Drive Preston Road from Royal Lane to Northwest Highway on a Saturday morning and you are passing through the busiest retail reshuffle the neighborhood has seen in a generation. A former liquor store has become a Rockwell-designed steakhouse. A taco lounge has become a Michelin-recognized bistro. A 60-year-old shopping plaza is being torn down for a 17-story residential tower. None of these projects are related, and yet together they are quietly rewriting where Preston Hollow eats, drinks, and lingers.
The through-line is timing. Everything is happening now, in the same six-month window, across three retail nodes that anchor the neighborhood's north, east, and west edges. If you have lived here more than a decade, the map you carry in your head is already out of date.
Preston Royal: A New York Steakhouse Takes the Corner
The most visible change sits at Preston and Royal, where Palladino's Steak & Seafood opened June 16 at 5959 Royal Lane in the former Spec's space. The concept comes from Joseph Palladino, the ex-NYPD officer who co-founded Nick & Sam's with Phil Romano almost thirty years ago and later launched the Coal Vines pizza chain. Preston Royal's landlords approached him about the corner, and he took it as a homecoming.
What matters for anyone living within walking distance is the caliber of the kitchen. Executive chef Sam Hazen brings a résumé that includes Le Gavroche, Tavern on the Green, and Tao, working alongside chef de cuisine Henry Johnson. The dining room was designed by Rockwell Group, the same firm behind the original Palladino's at Grand Central Terminal in New York. The menu blends prime steaks, Italian dishes, and sushi, with tableside service centered on a slow-roasted prime rib trolley. The bar opens at 4:30 p.m. daily; dinner runs to 10 on weeknights and 11 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Two private rooms are worth knowing about. The Aria, named for Palladino's daughter, holds a grand piano and stage for live programming. The National is a smaller room decorated with photography from Dallas National Golf Club. Both will absorb the private-dinner demand that Preston Hollow has historically had to route to Uptown.
Preston Hollow Village: A Slower, More Selective Rebuild
A mile north on Walnut Hill, Preston Hollow Village is doing something different. Instead of a single anchor, the center has been layering in independent operators one lease at a time. Three of them opened or announced in the last twelve months, and together they explain why the parking lot is fuller on a Tuesday night than it was two years ago.
- Ella, at 7949 Walnut Hill Lane, opened June 17 in the space that used to hold Chido Taco Lounge. It bills itself as an intimate American bistro, and the dining room shares a lounge with the Customs Speakeasy next door. The kitchen is run by Kyle Farr, formerly executive sous chef at Michelin-recognized Sachet and executive chef at the late Boulevardier. Beverage director Julian Shaffer was recognized by the Michelin Guide last fall for his cocktail program.
- Cantina la Rosa opened in the former Fernando's space, from the team behind East Dallas's Smoky Rose. The kitchen is led by Rolando Garcia, with co-owners David Tripplehorn Cash of Goodwins and first-time restaurateur Cameron Levine. The menu leans full Tex-Mex, from enchiladas and carne asada to a cheeseburger, open for lunch and dinner.
- Fortune House, the Shanghainese restaurant known for its xiao long bao, will open a third location at Preston Hollow Village on September 26. DuWest Commercial Real Estate confirmed the date, and exterior signage is already up. The soup dumplings, available in traditional pork, blue crab, and black truffle, earned a "Best Dumplings" nod from D Magazine at the original Irving location.
The pattern here is worth noticing. Preston Hollow Village is not chasing a single trophy tenant. It is stacking chef-driven, independently owned rooms next to steady mainstays like the Broken Egg and Thirsty Lion, then letting the mix do the work. For residents, that means a plausible weeknight dinner rotation that does not require driving south of Northwest Highway.
Preston Center: The Sixty-Year Debate Is Finally Over
The west edge of the neighborhood is where the biggest change is happening, and it is the one most residents are still processing. Preston Center is being partially torn down and rebuilt. City planning records show the redevelopment of the center has been debated for decades, with concerns about traffic and encroachment splitting property owners and residents. A city-backed advisory task force formed in 2015 eventually approved a rezoning plan unanimously. Construction started in March 2026, and the first phase is expected to complete in late 2028.
