Collin County has long been one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, not just Texas. Dallas suburbs like McKinney, Allen and Plano are fueling most of that growth. But the development frenzy has spilled even beyond those borders.
Princeton, for example, sits about 10 miles east of McKinney. According to the U.S. Census bureau, more than 20,000 people have moved to Princeton since 2010, quadrupling the population.
City leaders announced a decision on Monday to temporarily pause all new residential development to help Princeton’s infrastructure catch up. The initial moratorium will last 120 days, but the city’s mayor, Brianna Chacón, expects it will last longer than that.
Chacón spoke to the Texas Standard about the development challenges her city faces.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about some of the challenges your city is facing because of all this new development you’re seeing.
Brianna Chacón: It’s kind of a multifaceted problem. Biggest problems are going to be congested roadways. Our public safety has a huge strain on it just because of the amount of residents they have to serve. And then our infrastructure, so our water services.
I bet a lot of people move to that area to get away from some of the urban sprawl.
Initially, I believe so. I think people are moving out here now because a lot of people are excited about the growth.
But at the same time, well, now you’re talking about putting some kind of halt on development. Tell us more about that decision and how city leaders are thinking.
We just put a halt on our residential growth, not our commercial growth. We are still pro-development in that regard.
But we do need to take a pause, take a breather to make sure that we do have the infrastructure in place, that we do have the public safety services in place – that way we can better serve all of our residents here as we’re feeling those growing pains and those strains from the growth.
How long are you going to put a pause on this residential development?
So as of right now, it’s 120 days. That’s a state guideline, not a city guideline. That gives us time to assess the situation and make plans moving forward. After that, if we need to file an extension, we’ll do that as necessary. But initially it is 120 days.
So what are you going to do? I mean, because that’s a relatively short window here.
Right. So, again, 120 days will not solve all the problems. It just gives us enough time to analyze that problem and then create a better path moving forward. So we don’t anticipate it ending at 120 days. But again, it allows us to time to pause and build back a whole lot better than what we did.
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I think a lot of folks are now rethinking this idea that bigger is better, that this push for perpetual growth in many Texas cities maybe needs to be rethought.
Because you end up with a lot of back side problems that you now have to sort of clean up – they weren’t prepared; they didn’t have the the infrastructure in place to deal with all that push for growth. What do you think?
I fully agree with that. I think most of our Collin County cities are feeling that same exact strain. No one was prepared for the mass growth that we had. And it is too much. It is too quick, and no one was adequately prepared for this.
So what do you hear from longtime citizens about the community’s sudden growth? Is it changing your city in some deeper way?
It has rapidly changed our city, you know, just in the amount of time, honestly, that people have to spend on our roads. It’s caused a big area of contention for a lot of people. We’re still a commuter city. They have to leave to go to work. So a good majority of their day is sitting on Highway 380 versus being at home with their families.
So in a way, residents – people who’ve been there for a long time – are having to pay the price for all this growth, and now you’re hoping to do something about it.
How long will it take, do you think, to get things normalized, or is that even a possibility? Have things changed forever?
I do think that things have changed for forever. We’ll never be that little small town again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do something better moving forward.
You know, we’ve got partnerships with TxDOT – and fortunately, 380 is a TxDOT road – so however quick they can move, we do partner with them to help assist that.
But on the city side, we just passed our budget. We’ve got $17 million allocated towards our roads that we will actually be improving for our residents here.
