Denton in many ways appears frozen in time compared with buzzy neighbors to the east such as Frisco and Plano. The downtown square is centered around a towering courthouse built in 1896. Just to the south, the tall silos of what’s now Morrison’s Corn-Kits have been operating for more than 130 years. The tallest building in the city is a Texas Woman’s University dormitory from the 1960s.
At the same time, there are signs of change all around. Construction workers walk in and out of a long-vacant theater on the square that’s being revived for concerts and events. A short drive from downtown will bring you to new industrial buildings and sprawling neighborhoods adding thousands of rooftops.
Denton County’s population jumped 18% between 2020 and 2025, from 906,422 to 1,077,214, according to North Central Texas Council of Governments estimates. As of January, the population sat at about 1.1 million. That kind of growth has attracted billions of dollars of investment, with even more on the way.
Regional planning leaders such as Michael Morris, director of transportation at the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said Denton County is positioned well for that growth. The county is located in the fastest-growing state in the U.S., on the edge of the fastest-growing region within the state. It neighbors Collin County, a major corporate hub and home to some of the fastest-growing cities in the country, as well as Tarrant County, home to the nation’s fastest-growing big city in Fort Worth.
Denton County benefits from immense infrastructure access, including the intersection of I-35 West and I-35 East, part of one of the busiest highway corridors in the United States. At the southern end of the county, real estate firm Hillwood continues to grow the 27,000-acre AllianceTexas development with more housing and industrial facilities.
“From a logistics standpoint, from a production and attraction standpoint, Denton County is in the crosshairs of tremendous economic development opportunity,” Morris said.
At the same time, managing that kind of change can be challenging. Government officials, business leaders and residents alike are all navigating how to usher prosperity to the region as growth encroaches from all sides.
Industrial muscle
Brian Hatmaker, president of Stulz USA, had a big decision to make for his booming business — where in North America to put a new factory to manufacture HVAC systems for data centers. He landed on Denton and opened a 200,000-square-foot facility at 431 Mingo Road in 2025, where the company now employs 270.
Inside the busy shop, employees do everything from wrangling parts for complex HVAC systems to pipefitting, electric work and assembly.
Denton was ideal, Hatmaker said, because of the strength of its labor market. Stulz needed entry-level assembly employees as well as electricians, accountants and people who knew how to run industrial operations. The universities in the area gave him confidence they could hire across many different positions.
“We knew that we could draw no matter what level of employee we needed, whether it was an hourly role, a low-skilled role, a semi-skilled role, a high-skilled role, more of a back-office position, engineering, even executive-level hires,” he said. “We knew that Denton was well positioned to be able to draw from all 360 degrees to get those people to our hiring process.”
The company is already planning to grow. Another 300,000-square-foot facility is in the works across the street, which should expand its workforce to more than 600 employees.
“We made some big bets in coming to Denton, and we feel good that they’re paying off,” he said.
For Brittany Sotelo, economic development director for Denton, Stulz represents the kind of employers she and her team are trying to attract. Sotelo highlighted other notable deals like was Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis’ decision to put a $280 million factory for cancer drugs in Denton, creating up to 150 jobs.
Denton County is home to about 137 million square feet of industrial space, with almost 12 million more square feet under construction, according to data from CoStar Group. About 37% of all existing space was delivered in the past six years — 50.7 million square feet. The Alliance submarket is the No. 1 submarket in the country for industrial construction. High levels of activity can also be seen in northern Lewisville and in Denton, according to Cody Gibbs, director of market analytics for CoStar.
“Denton County has a lot going on for it from an industrial standpoint,” he said in an email. “The positioning of the I-35 split makes it an ideal location for a wide range of logistics and distribution users who not only need to move goods in and out … but also around the Metroplex.”
Managing the area’s growth is similar to drinking out of a fire hydrant, Sotelo said. Her team focuses on the creation of high-paying jobs so people can work near where they live — she said about 37% of Denton County residents work in the county, compared with about 70% of Dallas County residents.
Sotelo said to achieve that balance, the area also needs more and diverse housing options, especially executive housing.
“If we didn’t have executive housing, we weren’t going to get a headquarters,” she said. “We weren’t going to get the type of industries that we want to see that’s going to pay a high salary.”
The largest employer in Denton County is the University of North Texas with 8,891 workers, according to NCTCOG data as of July 5. Others include Charles Schwab in Westlake with 7,900 and Peterbilt Motors in Denton with 2,000. Sotelo said her goal is to attract large employers, not just warehouses.
A lot of that kind of activity has landed in Alliance, which stretches from southern Denton County into Tarrant County. Taiwanese company Wistron Corp. opened one of two supercomputer manufacturing sites in July worth a total of $761 million in partnership with Nvidia. Bell Textron Inc. plans to spend millions on a new factory to manufacture rotor blades for its next-generation helicopter its developing for the U.S. Army.
Big buildings are also planned for Northlake, which has a population of a little more than 12,000. Hillwood has the capacity to build 10 million square feet worth of industrial space in the city, said Kim Cole, vice president of development at Hillwood Properties. MP Materials plans its next rare earth magnet facility in Northlake, a potential $1.2 billion investment that could create 1,500 jobs.
“It’s a huge opportunity for us to just take the next step into the advanced manufacturing logistics and supply chain,” Cole said.