Colleyville Boulevard New Restaurants and Northern Gateway Golf Plans

Driving south into Colleyville on SH 26, the corner at John McCain Road still looks much as Community Impact described it in 2018: "green, open fields, trees and a shopping center." Since then that frontage has seen a gas station denied, a land deal closed, a resort hotel designed and redesigned, and a pro golfer step in. It still has no building on it.

Meanwhile the leased storefronts farther down Colleyville Boulevard keep changing. An ice cream shop, a smoothie bar, a diagnostics clinic and an expanded art studio have all opened since July. On land the city controls, Colleyville takes its time on purpose. Private landlords leasing out existing space don't have to.

A front door the city decided to guard

In 2018, Community Impact described the northern gateway as the stretch of SH 26 from John McCain Road to Danielle Drive. The city's economic development director, Mark Wood, called it a blank canvas, not a redevelopment problem like the older gas stations and car washes at the southern entrance. In the same Community Impact report on Colleyville's gateways, he described the standard any pitch would face:

"I don't think it's an easy 'yes.' … Our job as staff from the very beginning is to keep the vision, get the projects to the best it can be for submittal so that when it does go to the governing bodies it is a good project."

That wasn't talk. In June 2017 the planning and zoning commission denied special-use permits for a RaceTrac near Bear Creek Spirits & Wine at the northern gateway. Commissioners said a gas station didn't match the comprehensive plan's vision for the property.

Next the city bought the land itself. Reports differ on when. A Star-Telegram account and one Community Impact story put the 15-acre front parcel in 2019. Another Community Impact story says the city bought 15 acres for $4.4 million and 22 acres for $4.1 million, both in 2020. Either way, Colleyville became the owner of its own front door. A developer who wanted the corner now had to negotiate with council directly, not with a private seller.

How the resort hotel stalled

The city's first buyer arrived in 2025. Community Impact covered each step, from the June 2025 letter of intent to the August 2025 sale to the November 2025 redesign:

1. June 4, 2025. Council approved a letter of intent for NuCiti Capital Partners to buy 22 acres for $9.85 million, with an option on 15 more. The concept called for 120 hotel rooms, two resort pools, a conference center, a retail village with restaurants and 26 rentable casitas.
2. Aug. 5, 2025. Council approved the sale of the 22 acres at SH 26 and John McCain Road. The plan added a rooftop restaurant and a parking garage. Wood, by then assistant city manager, told Community Impact the developer wanted "to work with the property, not against it," and called it "a beautiful piece of property with a creek running through it [and] some beautiful, mature trees."
3. Nov. 18, 2025. The concept changed to 140 rooms and 18 casitas. It now had a 10,000-square-foot conference center, a parking deck, an independent steakhouse and a Tex-Mex restaurant. The city expected a zoning change within 60 to 90 days.
4. April 10, 2026. A Community Impact development roundup still listed the hotel sale as waiting on zoning approval.

The purchase agreement set its own deadlines: a 120-day feasibility period, and a 420-day window for council to approve the site plan package before construction could start. The option on the adjoining 15 acres stays open through Dec. 31, 2028. Those terms kept the city in control of the timeline after the sale. Through the spring of 2026, that timeline didn't produce a zoning approval.

The handoff to a golfer

On Sept. 1, 2026, council voted unanimously to let NuCiti assign its purchase-and-sale agreement for the 22 acres and the 15-acre option to Lone Star Blackjack Oak LLC. Community Impact reported that the entity is sponsored by professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau. Mayor Bobby Lindamood said a hotel is no longer planned. Per the city documents cited in that report, the new concept is a par-3 golf course, a driving range and other commercial uses such as retail and restaurant space.

Wood said NuCiti plans to step away after the transfer and that nothing else in the development agreement changes. The same city staffer who wouldn't give the corner "an easy 'yes'" in 2018 is still on the file in 2026.

DeChambeau has backed a golf venue in this area before. D Magazine reported in July 2024 that he invested in Dallas-based UnderPar Life. Its first venture opened at Hawks Creek Golf Club just west of Fort Worth, and a second-venue deal followed for Horizon Golf Course in El Paso. D Magazine described the El Paso plan as a two-story, 12,000-square-foot facility with a 300-yard range, an instruction academy, a short-game area and food and beverage space. No public source ties the Colleyville project to UnderPar Life, and no public statement from DeChambeau about Colleyville has been found.

What hasn't happened yet

Wood said Lone Star Blackjack Oak planned to file a development submittal with the city by mid-October. As of Oct. 12, 2026, no filing, site plan, project name, construction start or opening date has been published. For now, the "par-3 and driving range" description is a land-use concept, not a design.

City spending on the corridor is also at the planning stage. Colleyville's draft capital improvement plan for FY 2026-27 totals $35.18 million. It includes $1.5 million for electricity in the SH 26 medians, and the final project list depends on budget adoption. Like the gateway, that line item sits on a public schedule set by votes.

The boulevard moves at a different speed

The city's corner has spent close to a decade without a building. Over the same few months of 2026, the privately leased centers along Colleyville Boulevard and nearby SH 121 have opened and closed businesses on ordinary retail timelines. Here is the status of each as of Oct. 12, 2026.

Several of these are worth knowing in more detail. Tick Tock Taco's locations page lists Colleyville as "Coming Late October 2026." Community Impact reported that its menu uses halal and organic ingredients. Little Diggers is an indoor sandbox of more than 1,200 square feet for children 7 and under. It has hundreds of construction-themed toys and two birthday party rooms, each with its own sandbox, according to Community Impact's August roundup.

Lucile's will be the second location of a Fort Worth restaurant, in the former Zafiros space. Lucile's serves lunch and dinner seven days a week and breakfast on weekends, with daily blackboard specials of fresh seafood and homemade soup. Lean Kitchen sells rotating monthly meal-prep menus of chicken, beef, turkey and seafood, for order-ahead pickup or grab-and-go.

Every opening and expansion on that list happened in a center that already exists, where a lease, a build-out and a sign are enough. None needed a council vote on a land sale, a zoning change for a 37-acre site or a feasibility window. That explains why a smoothie bar can open within a season while the corner at John McCain Road has gone through a denied gas station, a sale, two hotel concepts and a change of buyer in the same years.

Tick Tock Taco is targeting a late-October opening. Lone Star Blackjack Oak's submittal, once filed, would put a golf design for the northern gateway in front of the same planning and zoning process that turned down the RaceTrac in 2017.

Whatever ends up at SH 26 and John McCain Road will shape the drive into Colleyville from the north. The Pistana Group follows Colleyville's gateway decisions closely and includes them in how we present and price homes nearby. If you're thinking about what this corner could mean for your home, request a Premium Listing Consultation and we'll walk you through it.