For years, the mental map of Highland Park has had one gravitational center. You drive to the Village for a haircut, a coffee at Bistro 31's patio, an early dinner at Café Pacific, a Sunday bagel at Sadelle's. Everything else has been quieter side streets and the calm residential grid that makes the neighborhood what it is.
That map is about to gain a second anchor a few blocks north, and it will be the closest thing Dallas has built to a peer for Highland Park Village in decades. Knox Street, long a low-slung strip of boutiques and casual restaurants pressed against the Katy Trail, is being rebuilt at a scale most residents have not yet fully absorbed. The project is far enough along that the shape of the finished neighborhood is now visible from the sidewalk.
What is actually going up
The development is a joint venture led by BDT & MSD Partners, Trammell Crow Company, Highland Park Village Associates, and The Retail Connection. It spans more than one million square feet and will deliver 150,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of retail, a 27-story, 186-unit apartment tower, a half-acre park with a direct connection to the Katy Trail, and The Knox Hotel and Residences, a 140-room hotel and 47 ultra-luxury condominiums operated by Auberge Collection.
The two ownership names to note there are Highland Park Village Associates and The Retail Connection. The same operators who curate the Village's tenant mix are curating this one. That is the single most useful piece of context for interpreting every announcement that follows, because it explains why the incoming brand list reads the way it does.
A quick sketch of the moving pieces, all confirmed by the development team:
- The Lora, the apartment tower, will sit above a curated retail base
- 3333 Knox, a nine-story office building, is scheduled for delivery in late 2026 and has been 100% preleased since fall 2024, with ISN Software Corporation joined by Paul Hastings LLP and BDT & MSD
- The Knox Hotel and Residences, set to debut in late 2026, with the private residences nearly sold out well ahead of completion
- Knox Street Park, the half-acre green space linking directly into the Katy Trail
The hotel side is worth pausing on. Designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, the hotel will feature signature restaurants, bars, lounges, expansive event spaces, and a full-floor spa and wellness retreat connected to an outdoor pool and bar with sweeping views of Downtown Dallas, while the residences, designed by Dallas-based Chad Dorsey Design, will include a clubroom, bar and lounge, entertainment spaces, fitness center, and indoor pool. Brudnizki is the designer behind Annabel's in London and The Beekman in New York, and Auberge operates properties like Auberge du Soleil in Napa and Etéreo on the Riviera Maya. This is not a business hotel with a lobby bar. It is a hospitality product aimed squarely at the same clientele that already books private rooms at Café Pacific.
The retail and restaurant list, read carefully
Two of the incoming names have been announced with enough detail to sketch what the daily rhythm on Knox will feel like once they open.
The first is Sant Ambroeus. In June 2025, the Italian hospitality group announced Knox Street as the location of its first Texas outpost, anchoring the base of The Lora and overlooking Knox Street Park, with all-day dining, an elegant café, and dedicated outdoor patio seating. Anyone who has spent a morning at the original Sant Ambroeus in Milan or the Madison Avenue location in New York knows the format: espresso and pastry at the counter early, a proper lunch crowd through the afternoon, cocktails and dinner at night. It is the kind of place designed to be walked to, repeatedly, by people who live nearby. For Village regulars, the closest current analog in atmosphere is the morning bar at Sadelle's, though the format is different.
The second is Théa Mediterranean Rooftop. According to CultureMap Dallas, the concept is coming to the Knox Street development next to the Katy Trail. Rooftop dining with Katy Trail views is a category Highland Park has never really had.
Then there is the retail announcement that will most directly reshape shopping habits. In December 2025, a highly anticipated collection of lifestyle retail brands confirmed their plans to open locations at Knox Street, three of which would be making their Texas debuts, including DÔEN, STAUD, TOTEME and TWP. For readers who don't follow this corner of the market: DÔEN is the Los Angeles label built around soft, romantic dresses that has been almost impossible to try on in Texas without flying somewhere. TOTEME is the Stockholm minimalist brand carried by Net-a-Porter and a handful of independent boutiques nationally. STAUD and TWP round out a lineup that reads like a New York or West Hollywood shopping block, not a Dallas one.
The Village has its own excellent tenant mix, of course, anchored by Chanel, Hermès, Dior, and the ground-floor tenants residents already know by first name. What Knox Street adds is a different register of luxury: contemporary, more design-forward casual, aimed at a slightly younger household or the same household on a Saturday morning instead of a Friday evening.
Why the park connection matters more than the retail
The retail names will get the press. The half-acre park will get the daily use.
Residents who walk or bike the Katy Trail already know the awkward middle stretch around Knox, where the trail passes through a landscape that has been under construction for most of the last three years. The finished Knox Street Park is being built as a direct extension of that trail experience, with the park itself acting as a landing pad off the trail rather than a separate destination you have to hunt for.
For a household living in Highland Park proper, the practical effect is that the trail becomes a viable route to a coffee, a lunch, or a park bench, without needing to drive. That is a small change on paper and a substantial one in practice. It reorients the pedestrian geography of the neighborhood northward in a way that Highland Park Village, sited south of Mockingbird, has never really done.
Timing worth keeping in mind
The building is topped out, but the pieces open in stages. A short calendar for planning purposes:
- Late 2026: 3333 Knox office building delivers, and The Knox Hotel and Residences debuts
- Late 2026 into 2027: retail and restaurant tenants stagger their openings around the hotel debut
- Ongoing: more highly anticipated announcements in the coming months will unveil first-to-market brands and premier dining concepts
If you have friends visiting in the late fall of 2026, plan on the Village for the traditional Highland Park introduction and Knox Street for something newer. If you are considering a home purchase in the blocks between Preston Road and the trail, the walk-to inventory just widened considerably, which tends to move quickly through resale values on the affected streets. Homes with an easy Katy Trail approach have always traded at a premium to interior lots; the coming amenity density on Knox will sharpen that gap rather than soften it.
What this changes for the neighborhood
Highland Park has always been a neighborhood defined by restraint. New construction is measured. Retail turnover at the Village is rare, and when it happens, it happens carefully. The instinct among long-time residents to view a project this size on the northern edge with some skepticism is fair.
What is different about Knox Street is the ownership overlap. This is not an outside developer parachuting in with a generic mixed-use template. The same team that has spent decades protecting the character of Highland Park Village is co-authoring the tenant mix a few blocks north. The retailers announced so far, the hotel operator, and the designers involved all point in the same direction: a second anchor that complements rather than competes with what already exists.
The Village will remain the Village. Café Pacific will still be Café Pacific. Honor Bar's patio under the oak tree will still be one of the best places in Dallas for a Tuesday lunch. What changes is that residents will have a second place, walking distance from the trail, where the standard of design and service matches what they have come to expect closer to home.
If you are thinking about how your own home fits into the shifting geography of the Park Cities, whether that means adjusting a plan to sell, quietly watching values on your block, or considering a move to be closer to the trail, I would welcome the conversation. Reach out to Longoria Brown Homes and let's connect.
