What's New Around Preston Center And Preston Hollow Village This Summer

If you have driven Northwest Highway between Preston Road and the Tollway in the last six months, you have seen the neighborhood quietly finish a project it has been working on for years. The strip that most Preston Hollow residents used for a dry cleaner run and a Tom Thumb stop is turning into a place people actually linger. Cafés with morning lines. A rooftop bar under construction. Coworking floors leased before they open.

The changes are not evenly spread. They are concentrated at three intersections, and if you map them on top of each other, the pattern is unmistakable.

Preston Center is finishing a two-year pivot from errand strip to walkable food-and-work district, and the construction cones going up on Luther Lane this spring are the punctuation, not the interruption.

The tenant sheet at Preston Center reads differently than it did last summer

The most visible change is on Villanova Street, where Maman opened its first Texas location in the Plaza at Preston Center in the former Trova Wine + Market space at 4004 Villanova Street. The New York café brand is a familiar one to anyone who has walked SoHo, and the company has grown from a single Manhattan café to fifty locations across North America since 2014. What matters locally is not the pedigree. It is the hours. The café and patio are open daily through 6 p.m., serving coffee, pastries, and a menu of modern favorites and French classics, which turns a formerly quiet stretch of Villanova into a full-day sidewalk.

Across the parking field, a much larger arrival is coming online. The Canadian restaurant company CRAFT is making its U.S. debut at Dallas' Preston Center, through a partnership between founder PJ L'Heureux and Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi. The building at 5974 W. Northwest Highway is not a bistro replacement. The flagship CRAFT features 10,500 square feet designed with local firm ID Studio 4, a 360-degree bar in the center of the room, a rooftop patio, and one hundred beers on tap alongside cocktails, wine, and a globally-inspired menu. Read that footprint against what used to sit in that quadrant of Preston Center and the shift is obvious. The center did not add another restaurant. It added an evening anchor.

Preston Hollow Village did the same thing, quieter

Two miles east, Preston Hollow Village made a parallel move without the fanfare. The old Chido Taco Lounge space on Walnut Hill has become something more ambitious. Ella at 7949 Walnut Hill Lane opened as an intimate American bistro with modern comfort food in a refined setting, and the space shares a lounge with Customs Speakeasy. The kitchen and bar hires are the tell. Executive chef Kyle Farr was previously the executive sous chef at Michelin-recognized Sachet as well as executive chef at Boulevardier, and Julian Shaffer, recognized by the Michelin Guide last fall, joined as general manager and beverage director. That is not a taco-space-turned-taco-space. That is a building shifting audience.

A little further south, the Fernando's space has a new occupant that answers a question Preston Hollow has been asking for two years. Cantina la Rosa moved into the former Fernando's space in Preston Hollow, with David Tripplehorn Cash (co-owner of Goodwins) teaming up with first-time restaurateur Cameron Levine, Smoky Rose executive chef Rolando Garcia, and Smoky Rose co-owner Oscar Aroche, and it is officially open for lunch and dinner. The old Fernando's sign sitting empty was the neighborhood's most visible vacancy. It is filled, and the operators behind it are the same people who built one of East Dallas' most consistent rooms.

Luther Lane is the two-year asterisk

Here is the part that will actually change your commute. Construction on a Preston Center redevelopment called 8300 Douglas is slated to begin in March of 2026, with key players including Ramrock, Lincoln Property Co., HKS, and Willow Bridge Property Management. The scope is not small. Plans include a twelve-story, 300,000-square-foot office tower, a seventeen-story, 147-unit luxury residential tower, a 35,000-square-foot rooftop park, and 24,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and restaurant space. Construction began in March 2026, with the first completed phase of the project expected in late 2028.

Two and a half years is a long time to route around cones. What is worth understanding is the design intent, because it tells you what the block will feel like on the other side. The heart of activity will be focused on Luther Lane, with plans to activate that stretch of street with small-door restaurants and coffee shops that add to the existing Preston Center retail. Translation for residents: the Luther Lane corner you currently treat as a shortcut between Douglas and the post office is being rebuilt as the center's front porch.

The Hill gets a work anchor

The third piece sits a mile north. Kiln is planning Kiln Preston Hollow, opening Spring 2026 at The Hill, which slots a premium flexible workspace directly into a shopping center residents already visit for groceries and dinner. This matters because it changes the composition of who is at The Hill on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. Coworking members do not disappear at the end of the workday. They order lunch, they take three-o'clock coffee, they push retail traffic into an off-peak window that most centers cannot fill.

Combine Kiln at The Hill with Maman and CRAFT at Preston Center and the neighborhood has three new all-day drivers within a two-mile radius. None of them existed a year ago.

A resident's weekday loop, corner by corner

If you actually live here, the practical question is what to swap in and what to keep. Working from what is open right now or opening this year:

• Morning coffee that is not the same three options. Maman's Villanova patio is quiet before nine and full by ten. The pastry case is the differentiator.
• A weekday lunch that is not a chain. Ella at Preston Hollow Village is priced and paced for a midday hour, and the Customs Speakeasy connection means the same reservation extends into a drink after five.
• A Tex-Mex table for a group of eight. Cantina la Rosa at the old Fernando's is the answer to the "where do we go with visiting family" problem that has been open since Fernando's closed.
• An after-work room that holds more than a bar top. CRAFT's rooftop and 360-degree bar are built for the size of group that would previously drive to Uptown.
• A place to take a call between school pickup and dinner. Kiln at The Hill, once open, gives you an alternative to the kitchen table without a downtown drive.
• The stretch to avoid for the next two years. Luther Lane between Douglas and Westchester. The construction fencing goes up this spring.

What this actually changes

The easy read is that Preston Hollow got some new restaurants. The more accurate read is that the neighborhood's center of gravity is shifting from Preston Road as a drive-through corridor to Preston Center and The Hill as places you park once and stay. That is a structural change, not a menu change. Coffee shops that stay open through six, coworking that fills the midday, a rooftop that runs a Friday crowd, ground-floor retail designed around a walkable Luther Lane. Each of those independently would be minor. Together they are the reason 8300 Douglas broke ground this spring rather than five years from now. Demand for exactly this kind of density was already visible in the leasing.

The other thing worth naming honestly is what stays the same. Preston Hollow's residential streets, the mature canopy along Meaders and Deloache, the pace of Sunday morning on Walnut Hill east of the Tollway. None of that is affected by a coworking floor at The Hill. The reason the new tenants work is that the neighborhood underneath them did not change.

If you have been thinking about how your own block fits into what the center is becoming, or whether the two-year construction window is a reason to move now or wait, that is exactly the kind of question worth talking through with someone who lives with the market daily. Reach out to Anthony Cedano for a market consultation or a complimentary home valuation, and we will map it against your street specifically rather than the neighborhood in the aggregate.