you’re paying to saw concrete.
Shell or somebody else’s restaurant?
A shell on South US 75 gives you a clean slab and nothing to fight, but you buy every wall, fixture, and duct. A former restaurant on Texoma Parkway may already have a hood, a grease interceptor, and restrooms, and each of those is either a gift or a liability depending on its age and size. We walk both kinds with you before you sign. Our tenant improvements and restaurant construction pages go deeper on scope.
Then there’s industry. GlobalWafers runs a 300-millimeter raw silicon wafer plant in Sherman, and in July 2026 Micron announced $500 million in financing support for it, according to a City of Sherman news release. Coherent broke ground on a $650 million expansion of its Sherman facility for what the city calls the world’s first 6-inch indium phosphide fab, expected to support 550 jobs at full production.
The west side is moving as well. The Sherman Economic Development Corporation says the new Sherman High School in west Sherman set off growth along the Heritage Parkway and FM 1417 corridor, now one of the city’s most active development areas.
Brick on the square, Heritage Row, and new ground
Downtown started under a tree. In 1848 the town was moved to a spot set by a huge pecan on what became the southeast part of the public square, and a 12-year-old named Julia Shannon got to name the streets: Mulberry, Pecan, Elm, Walnut, Cherry, Crockett, Houston, Jones, Rusk, Lamar, and Travis. By 1885 Dun and Bradstreet listed Sherman as the financial center of Texas. Two-story brick storefronts still line Travis, Crockett, and Lamar streets downtown.
Buildings that old change the job. In storefronts this age, upper floors have often sat empty for years, facades have been refaced more than once (one on Crockett Street wears a stucco front), and the electrical service, plumbing, and front step all predate what a modern tenant needs. And in Sherman the paperwork starts with the materials: the city’s permits required sheet says commercial remodels need an asbestos survey and a demolition permit, and even interior demolition for a remodel counts as demolition.
In a building this old, the asbestos survey comes before the design, not after it.
If the survey comes back positive, the city’s remodel checklist says those areas have to be remediated before the project moves forward. Plan for it.
The outside of these buildings is where the character lives. Restoring a downtown facade usually means cutting out failed mortar and repointing with a mortar softer than the old brick, rebuilding wood upper windows rather than swapping them, and putting a storefront back in the proportions of the original. Sherman reestablished its Main Street program in 2016 to tap the state program’s design help, grant access, and downtown planning, and the Texas Main Street Program at the Texas Historical Commission offers technical help with design to its member cities. Ask about it before you draw anything.
The houses: Victorian, mid century, and brand new
Sherman’s housing comes in layers, and some of it goes back to the 1890s. The Captain N. A. Birge House at 727 West Birge Street, a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, was built in 1896 right after the great Sherman tornado destroyed an 1877 building on the same lot. Along South Crockett Street, the 300 to 1300 blocks form the Heritage Row Historical District, which City Council created on January 3, 1978.
The city had 15,713 people in 1930 and 20,150 in 1950, then added plants from IBM, Johnson and Johnson, Texas Instruments, and Texoma Inc. in the 1950s and 1960s. The Census Bureau’s year built estimates show the result: about half of Sherman’s 19,846 housing units went up before 1980, and the 1960s alone account for 3,041, more than any other decade. Another 1,488 date to 1939 or earlier.
Now the edges are filling in. The city’s planned development districts include Pecan Grove Estates, about 254 acres between US 75 and Texoma Parkway south of Fallon Drive, and Post Oak Village, about 212 acres with roughly 103 acres set aside for single-family homes. Joiner Ranch, Aspen Park, and Greenway are on that list too.
Permits, the CO, and county health review in Sherman
Building permits and certificates of occupancy come from Development Services at 317 South Travis Street, and you apply through the city’s Self Service Portal, which moved to new permitting software on March 31, 2025. Sherman adopted the 2021 ICC codes on February 5, 2024, along with the 2023 National Electrical Code. If your architect last drew for a city on a different code edition, have the drawings checked against Sherman’s set before you submit.
Every contractor working in the city has to register with Development Services, state-licensed trades included. For a commercial remodel, the checklist asks for a detailed plan of the work, a Texas Accessibility registration number on any project over $50,000, Planning and Zoning Commission site plan approval if the building footprint changes, and the electrical, plumbing, and mechanical contractors validated on a single permit.
The comprehensive fee schedule, revised March 3, 2025, prices a commercial remodel at $0.50 per square foot and a CO permit at $75. It also charges $250 on top of the permit fee for work done before the permit is issued. Reinspections climb from $75 to $100 to $125.
When Sherman wants a new CO
“A CO permit is required for any non-residential use that has a change of ownership or change in lessee.”
From the City of Sherman’s permits required sheet.
New owner, new tenant, new use: new CO. That includes buying an existing business that changes nothing else.
The fire marshal’s short list
The Fire Marshal’s Office reviews fire protection system plans and enforces the 2021 International Fire Code. It takes electronic submittals only, wants plans and permits on site whenever work is underway or being inspected, and schedules inspections Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a fee for anything after hours. Its top 10 fire code violations read like an opening day checklist: exit signs and emergency lights that work, no extra locks on exit doors, storage kept 24 inches below the ceiling (18 inches with sprinklers), maintained extinguishers, and a correct certificate of occupancy.
