Prosper's $2 Billion Venice on the Tollway: What The Marco Means for Nearby Home Values
Prosper's town council voted unanimously on October 27 to approve zoning for The Marco, a $2 billion Venetian-inspired mixed-use district at the northeast corner of the Dallas North Tollway and U.S. 380. It is, by the town manager's own description, the biggest project in Prosper's history. If you own a home anywhere near the tollway corridor — or you are shopping in Prosper, Celina, or Frisco — this is worth understanding now, while it is still mostly paper and renderings. The time to think clearly about a project like this is before the cranes arrive, not after.
What The Marco Actually Is
The Marco covers 143 acres at one of the most visible intersections in North Texas. Developer Blackard Companies, led by Jeff Blackard, plans to build the district around a 15.5-acre navigable lagoon and a canal system modeled on Venice, with electric boats instead of gondolas. Blackard built Adriatica Village in McKinney, a 45-acre Croatian fishing-village-themed project; The Marco is roughly three times that size. Bill Cawley of Cawley Partners — also a partner on the Dallas Stars' planned $3 billion arena district at the former Willow Bend mall in Plano — has joined as a development partner.
The zoning approval sets hard caps on what can be built:
Up to 4,400 residential units total, with no more than 2,500 mid-rise apartments, 1,000 single-family homes and duplexes (villas and townhomes), 500 age-restricted apartments, and 400 high-rise condos or apartments. Some luxury waterfront condos could sell for as much as $10 million, according to early reporting.
More than 1 million square feet of Class A office space, including up to two corporate campuses at the hard corner, with office buildings up to 14 stories tall.
Up to two waterfront hotels, a market square with a grocery store, restaurants, and retail.
A performing arts center, possibly in partnership with Prosper ISD, whose voters approved $125 million for one in a 2023 bond — though as of September, no plans had been finalized with the district.
One detail is easy to miss and matters more than it looks: the lagoon is not just decoration. It doubles as the site's regional stormwater infrastructure, replacing a conventional detention pond. That is why the lagoon gets built first, and why the council tied residential openings to it.
What Got Approved — and What Did Not
Here is the part the headlines tend to skip: zoning is a framework, not a green light. Four development agreements still need council approval — covering economic incentives, building standards, impact fee waivers, and parks and open space — ideally by the end of this year. If any of those stall, the schedule moves. Town staff have been clear that late 2027 is a target for starting lagoon and infrastructure work, not a commitment, and full buildout is expected to take five to seven years after construction begins. Some reporting puts it closer to a decade.
The council also added guardrails that slow the apartment rollout, after the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval by a split 4-2 vote in August and the council tabled the item in September. The revised plan now requires that no residential units open until the lagoon is complete, that at least 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space be built after the first 1,000 mid-rise apartments before more can open, and that mid- and high-rise multifamily be kept out of certain parts of the site. Every apartment building must include open space and a pet area. The message from the council is plain: the commercial and amenity pieces have to show up, not just the apartments.
Why This Corner Matters for Nearby Home Values
A project like this does not move home prices by itself. It moves them through three channels, and all three are worth watching separately.
First, access. The North Texas Tollway Authority plans to open a new tollway segment from U.S. 380 to FM 428 in late 2027 — the same window as The Marco's infrastructure start. Once it opens, Prosper will hold roughly three miles of tollway frontage. Mayor David Bristol has called the corridor plan "literally a blueprint for the next 25 to 50 years." For homeowners in Prosper and Celina, the practical effect is shorter drives to the employment centers south, and a corridor that keeps getting more useful as it fills in.
Second, jobs. More than a million square feet of office space and two corporate campuses, if they land tenants, would bring daytime demand to a corner that is mostly rooftops today. That is the part that supports housing demand in the surrounding neighborhoods over the long run — not the lagoon, but the payrolls.
