That corner of McKinney and Lemmon in Uptown has been a dead zone for almost a decade. The old Albertsons closed in 2016, and the building has sat dark ever since — a big, empty box in one of the most walkable, food-obsessed neighborhoods in Dallas. Central Market has held the property lease the entire time. Getting something built there has just taken a lot longer than anyone expected.
The short version of the delay: Central Market originally signed on as the grocery anchor for a massive mixed-use high-rise project with developer KDC. That deal was estimated at around $295 million and would have added residential towers, office space, and a hotel to the site. Construction was supposed to start in April 2022. It didn’t. The company later cited a softer post-COVID commercial market, and by 2023 the high-rise plan was off the table.
What’s moving now is a different project entirely. Central Market went back to the drawing board and designed a standalone store at 3524 McKinney Ave. — a complete renovation of the existing building, without any of the high-rise component. The new design calls for about 60,000 square feet of retail space, parking across two levels, an open-concept cooking school that doubles as a community room, and a stage in the café area for live music.
Central Market filed a rezoning request with the city of Dallas in mid-2025. At the time, the company said it was targeting a 2026 construction start — though that was already a revised timeline, having originally said 2025. No groundbreaking has been publicly announced as of this writing, so the schedule is still contingent on permits…