In session on Tuesday night,  the Early City Council approved the Town Center master development concept.  Property that has been farmland, located north of Early Blvd., an area that runs from roughly north of Humphrey Pete’s back to the east toward Bruner, will, over time, become Early Town Center.

“The town center is going to be a multi-family retail, restaurant, shopping and living area as well as a venue people can go to.  They can go to the park, they can come across the boardwalk and enjoy nature and the fun of the lake and family.  At the same time, they can shop and having a dining experience which would be unique in the sense that there is this lake setting and here we are in the center of town basically,” said Dr. Robert Mangrum, Mayor of Early.

“As you saw on the diagram, the idea of the restaurants along the boardwalk with multi-family housing and retail and a hotel, kind of multi-purpose, recreational as well as living and pedestrian type activity,” Mangrum said.

The Early Town Center concept was presented by Tod Hanson of Schwarz-Hanson Architects of Fort Worth, the same company that designed the Early Event and Visitor Center.

“The project to us, as maybe an outsider that doesn’t live here, has a lot of validity.  We think that obviously it is market driven, in the big picture.  Being familiar with this part of Texas and being familiar with other areas and destinations, we feel like it’s well positioned geographically for a project like this to be an attraction for the city and would draw regionally, not just locally,” Hanson said.

Approval of the concept Tuesday night allows platting of the land to begin in the near future.  The city will be fielding interest from developers and will also begin the process of installing a road on the property in the coming weeks.

You can CLICK HERE to be taken to a link on the City of Early website that shows the concept of the Town Center and drone video of the property which will be developed.