Can The Dallas Stars' $3B Arena District Draw More Companies To Plano?

In addition to professional hockey, the Dallas Stars’ planned $3B sports and entertainment district in Plano will bring an injection of new trophy office space to a city that hasn’t had any Class-A deliveries since 2024. 

Dallas-Fort Worth leads the U.S. in corporate relocations, and the influx of up to 2M SF of new office space from the redevelopment project is expected to help Plano land a bigger share of those moving companies, according to its director of economic development, Michael Talley. The city’s new development pipeline has been dry for years as Plano has been focused on its stable of existing corporate campuses ready for redevelopment.

The Stars’ 90-acre mixed-use district at the site of The Shops at Willow Bend mall will increase the city’s Class-A office supply by more than 7% and bring two hotels, nearly 1,000 residential units and more than 200K SF of retail, restaurants and entertainment options, the project’s developers said.

“If you have an opportunity to put something in place where these employees are going, where you can go grab a coffee, grab lunch, go to happy hour, grab dinner, all those things help,” Talley said. “I absolutely believe it will be another carrot for us to hang out there to attract companies.”

DFW's flight-to-quality trend provided office momentum throughout 2025 and pushed Class-A rents to record highs across the metro through the second quarter this year. Plano’s Class-A office asking rents are also rising, as the city lacks any freshly built inventory.

Plano's Office Market

The rise of Y’all Street has turned DFW into a financial hub and fueled demand for top-tier office space in Uptown Dallas, Preston Center and along the LBJ Freeway corridor near the Galleria. Those submarkets are among just a handful of areas in the metro with higher asking rents for Class-A space than the $46.86 per SF Plano landlords are getting, according to second-quarter data provided to Bisnow by Colliers.

Plano’s Class-A office rents rose nearly 5% year-over-year as the city's vacancy rate dropped from just under 22% to below 19% during the same time span. The city has seen positive net absorption for each of the past five years, and nearly 426K SF has been leased through the first half of 2026. 

Across the metro, Class-A office rents rose more than 3% year-over-year to a record high of $40.08 per SF in Q2, Cushman & Wakefield's latest market report showed. DFW’s increase was on par with the national average, as Class-A rents increased just over 3% to $43.76 per SF, according to Colliers’ Q2 U.S. office report. 

DFW's Class-A vacancy rate tightened 190 basis points to 25.5%. For the U.S., Class-A vacancy was down 50 bps year-over-year to 18% in Q2. 

The North Texas metro has absorbed more than 1.4M SF of Class-A office through the first half of the year, and Cushman & Wakefield expects that to continue at a steady clip through the end of the year. 

Just like Plano’s Class-A development pipeline has been empty for a few years, DFW as a whole has seen a lack of new construction in recent years because office projects fell out of favor with lenders. There was just over 2.2M SF of Class-A offices under construction across the metro during the second quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Without new construction, AT&T picked one of Plano’s existing corporate campuses, the 54-acre former home of Electronic Data Systems, for its new corporate headquarters earlier this year. 

The telecommunications titan isn’t the only technology company coming to town, as Samsung Electronics America announced plans in June to move its U.S. headquarters from New Jersey to Plano by the end of 2026. The company will relocate around 1,000 employees to its existing campus in Plano’s Legacy Central business park. 

Corporate Target

As those two moves illustrate, DFW has become a powerhouse in attracting corporate relocations. The region nabbed 11 headquarters moves last year, the most of any city in the country.

Plano has emerged as a prime target for corporate relocations because it has become a central part of the metro, according to Centennial founder Steven Levin, who bought the Willow Bend mall with Cawley Partners CEO Bill Cawley in 2022.

“You're not really in a northern suburb. You're really more central in the Metroplex,” Levin said. “You're along the tollway, which is clearly the best north-south artery, and so I think all of those things together have made it a very desirable location for businesses to locate.”

When Levin and Cawley first bought the site, they expected the redevelopment would only include around 500K SF of office space. The duo pitched the mall site to AT&T as a landing spot for its relocation, but the telecommunications giant couldn’t see past the mall, Cawley said.

“Once we demo the mall, everybody will see the opportunity,” Cawley said. “It's 90 acres at Park [Boulevard] and the tollway. It's a great location.”

They plan to start demolition of the enclosed mall in January. The Stars’ goal is to be playing in the new arena in 2031. 

Plano isn’t the only Collin County city seeking opportunities to attract corporate relocations. Frisco and McKinney have made waves in that realm in recent years, with Public Storage announcing plans to move its headquarters to the former in February.

All the municipalities in Collin County are competitive and experiencing economic development growth. But Plano is the most suburban and has the most urban amenities, according to Mark Masinter, Newmark’s chairman of global retail and an investor in the Willow Bend redevelopment. 

He praised Plano leadership’s ability to attract businesses, adding that he expects all the cities in Collin County to be attractive locations for future corporate relocations. 

“There's still plenty of room in Plano, and obviously there's a ton of room in Frisco for lots and lots of corporate relocations,” Masinter said.

Positioning Plano

The high-profile relocations of AT&T, the Stars and Samsung create a snowball effect for the city of Plano. 

“When companies make those moves and have those press releases, people start asking why, and we get more … interest in office space, industrial space, some of the redevelopment opportunities,” Talley said. “The pipeline of interested companies has only picked up with those announcements.”

However, that pipeline didn’t grow overnight. The city puts a lot of work into attracting relocations, as corporations look at things like quality of life, safety, the school district and the local park system, Talley said. 

Plano also approved a $15M incentive package for Centennial to help with the mall demolition and set up a city visitor’s center at the development. The city also established a tax increment reinvestment zone for the Willow Bend property to fund Plano’s up to $700M contribution toward construction. 

“Our job is to make sure they have the resources to succeed in the city,” Talley said. “When they're putting these types of investments into these properties, they want to get it right.”

With the visibility of the Stars and the project’s central location in the metro, Masinter said he believes the mixed-use district will be a gathering place for the entire region. 

Levin and Cawley have gone through several iterations of redevelopment plans for the Willow Bend site over the last few years, but they said the Stars will provide the kind of energy needed to build a premier sports and entertainment district. And it is going to include more office space than most people would expect, thanks to its location.

“It's the best mixed-use office site up north,” Cawley said.