Third, land expectations. Capital was already moving into this corridor before The Marco surfaced: DFW Land bought a 50-acre tract just north of U.S. 380 on the east side of the tollway extension in 2023, and added 71 acres at the southwest corner of the tollway and Mahard Parkway in 2024. A high-intensity anchor with office, hotel, and retail generally firms up pricing expectations on nearby frontage. It also sets a bar: neighboring applicants will now cite The Marco's caps and heights, and the council can just as easily cite its phasing triggers.
The Honest Caveats
None of this is a reason to rush into anything, and there are real downsides to keep in view.
The biggest one is supply. A 4,400-unit cap is a lot of housing arriving in one place over several years, and more than half of it is apartments. In a market where DFW pending sales just hit their 2026 low and price cuts are running at about 1.5 per new listing, a wave of new rental supply near the corridor could soften rents and compete with nearby resale homes for the same buyers. The council's phasing triggers exist precisely because of this worry.
The timeline is the second caveat. Nothing opens before the lagoon is done, the four agreements are not signed yet, and a five-to-seven-year buildout means the finished village is a 2030s story, not a 2027 one. If you are buying nearby today, you are buying the corridor as it is — good schools, growing rooftops, and a long construction horizon — not the finished postcard.
The third is price. The project's luxury end, with condos reportedly reaching $10 million, tells you who the developer expects to attract. That does not set your neighborhood's prices, but it does tell you the project's ambitions sit well above the median DFW home. And like any rendering-driven project, the finished product may look different from the pictures: the commission itself noted the application leaned heavily on renderings, with enforceable details like materials and setbacks still to be defined.
What Buyers and Sellers Near the Corridor Should Do Now
If you own near the DNT and 380 corridor, watch the year-end council votes, not the renderings. The four development agreement votes — incentives, building standards, impact fees, parks — carry more signal than any new picture of the lagoon. Those votes decide whether dirt moves in late 2027 or slides.
If you are buying in Prosper or Celina, price the home you can see today. A future lagoon and office campus are upside, not value you should pay for in advance. Ask your agent to show you comparable sales in the same neighborhood, not just the new-construction premium.
If you are selling nearby, do not wait for The Marco to lift your price. The project is years from delivering amenities, and the broader DFW market is slow right now. A well-priced listing this winter competes on its own merits; a listing priced for a 2030s village will sit.
If you are an investor, separate the land story from the housing story. The corridor's land and frontage thesis is genuinely interesting. The near-term rental story is not — thousands of new apartments are coming to this corner over time, and the council itself is phasing them for a reason.
Track the tollway extension, not just the project. The NTTA segment from U.S. 380 to FM 428, opening in late 2027, affects daily life for everyone along the corridor whether The Marco hits its dates or not.
The Rate Backdrop This Week
One more piece of context, because it affects anyone buying near the corridor this month: mortgage rates fell for a third straight week. Freddie Mac's survey for the week ending November 5 put the 30-year fixed at 7.18%, down from 7.24% the prior week and 7.32% two weeks before that. The 15-year fixed slipped to 6.57% from 6.60%. A year ago the 30-year was 6.22%.
On a $400,000 loan, the 30-year payment is now about $2,710 a month in principal and interest, roughly $38 less than at 7.32% three weeks ago — but still about $255 more than a year ago. That is real relief for a buyer, and it is also small enough that it should not change anyone's decision on its own. Rates are easing; they are not low.
The Bottom Line
The Marco is the largest test yet of what Prosper intends for its tollway district, and the council negotiated hard enough to make the phasing real. For nearby homeowners, the honest read is that this is a slow, real, and genuinely consequential project — one that could reshape the corridor over the next decade, and one that still has several votes and several years between the zoning approval and anything you can walk through. The next thing to watch is not another rendering. It is the year-end development agreement votes.
Sources: Town of Prosper press release (Oct. 28, 2026); Community Impact; Dallas Morning News; Houston Chronicle; The Real Deal Texas; The Texas Land Agent; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ending Nov. 5, 2026. Payment figures are the author's calculations, principal and interest only, on a $400,000 loan.
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