The project is called 8300 Douglas. It is a $200 million mixed-use development from RAMROCK Real Estate, Lincoln Property Company, and Willow Bridge Property Company, designed by HKS Architects with interiors by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture and SJL Design Group, and landscaping by OJB. The plans call for a 12-story Class AA office tower with roughly 300,000 square feet, a 17-story luxury residential tower with 147 units, 24,000 square feet of retail, and a 35,000-square-foot rooftop park. Fifth Third Bank has already signed as an office tenant. Roughly a thousand parking spaces will sit across four below-grade and two above-grade levels.
Several longtime tenants have already left the affected buildings to make way for demolition, including Wang's Chinese Cafe, Yolk, and AT Bistro – Au Troisième. Target and CVS are staying. Not everyone is thrilled about the churn. DD Rogers, a resident quoted in People Newspapers, put it this way:
I worry that much of our community's signature charm is being eroded little by little as locally owned businesses are replaced by national chains.
Others see the opposite. Nicole Scholle, in the same piece, said the corner had needed a refresh for years, pointing to the concentration of new activity a few blocks east. Both reactions are fair readings of the same set of facts. What is not in dispute is that the walk from Preston Road to Douglas is going to look and function differently by the end of the decade.
The Preston Center Restaurant That Already Opened
While 8300 Douglas breaks ground, Preston Center already has one new anchor. CRAFT Restaurant & Beer Market, a Canadian chain making its first U.S. appearance, opened April 1 at 5974 W. Northwest Highway. The Dallas launch came through a partnership between founder PJ L'Heureux and Tom Gaglardi, owner of the Dallas Stars, who previously brought Moxies to Uptown. The build-out is 10,500 square feet with a 360-degree center bar, a rooftop patio, and seating for more than 500 across indoor and outdoor spaces. The beer program runs over 100 taps, with local pours from Peticolas Brewing Company and Celestial Beerworks. Kitchen runs late: to midnight most nights, to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday, with weekend brunch.
The Plaza at Preston Center, Refreshed
A quieter update sits directly across the intersection. The Plaza at Preston Center, at the southeast corner of Preston Road and Northwest Highway, wrapped a $5 million facelift ahead of its 75th anniversary. The work replaced roof caps, sidewalk pavers, and the color palette across nearly every building, matching the cleaner façade already in place at Muchacho and il Bracco. New tenants that arrived alongside the refresh include Trina Turk's only Dallas location, Frenchie from Travis Street Hospitality, the Y-OHR boutique, and Viva Day Spa expanding from Austin. Occupancy is around 90 percent.
A Cheat Sheet for the Next Six Weeks
| Where | What | When | Address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preston Royal | Palladino's Steak & Seafood | Open (June 16) | 5959 Royal Ln. |
| Preston Hollow Village | Ella | Open (June 17) | 7949 Walnut Hill Ln. |
| Preston Hollow Village | Cantina la Rosa | Open | former Fernando's |
| Preston Hollow Village | Fortune House | Sept. 26 | Preston Hollow Village |
| Preston Center | CRAFT Restaurant & Beer Market | Open (April 1) | 5974 W. Northwest Hwy. |
| Preston Center | 8300 Douglas | First phase late 2028 | 8300 Douglas Ave. |
What the New Map Actually Says
Pull back from the individual openings and a shape appears. Preston Hollow's dining and retail center of gravity is being pulled in three different directions at the same time, by three different developers, using three different playbooks. Preston Royal is going for the trophy tenant, one signature room at a marquee intersection. Preston Hollow Village is layering independents. Preston Center is scraping the site and starting over, with vertical density and residential units built into the block.
For a resident, that translates into something practical. The old habit of driving into Highland Park Village or Uptown for a nicer dinner is now competing with a neighborhood where a Rockwell-designed steakhouse, a Michelin-recognized bistro, and a Shanghai soup-dumpling room all sit within a two-mile triangle of your house. The construction fencing on Douglas Avenue is a nuisance now. In three years it becomes the front yard of a new residential tower with restaurants and a rooftop park underneath.
The Preston Hollow of 2028 is being priced and permitted in 2026. If you own a home here, that is worth knowing before your neighbors do.
If you are weighing what these changes mean for the value of your specific block, or thinking about how a nearby project might shape the buyer pool for your home, The Rosen Group offers a private consultation and home valuation grounded in the streets and corners you actually live on. Request a private consultation and home valuation to get started.
