Las Colinas

Las Colinas is a commercial and residential community on State Highway 183, Interstate highways 35E and 635, and Belt Line Road within the city of Irving and ten miles northwest of Dallas in western Dallas County. It is southeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. At the center of Las Colinas is Lake Carolyn; the community also includes the University of Dallas, North Lake Community College, Las Colinas Country Club, Texas Stadium, and the Trinity River Greenbelt Park. The site was settled during the late 1800s, and by the early 1900s a number of small towns, including Kit, Sowers, Finley, and Irving, were in the vicinity. In 1928 John W. Carpenter, father of the founder of Las Colinas, Ben Carpenter, established a ranch in the area; by 1959 the ranch, originally called Hackberry Creek Ranch, had grown to 6,000 acres. The ranch was renamed El Ranchito de Las Colinas (the little ranch of the hills) and was managed by John Carpenter's son Ben and Dan C. Williams. In the late 1960s the westward growth of Dallas prompted the men to develop the ranch as a residential area, but after plans for the D-FW Airport were revealed, Carpenter and Williams began developing a master-planned commercial and residential community. The project was to take some twenty years to complete and would originally encompass about 7,000 acres, 3,450 of which would be used for recreational and educational facilities and Lake Carolyn, a 125-acre man-made lake. The remaining acreage would include numerous business parks built around a public transportation system that would include the Mandalay Canal (a series of canals and water taxis) and the Area Personal Transit system (a system of elevated tracks and passenger vehicles that would serve 1,000 acres of Las Colinas). The community would also have residences for 50,000 people; the residences would be developed so as to preserve the natural setting.

The development of Las Colinas was announced on September 14, 1973, as a joint venture of Southland Financial Corporation (represented by corporate president Ben H. Carpenter and chairman Dan C. Williams) and its subsidiary, the Las Colinas Corporation (represented by chairman Wayne Hurd and president Ernest O. Perry). At the date of the announcement the Las Colinas Country Club had already been completed and two residential areas were under construction. University Hills Village was next to the country club, and Northgate Village was at the southern end of the community. Additional acreage had already been donated for the University of Dallas and for a park on the nearby Elm Fork of the Trinity River. The Dallas County Community College system had also secured a section of land in the community for North Lake College. Construction on the infrastructure began along State Highway 114 (the John W. Carpenter Freeway), and Allstate Insurance Company, the first corporation to settle in Las Colinas, bought a section of land in the site for its new regional office building. In the next two years Las Colinas developed slowly because of a poor economy, but by 1975, 627 acres had been fully developed and two business parks had also been completed.