Restaurants answer to Grayson County
Food permits don’t come from City Hall. The Grayson County Health Department’s Environmental Health Division, at 205 North Houston Avenue in Denison, handles them. Its checklist for opening a food establishment asks for an application, a risk assessment, a detailed menu, and plans drawn to scale showing equipment, sinks, coolers, restrooms, and the dumpster, with a $200 initial inspection fee. When construction is finished you call for a pre-operational inspection with 72 hours’ notice, and no food, drinks, or single-use items go into the building until the permit is released. Since September 1, 2025, annual permits are priced by risk, from $250 for low risk to $550 for a full-service restaurant.
The city adds one more layer. Its fats, oil, grease and sediment program regulates about 260 businesses, restaurants among them, so the grease interceptor is a sewer question as much as a health one.
Remodeling Sherman houses, from Heritage Row to new builds
Older brick houses near downtown hold their value in the details, and the bathroom is where those details either survive or get lost. A period restoration keeps the clawfoot tub, puts back black and white hexagon floor tile and a subway tile wainscot, and hides new supply lines and drains behind the old look. A cast iron tub full of water is heavy, so we check the floor framing under it first.
Sherman’s permit list is broader than people expect. It calls out every exhaust vent, bathroom ventilation fans included, plus water heater replacements and any new or replaced outlet, switch, or light fixture. Residential remodels and additions that involve new framing or mechanical, electrical, or plumbing work need a building permit, and painting or new flooring doesn’t. Our bathroom remodeling page covers the full scope.
On Heritage Row, the district guide draws a clear line. Interior projects, landscaping, and routine mechanical, electrical, or plumbing maintenance skip the Historic Preservation Board. Exterior repairs that replace original features, additions, new fencing, exterior paint, and demolition need a Certificate of Appropriateness first. The Heritage Row page notes the city cut the board’s special called meeting fee from $500 to $75 in March 2025.
So a new bath inside a South Crockett Street house is a building permit. A rear addition is a building permit and a board hearing.
In the 1950s and 1960s ranch houses, the kitchen is usually the room that needs the most: closed off, short on counter, and wired for a different era. Kitchen remodeling there often means opening a wall, and we bring in an engineer if it carries load. When the kitchen, baths, and floors all need work, a whole-home remodel under one permit and one schedule beats three separate jobs.
Three Sherman landmarks locals know
Grayson County Courthouse
The current courthouse went up in 1936. It replaced a building that a lynch mob burned on May 9, 1930, a day the city’s own history calls one of the most tragic in Sherman’s past.
Austin College and Sherman Hall
Presbyterian missionary Daniel Baker founded Austin College in Huntsville in 1849, and it moved to Sherman in 1876. The college calls itself the oldest institution of higher education in Texas still operating under its original name and charter. Sherman Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, got under way in 1914 after Sherman residents donated $50,000 to build it.
The Municipal Building and Kidd-Key Auditorium
Kidd-Key College, once a major music conservatory, closed on May 31, 1935. The city bought the property in 1937 for $40,000 and opened the Municipal Building there in 1938. The words Kidd-Key Auditorium still run across its front, just below the carved Municipal Building name.
How we’d run your Sherman project from Plano
Distance changes how a job has to be managed, so here’s the plan, following our six-step process. We drive up and walk the space with you first, looking for the Sherman specifics: asbestos survey needs, an old grease interceptor, a front step that fails accessibility. You see 3D renderings before we price anything. The proposal is fixed scope, organized by trade, with every allowance written out.
During construction one project manager owns the job, and you get a written photo update every week, which matters more when our office is an hour away. We file with Development Services and coordinate the fire marshal and, for food uses, the county health review. At the end you get a close-out package with as-builts, permits, inspection records, the CO, and warranties. After that, we stay reachable.
Leasing a shell on South US 75, taking over a restaurant on Texoma Parkway, restoring a storefront on Travis Street, or fixing up a house near Heritage Row? Book a consultation. We’ll come up to Sherman, walk it with you, and hand you a plan you can hold us to.
Building in Sherman: what to know.
Sherman, the Grayson County seat, grew from 43,693 residents in 2020 to 52,417 in 2025 while Texas Instruments, GlobalWafers, and Coherent built or expanded chip and wafer plants in the city. New restaurant and retail suites cluster along US 75, while the courthouse square and the Heritage Row Historical District on South Crockett Street hold the city's oldest brick storefronts and houses. Sherman Development Services at 317 South Travis Street issues building permits and certificates of occupancy under the 2021 international codes the city adopted in February 2024.
Sherman neighborhoods and districts.
- Downtown Sherman
- Heritage Row Historical District
- Sherman Town Center
- Sherman Commons
- Texoma Parkway corridor
- Heritage Parkway and FM 1417 corridor
- Austin College area
- Pecan Grove Estates
- Post Oak Village
- Bel Air Village
- Joiner Ranch
- Aspen Park
- Greenway
Sherman on the map.
Open Sherman, TX in Google Maps
Photo credits
- Sherman July 2016 28 (Travis Street).jpg by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Sherman July 2016 34 (Crockett Street).jpg by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Grayson county tx courthouse.jpg by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Austin College July 2016 09 (Sherman Hall).jpg by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Sherman July 2016 51 (Municipal Building).jpg by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
