Dallas Stars players take the ice for Game 1 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Minnesota Wild at American Airlines Center on Saturday, April 18, 2026, in Dallas.
Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Stars plan to build their future home in Collin County because they say it will be the new “center” of Dallas-Fort Worth.
Building a billion-dollar arena surrounded by a $2 billion mixed-use district in Plano — 17 miles north of American Airlines Center — will place the NHL franchise squarely at the epicenter of where they say the majority of their fans reside.
“The overwhelming percentage” of Stars’ season-ticket holders live north of Interstate 635, team president and CEO Brad Alberts told The Dallas Morning News. “We feel like this is going to be the center of the D-FW Metroplex population mass moving forward into the next two decades.”
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Telegraphed for months, the Stars’ move last Tuesday to sign a nonbinding letter of intent to build its arena and entertainment district at the Willow Bend site arrived like a thunderbolt, landing one day after AAC co-tenants, the Mavericks, chose the Valley View site to build their own arena and entertainment district. Why did the Stars choose Plano and not another location they explored?
The answer is rooted in the franchise seeing a continuing population shift north, particularly among its fans. A unique opportunity to construct a “village, campus-like” revenue-generating entertainment district across 90 acres. An “earth-shatteringly good” relationship with Plano city leaders. And the belief the Stars will solve vexing transportation and traffic questions hovering over the planned $3 billion project.
Alberts and Steven Levin, the founder and retiring CEO of Centennial Real Estate, detailed the rationale for the team’s move to Plano during an exclusive nearly two-hour visit to The News. Levin Holdings, Cawley Partners and Northland Properties will own the Willow Bend site.
In the agreement with Plano, Stars owner Tom Gaglardi will become a co-owner with Levin and Cawley. Gaglardi’s real estate development company, Northland Properties, will be a decision-maker and profit off the $2 billion in real estate that surrounds the arena. Centennial is managing the real estate, excluding the arena. Waterfall Asset Management is a financial partner in the project.
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“It’s going to be very collaborative,” Levin said.
Alberts called it the “biggest project” in the history of Collin County and the Dallas Stars. The city plans to contribute $700 million in funding through bonds backed by revenue from a tax increment reinvestment zone, according to city documents. The Plano City Council on Monday night unanimously approved a landmark agreement to help fund and incentivize the Stars’ project.
What Alberts called the Stars’ “engagement” to Plano with intent to marry is part of a larger sports and entertainment mosaic crystallizing in Collin County: The Dallas Cowboys opened their headquarters at The Star in Frisco in 2016. PGA of America moved its headquarters to Frisco in 2022. Frisco’s FC Dallas’ Toyota Stadium, which opened in 2005, is undergoing nearly $200 million in renovations.
Big-time sports in Collin County are flourishing. At the same time, Alberts stressed the franchise is not moving to the “suburbs.” Rather, he believes, they are following their North Star, so to speak, to ensure long-term business viability.
Before the fall of 2024, Alberts said, he and Gaglardi had no intention of leaving American Airlines Center, the team’s home since 2001. But their co-tenants, the Mavericks, wanted to “do their own thing,” Alberts said.
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They expect the new arena to be ready to stage a couple of events in the summer of 2031 in advance of the NHL season beginning that fall. Construction likely needs to begin in 2028.
Levin said the site “lends itself to something very special, and we want something that really is unique to Dallas.”
The property at 6121 W. Park Blvd. emerged as the favorite to land the NHL franchise when the Stars began exploring options outside Dallas. The Stars spoke to at least eight other cities about relocating, including Frisco, The Colony, Arlington and Fort Worth.
Asked specifically about the Valley View site, where the Mavericks have chosen to build their new arena and mixed-use district, Alberts said, “Ultimately, the business deal, we couldn’t get that figured out. I liked it, certainly. It was an attractive site.”
Traffic is seen on the Dallas North Tollway looking south from West Park Boulevard toward the Bush Turnpike on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Plano.
Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer
The “heat map” shifts north
The center of gravity in D-FW is moving north as part of a macro migration trend. The Stars say they have their own so-called “heat maps” that show a population shift north for their fan base — their customers increasingly reside north of I-635.
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Levin called the Willow Bend location “in the center of Dallas today.”
Alberts said their youth hockey stronghold is in Collin County, adding they could “build two more sheets of ice anywhere around Collin County tomorrow and we’d be full.”
He referenced the population growth in Prosper, in Celina, in Anna. He talked about meeting over the last 18 months with their economic development corporations and city managers.
“When that starts to build out, those are going to be our customers, and so why make them drive all the way down from the Tollway?” Alberts said. “Let’s just cut [that distance] in half, and so we feel like we found an incredible location.”
FC Dallas President Dan Hunt planted his flag in Collin County two decades ago. Hunt recalled his late father, the visionary Lamar Hunt, telling him before he died in 2006: “I’ll be gone, but I put you in the right place with the stadium.”
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“That was really a powerful statement,” Dan Hunt told The News. “The population is going all the way to Oklahoma. We will fill in to Oklahoma at some point, my dad was right about it, by the way. So the toll road [Dallas North Tollway] is going to effectively go to Oklahoma, and the population growth will go all the way there.”
Alberts acknowledged that for every inconvenience there will be a convenience, and vice versa, referencing the fan who lives in Mansfield who has to drive farther (some 50 miles) to Willow Bend.
“We’re not going to please everybody,” Alberts said, “but what we feel like is that this is the center of where the Metroplex is headed, and certainly our heat map for customers over time will continue to draw farther north.”
Options ‘endless’ with Plano mixed-use district
The Stars saw Willow Bend offering a unique opportunity to create a mixed-use district to tap into additional revenue streams.
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Numerous sports franchises nationwide have gone the mixed-use development route, surrounding venues with everything from restaurants and retail to hotels, apartments and offices — generating additional dollars 365 days a year.
Victory Park, the entertainment district surrounding the AAC, does not provide the Stars or the Mavericks with revenue because the franchises do not own the real estate.
“This is a hot topic in sports right now — these sports-anchored mixed-use real estate developments,” Alberts said. “The days of just having an arena with surface parking lots around it, where you’re only making money when people come to the event and walk in those doors, I think, are over.”
Alberts said, “We are a real estate company. We are a 50% partner in real estate. So it’s important that we drive traffic to the district, and not just look at it as an arena business.”
The Stars harbor ambitions larger than what the Texas Rangers created with their mixed-use district, Texas Live!, in Arlington. Restaurants, apartments and a hotel have been on the Stars’ wish list for months, possibly along with a brick-and-mortar Stars hall of fame and perhaps a social club like Cowboys Club in Frisco.
Alberts pointed to the NHL’s rising salary cap as the primary reason why the team needs to drive year-round revenue. Between the 2024-25 and 2027-28 seasons, the league’s salary cap will rise from $88 million to $113.5 million — a $25.5 million jump.
Alberts said the main revenue driver for the franchise is season-ticket holders, but “do we want to keep raising prices on our fans 20% to 25% every year? That’s unsustainable.”
“We can now create 365-day-a-year revenue that’s not all on TV sponsorship and tickets,” he said.
In particular, Alberts said, what the Atlanta Braves have done with The Battery Atlanta, the more than 60-acre development surrounding Truist Park, is a primary blueprint.
“I think we will create a more dynamic version of The Battery on our 90 acres,” Alberts said.
The proposed agreements for the Stars’ arena project require the redevelopment to include a multipurpose facility “for a premier national level professional sports team,” at least one conference hotel and a visitor’s center for tourists, among other terms.
Alberts called options “endless.” He envisions multiple hotels, restaurants, retail, a “dynamic” sports and entertainment area. Levin said the composition of the retail elements will be sports oriented, entertainment oriented, with family food and beverage offerings.
