The Summer Celina Has Been Waiting For
For years, the running joke among longtime Celina residents has gone something like this: you love living here, but you budget an extra hour into any Saturday because the nearest Costco or Home Depot is a haul down Preston Road into someone else’s city. That joke has an expiration date, and it is measured in weeks now.
Three major retailers are in the final stretch of construction or interior buildout right here in Celina, and each one reflects something real about how quickly this community has grown into the kind of place national brands take seriously.
Costco Sets an August 26 Date
The one with the firmest opening date is also the one that has generated the most sustained buzz. Costco is scheduled to open its Celina location on August 26, 2026. As of this writing, the exterior shell is complete, permanent warehouse signage is installed, parking lot landscaping is planted, and crews are finishing the interior buildout.
The 158,000-square-foot warehouse will sit at the corner of Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway, anchoring a larger mixed-use development that will eventually include a Lowe’s as well. For a city that has watched its population surge while its retail options lagged behind, a full-scale Costco at that intersection is not a small thing. It means the Preston Road corridor in Celina is no longer just a commuter corridor — it is becoming a destination.
Home Depot Targeting an August Opening, Too
A few months ago, Celina entered into an incentive agreement with Home Depot that included a requirement to obtain a certificate of occupancy by July 2026 and begin operations shortly after. Construction is now in the framing and building dry-in phase, with the retailer targeting an August 2026 opening.
This will be Celina’s first Home Depot. That is worth pausing on. Celina is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and until this year, anyone who needed to load up a truck with lumber, irrigation pipe, or patio furniture had to leave town to do it. The combination of a Home Depot and a Costco opening in the same summer, within the same general corridor, signals something structural rather than coincidental: the retail market has caught up to where the rooftops already are.
Academy Sports Brings 64,000 Square Feet to The Crossing at Moore Farms
If Costco and Home Depot are the anchors, Academy Sports + Outdoors is the piece that rounds out the picture for families with kids in rec leagues, school athletics, or anyone who has ever driven to Frisco to buy cleats. A brand-new Academy Sports + Outdoors is coming to Celina in 2026, spanning nearly 64,000 square feet at 3525 S. Preston Road.
For a community where youth sports participation is woven into the social fabric — weekend fields full, parking lots at capacity — having a full Academy location in town changes the logistics of game-day preparation in a very practical way. New cleats the night before a tournament no longer require a thirty-minute drive.
Why This Summer Feels Different
Celina has been tracking its own growth closely enough that none of these announcements arrived as a surprise. The city has published permit filings, tracked construction milestones, and watched developers circle the Preston Road and Dallas North Tollway corridors for years. But there is a difference between knowing something is coming and standing in the parking lot on opening day.
What makes this particular cluster of openings notable is that they arrive together. A single big-box store opening in a growing suburb is routine news. Three category-defining retailers crossing the finish line in the same summer, in the same city, creates something closer to a shift in daily habit. The errand that used to mean leaving Celina now stays in Celina.
That dynamic matters beyond convenience. It means sales tax revenue generated by Celina residents increasingly stays in Celina, funding the parks, roads, and services that the city’s growth requires. The incentive agreement structure the city used to attract Home Depot — with its certificate-of-occupancy milestone — reflects exactly that kind of deliberate civic thinking.
What Comes Next
The retail momentum does not stop with these three. Blaze Pizza is slated to open at The Crossing at Moore Farms at 3515 S. Preston Road, Suite 130. All4Gym, a gymnastics and cheerleading facility serving ages 3 through 18 and offering open gym hours, is opening at 3600 N. Louisiana Drive. The dining and lifestyle district at The Creeks at Celina — already home to Haraz Coffee House and Capo’s Pizza and Pasta near the Dallas North Tollway and Frontier Parkway — continues to build out as a social hub for west Celina.
Each new address adds texture to a city that residents describe as genuinely different from the sprawling anonymity of some of its neighbors. Celina still has a Downtown Square, a Friday Night Market, a public library with a Storybook Trail winding through Old Celina Park. The question that growth always raises — whether a small-town identity survives its own success — does not have a final answer yet. But the fact that Costco and a wine estate out on Eden Hill Lane can coexist in the same zip code suggests the city is at least asking that question with some self-awareness.
For now, the more immediate news is this: if you have been driving south out of Celina for your household staples, that commute is almost over.
