The Perot family’s Hillwood Communities wants to tap into nature with its latest 800-acre project.
A prominent local real estate developer is expanding its presence near Fort Worth’s Alliance area with thousands more rooftops.
Hillwood Communities, the Dallas-based development company founded by local real estate mogul Ross Perot Jr., broke ground last week on an 800-acre community called Treeline just west of Justin, the company said Wednesday.
Treeline is planned to eventually have 2,500 single-family homes, along with an elementary school, parks, amenities and commercial space. It is in the Northwest Independent School District.
Fred Balda, president of Hillwood Communities, said the company has owned parts of the property south of FM407 near State Highway 114 since the 1980s, around the same time the company started building master-planned communities in the area.
Hillwood’s first master-planned community, Park Glen, was built in North Fort Worth in the late ‘80s with 3,000 homes.
Since then, Hillwood properties line up and down the corridor. Its Pecan Square and Harvest communities in that area ranked among the top-selling master-planned communities in the nation in the first half of 2023, according to RCLCO Real Estate Consulting. At 2,500 homes, Treeline will be a bit smaller than some of the company’s other communities in the area that have 3,000 or 4,000 homes.
“It took nearly no time to fill up our list of builders,” Balda said. “There’s just more demand than supply, and I should say, more demand for quality, good neighborhoods. Treeline will be an extension of what we’ve done in that corridor.”
The first phase of construction is underway and homes will be available for sale in mid-2025, Hillwood said.
American Legend Homes, Beazer Homes, David Weekley Homes, D.R. Horton, Highland Homes, HistoryMaker Homes, Pulte Homes and Tri Pointe Homes are lined up to build more than 700 homes on 40-, 45- and 50-foot-wide lots in the first phase.
Balda said he thinks the homes will range from just under $400,000 to the mid-$500,000s.
Plans for the first phase’s amenities include an indoor event space, an event lawn, an amphitheater lawn, pickleball courts, a food truck lane, a resort-style pool and an adventure park.
Hillwood is aiming for a “treehouse-inspired” theme based on the surrounding mature oak trees and a flowing creek. The design process is still ongoing, but Hillwood plans to include themed treehouses, such as a “library treehouse” and a “cloud spotting and stargazing treehouse.”
“You’ve got this tremendous swath of trees,” Balda said. “When you cross this beautiful bridge, you’re really coming into a forest. Mother Nature is really nice to us here, and so we want to preserve as much of that as possible, and therefore carry that theme throughout the community where we can.”