Rarely does 48 hours pass without Alberts and Levin brainstorming possibilities.
Levin said it’s going to be a “village, a large campus-like environment, and there’s an arena nestled in there. The way people kind of think where you see a big arena and parking and all that … it will feel much more intimate.”
A rendering for the proposed new development for the planned Dallas Stars arena and entertainment complex.
Courtesy of Centennial
Why there won’t be many districts like Willow Bend
Alberts and Levin believe Willow Bend also will flourish because stakeholders are aligned in their interests.
Alberts said the opposite happened more than two decades ago, when the real estate was separated from American Airlines Center, a line was essentially created outside the front door of the arena.
“We’re ensuring that that’s not going to happen this time,” Alberts said. “It’s really important that all the equity is aligned in this whole thing, so you’re not setting up, like Steven said, competitive interests. That’s what leads to a disaster in these business roll-up arrangements.”
Levin said mixed-use districts go awry when multiple owners try to build an alignment.
“It has to feel like it is one integrated, well-thought-out, well-designed project, and that’s why it’s important for Northland to be a part of it, and for us to work together,” Levin said.
When the Stars build a new arena, they also envision innovative, improved digital assets for sponsors, plus the ability to weave brands — much like the Dallas Cowboys have done at The Star in Frisco — into the mixed-use development.
It creates non-game-day opportunities for sponsors, Alberts said, expanding brands into experiences beyond hockey.
The sponsorship element that cuts against them currently, he said, will be solved at Willow Bend.
“All those digital boards that are in Victory Park now, right up next to the Mike Modano statue, guess how much money the Stars get from that,” Alberts said.
He made the symbol of a zero with his fingers.
“The Mavs don’t get any either,” he said. “That’s a problem, a big problem, and that’s not on the city … That’s just the complexity of the situation that’s been set up down there, and why it doesn’t work long term.”
Why ‘seamless’ process with Plano city leaders mattered
Another reason the Stars chose Plano is because of what Alberts called a seamless process with city leaders. He was effusive in his praise of the Plano City Council.
“It’s seamless — to me, it’s how it should be,” he said. “Just professional, timely, the council staff all united behind it, communication crystal clear. What they said when they said they were interested, what they said they would get done, they got it done in an unbelievably quick fashion. Coordinated communication between the developer and us. Fantastic governmental process.”
The city of Plano said, “‘Here’s what we can do, and here’s how we’re going to do it’. We were like, ‘Fantastic, great.'”
Under the proposed agreements for the Stars’ potential arena in Plano, the city would own the site and the arena and enter into an initial 30-year lease agreement with the team. The terms are to be negotiated, according to city documents.
From November 2024, when Plano said it was interested, to June 2025, Alberts said the franchise gave the city of Plano time officials needed to explore how they could finance it. By June “they had that on the table,” Alberts said, “so we’ve been working with them ever since to just kind of fine-tune these details and get everything prepared for now.”
Steve Levin, Centennial founder and CEO, and Brad Alberts, Stars president and CEO, speak with The News in Dallas, June 5, 2026.
Azul Sordo/The Dallas Morning News
Alberts declined to characterize his communication with the city of Dallas.
“We would not be building that kind of a project and not generating the kind of commerce and tax base in the city of Plano without the city support of the Stars moving here,” Levin said.
Alberts understands that some prominent stakeholders have made “overtures” for the Stars to stay in Dallas. He understands that there are “people that are upset with this.”
“We were never going to please everybody with this decision, but we feel like this is in the best interest of the Dallas Stars,” Alberts said. “And the way the Metroplex is shaking out, we feel like this area is going to be really the center of the Metroplex.
“And we feel like our business and our fans will be really, really happy once we can start to showcase what Steven has kind of articulated to you, how this district is going to lay out. It’s going to be an incredible experience for Dallas Stars’ fans. Give us a shot to show you what it’s going to be.”