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.
If it opens, the Uptown location would be the 11th Central Market in Texas. The chain currently runs ten stores statewide, including three in Dallas: Lovers Lane, Midway, and Preston Royal.
For Uptown residents who have watched that corner sit empty through multiple rounds of promises, skepticism is earned. The standalone store is a more realistic plan than the skyscraper it replaced, and Central Market appears to be working through the permitting process in earnest. But this project has missed deadlines before, and “2026” joins a short list of target years that have come and gone.
The corner of McKinney and Lemmon has heard this before.
