The Village of Preston Hollow Is Not Preston Hollow Village

Tell a friend you'll meet them for dinner at "Preston Hollow Village" and there's a real chance you end up in the wrong parking lot. Not because you misheard the name. Because two different shopping centers in this neighborhood answer to nearly identical names, and in 2026 both of them are in the middle of adding a new restaurant.

That mix-up isn't trivia. It's the clearest sign of something bigger happening across Preston Hollow's commercial corners this year: four separate retail nodes, all carrying some version of the word "Preston," are each having a completely different 2026. One is being partially demolished. One just landed a national opening. One replaced a restaurant that had been there for two decades. And one is about to add a fifth tenant to a lineup most residents already know by heart. If you live here, knowing which "Preston" is which now actually matters for planning your week.

Four Corners, One Word, Four Different Years

Here's the current state of each, as of this month.

These aren't rebrandings of the same place. They're four distinct properties, in four distinct parts of the neighborhood, and this is the first year in a while where all four have news at once.

The Corner That's Half Torn Up

Start with the one everyone already senses is different: Preston Center. If you've driven past Douglas Avenue and Luther Lane recently, you've seen the fencing. Ramrock Real Estate, in partnership with Lincoln Property Company and HKS Architects, broke ground in March on 8300 Douglas, a $200 million project that will eventually bring a 12-story, 300,000-square-foot office tower and a 17-story residential building with 147 units to that 2.5-acre block. The Dallas Morning News reported the project is slated for completion in 2028, with 24,000 square feet of new ground-floor restaurant and retail space and a 35,000-square-foot rooftop park.

Getting there meant losing some longtime tenants. Wang's Chinese Cafe, Yolk, and AT Bistro – Au Troisième have all left the block to make room for the build. Target and CVS are staying put, which is worth knowing if you've been wondering whether your pharmacy run is about to get more complicated. It isn't, at least not for those two.

What's easy to miss is that "Preston Center" isn't a single building, it's a district, and not every part of it is being bulldozed. A few blocks away on the same Northwest Highway and Preston Road corner, Craft Restaurant and Beer Market opened April 1 in a building that used to house a COVID-era hospital. It's the first United States location for the Canadian chain, co-owned by Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi, and its two-story rooftop patio is visible from the road. Meanwhile a separate property at the same intersection, the Plaza at Preston Center, quietly finished its own multi-year, $5 million cosmetic refresh ahead of its 75th anniversary, updating rooflines and sidewalks without touching a single restaurant lease.

So Preston Center in 2026 is really three stories happening on three different parcels: one getting demolished for towers that won't open for two years, one that just landed a splashy new restaurant, and one that got a facelift and moved on. If your mental map of the area only has room for one version of "Preston Center," this is the year to update it.

The Restaurant That Waited for a Landlord to Ask

A few minutes south, Preston Royal is having a much simpler year. Joseph Palladino, the restaurateur behind Nick & Sam's Steakhouse and the Coal Vines pizza chain, opened Palladino's Steak & Seafood on June 16 at 5959 Royal Lane, in the space that used to hold a Spec's. According to CultureMap Dallas, Preston Royal's own landlords approached Palladino directly, betting that his New York location's reputation, plus the neighborhood's appetite for a proper steakhouse, would make the corner of Preston and Royal worth the investment. The restaurant, designed by the same Rockwell Group firm behind Palladino's Grand Central Terminal original, brought in executive chef Sam Hazen, whose résumé includes stints at Le Gavroche and Tao.

Parking has reportedly been tight since opening night, which tracks for a shopping center that wasn't built with a steakhouse-sized crowd in mind. If you're headed there on a Friday, plan to circle the shopping center lot rather than the street in front.

Where Fernando's Used to Be

Now to the naming problem itself. Just off Northwest Highway near Central Market sits a shopping center that Dallas Morning News captions and press releases both refer to as "the Village of Preston Hollow." For twenty years, the anchor there was Fernando's Mexican Cuisine, a Tex-Mex spot with enough regulars that when it finally closed in May 2025, people kept knocking on the door asking if it was open. This February, Cantina La Rosa took over the space at 4347 W. Northwest Highway. It's a project from David Tripplehorn Cash, the owner behind Smoky Rose and a co-owner of Goodwins, along with chef Rolando Garcia and general manager Oscar Aroche. The team built an 80-to-90-seat covered patio with drop-down siding, explicitly designed to pull in regulars from both Bluffview and Preston Hollow who want, in partner Cameron Levine's words, a restaurant they can treat as a weekly habit rather than a special occasion.

Here's where it gets confusing. A few miles east, at Central Expressway and Walnut Hill Lane, sits a completely separate shopping center that press coverage calls "Preston Hollow Village," not the Village of Preston Hollow. This one has been home to Blue Sushi Sake Grill, Modern Market, Thirsty Lion, and Mesero for a while. Later this month, on a tentative date of September 26, it's adding Fortune House, a Shanghainese restaurant known for soup dumplings and pan-fried pork buns. Per CultureMap's coverage, this will be Fortune House's third location, following an original in Irving and a second on Greenville Avenue, and it's taking a ground-floor spot in the Douglas apartment building, a few doors down from Another Broken Egg Cafe.

Two shopping centers. Two names that differ only in word order. Both added a new restaurant this year. If you've ever told someone "meet me at Preston Hollow Village" and had them show up at the wrong one, this is why. It isn't a memory problem. The names are genuinely that close, and until this year there wasn't much reason for anyone to sort out which was which.

What This Actually Changes About Your Week

None of this is really about real estate. It's about knowing where you're actually going. If your usual routine involves cutting through Preston Center for a pharmacy run, expect construction noise and some rerouted foot traffic around Douglas and Luther Lane through at least 2028, even as Craft and the refreshed Plaza keep operating a few blocks over without interruption. If you're chasing a steakhouse reservation, Preston Royal is your destination, and you should budget extra time for parking. If you're craving Tex-Mex on a patio that doesn't require a drive across town, the Village of Preston Hollow has replaced Fernando's with a restaurant built specifically for that role. And if dumplings are the plan for later this month, make sure you're headed to Preston Hollow Village at Central Expressway and Walnut Hill, not the other one.

The bigger pattern is that Preston Hollow's commercial geography has quietly split into distinct identities this year, even where the names overlap. Knowing the difference is a small thing, right up until it's the reason you're standing in the wrong parking lot at seven on a Friday night.

For residents thinking about how any of these shifts might eventually affect their own street or their own home's position in the neighborhood, Vancleve | Garcia Group keeps a close eye on how these corners evolve. Let's Get Started whenever you're ready to talk through what it means for you.