If you've eaten a taco from Torchy's on South Preston Road this spring, or grabbed a Hawaiian plate lunch at Mo' Bettahs, you've been parking a few pad sites down from where Celina's first Costco is targeting an August 26 grand opening. Most residents don't realize how close together these actually are. The restaurant row and the big-box wave read like two separate headlines because they landed months apart, but they're pieces of the same commercial buildout on the same stretch of road, just built in a different order.
That order is the part worth understanding if you live here, because it tells you what's about to change about your week and it isn't a Costco membership card.
Same Address Block, Two Speeds of Construction
South Preston Road between the low 3400s and the low 3500s has filled in fast since the start of the year. Torchy's Tacos opened its doors on April 15, giving away a year of free queso to the first 100 people in line, at 3505 S. Preston Road. Mo' Bettahs Hawaiian Style Food beat it by about a month, opening March 20 at the same address block, its first Celina location and 78th nationwide. Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe followed in April at 3515 South Preston, a drive-thru location operated by Jesse Murphy, who already runs the brand's McKinney store. Chipotle rounded things out with a Chipotlane at 3520 S. Preston, up and running by early July.
That is four restaurants opening inside about four months, all within a few hundred feet of each other. It felt like a restaurant boom because, from a sidewalk view, it was one. What it actually was: the small, fast-to-build outparcels of The Crossing at Moore Farms, the retail development anchoring that block, finishing first while the bigger tenants down the road were still under construction.
Anchor stores don't move at that pace. A 106,000-square-foot Home Depot or a Costco warehouse takes longer to permit, build, and staff than a drive-thru sandwich shop, so they land later even when they're going up on the same corridor around the same time. That's the retail sequencing anyone who's watched Preston Road for the last two years is now seeing play out. The pad sites went first. The anchors, a short drive south at Ownsby Parkway, are catching up this week.
What Actually Opens Between Now and Labor Day
Costco's Celina warehouse is targeting an August 26 opening on the southwest corner of Preston and Ownsby Parkway, inside the roughly 40-acre Village at Ownsby Farms development. Along with the grocery and general merchandise you'd expect, the location includes a pharmacy, an optical center, a hearing aid clinic, and a 15,000-square-foot fuel station with 10 pump stacks.
Directly across the intersection, Home Depot is working against a deadline the city actually put in writing. Under its incentive agreement with Celina City Council, the retailer was required to obtain its certificate of occupancy by mid-2026 and begin operating shortly after, in exchange for the city's economic development support. The store runs roughly 106,000 square feet with a 28,000-square-foot outdoor garden center, a dedicated Pro Desk, and a tool rental center, on the northwest corner of Ownsby and Preston at 3425 S. Preston Road.
Back up at the restaurant cluster, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Blaze Pizza are filling out the rest of The Crossing at Moore Farms, the same development that already includes Pickleman's. Academy Sports gives East Celina a full sporting goods store within a few minutes of neighborhoods that have been driving to Frisco or McKinney for cleats and equipment. Farther north near Frontier Parkway, Haraz Coffee House is opening this summer with traditional Yemeni drinks alongside espresso and matcha, a different kind of addition to the same general stretch of road.
What Changes for Someone Already Living Here
None of this is a reason to feel differently about Celina. It's a reason to expect your parking lot to look different starting this week.
If you've been driving down S. Preston for a Torchy's run all summer, that same road is about to carry a lot more traffic once Costco and Home Depot open a couple of miles south, especially on weekends. The corridor was never building toward separate destinations. It's one continuous retail spine, and the version you've experienced so far, casual dining and quick errands, was only the front half of it.
The more useful shift is what leaves your to-do list. A Saturday that used to mean a mulch run at one store and a rotisserie chicken pickup in a different city starts to collapse into one stop along the same road. Sporting goods, home improvement, warehouse groceries, and a fuel station are landing within a couple of miles of the same block that already had your Wednesday taco order covered. That's a meaningful change in how many separate trips a Celina household makes in an average week, even if it never shows up in a headline number.
The Square Isn't Competing With Any of This
None of the growth on South Preston touches what's happening on the historic Downtown Square, and that's worth sitting with for a second, because it means Celina isn't collapsing into one retail corridor. It's splitting into distinct places that do different jobs.
The Friday Night Market has kept its own rhythm on the Downtown Square, landing on the first Friday of the month, from 6 to 9 p.m., through the fall calendar. Old Celina Park has run its free Movie Night series through the summer, with a blow-up screen, bleacher and lawn seating, food trucks, and a kids zone that opens at 7 p.m. ahead of an 8:30 p.m. start, and residents are explicitly encouraged to grab takeout from one of the downtown restaurants before heading over. Neither of those depends on what opens at Preston and Ownsby. They're built around the Square and the park, not around retail square footage.
That's the actual shape of the city right now for anyone living in it. Preston Road is where your weekly errands are consolidating. The Square is where community life still happens on its own separate calendar. Knowing which one to expect for which need, rather than treating Celina as a single blur of construction and growth, is the difference between feeling like the city is changing under you and feeling like you know exactly where to go for what you need this week.
If You're Watching This Corridor for a Different Reason
Some of you reading this aren't just planning a Costco trip. You're watching how fast a corridor like Preston Road fills in because you're weighing whether Celina is where you want to put down roots, or whether a home near this kind of growth holds its value the way you'd expect. That's a longer conversation than a shopping center opening date, and it's one I have with clients moving into or around Celina regularly.
If you want to talk through what this kind of commercial growth actually means for a specific neighborhood or a home you're considering, reach out to Sandy Mozur. Let's Connect.
