Two summers ago, "going out in Celina" meant walking a lap around the Downtown Square, ordering chicken fried steak at Lucy's, and calling it a night. That map still works. It just isn't the whole map anymore.
The story of Celina's 2026 summer is that the town now has two centers of gravity, and they behave differently. The historic Square is doubling down on cadence, small operators, and events that repeat every few weeks. South Preston Road is doing the opposite: absorbing national chains, a warehouse anchor, and a Weitzman-developed lifestyle district built around a six-acre pond. If you already live here, understanding which pole a given Friday belongs to is the difference between a fifteen-minute drive that feels worth it and one that doesn't.
The Preston Road corridor is where the chains are landing
The single date that will reshape a lot of grocery routines is August 26. Costco is set to open its new Celina location on August 26th, 2026, with the exterior fully complete, permanent signage installed, and parking lot landscaping planted as crews finalize the interior buildout. That is a Wednesday, which matters if you have been driving to the Frisco or Plano warehouses on weekends to avoid the crowds. The first two or three Saturdays after opening will not be the time to test the Celina store.
The Costco is one piece of a larger cluster forming along South Preston. Texas favorite Torchy's Tacos opened its newest outpost in Celina, at 3505 S. Preston Road, Ste. 120, debuting on Wednesday, April 15. A few doors down, Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe is opening at 3515 S. Preston Road, a franchise owned by Celina resident Jesse Murphy, who also owns the Pickleman's in McKinney, with a menu of sandwiches, pizzas, mac and cheese bowls, soups and salads. Blaze Pizza, known for its fast-fired custom pizzas, is heating up The Crossing at Moore Farms in 2026 at 3515 S. Preston Road, Ste. 130. Firehouse Subs is opening early 2026 near Preston Road and John Campbell Trail. And for the parents who have been driving kids to shoe stores in other suburbs, a brand-new Academy Sports + Outdoors is coming to Celina in 2026 at nearly 64,000 square feet, located at 3525 S. Preston Road.
Read that address list again. Three of those storefronts share the same block number. That is not accidental clustering. It is a strip designed the way strips get designed in North Texas: one anchor, a queso spot, a sandwich franchise, and a pizza counter, all sharing a parking lot. If your household ran out of "quick weeknight dinner" options in Celina last year, that shortage is being solved on one specific stretch of Preston Road this summer.
The Square is answering with cadence, not chains
The Downtown Square could have watched all this happen and lost the argument. It isn't. Its strategy is repetition.
Celina's Friday Night Market runs its 2026 summer season on the Downtown Square, with the July 10 and August 7 markets from 6 to 9 PM at 141 N Ohio St. A market that shows up on the same Friday every month trains a habit in a way a one-off festival never can. Pair that with the fact that Celina's events collectively draw over 100,000 attendees each year, and the Square's role becomes clear: it is the town's living room, not its pantry.
The Square is also getting new tenants that lean into that living-room identity. Nowhere Bar, a new bar and restaurant, is taking over the old Jimbo's Pizza location in downtown Celina, owned by Taylor Witt and Katie Dunn of the Little Wooden Penguin, and will be a "fun version of a dive bar" with burgers, beers, sports, shuffleboard, and a redone patio, opening this summer. A dive bar with shuffleboard, three blocks from an early-1900s brick building where Lucy's serves pie, is a very specific bet. It is a bet that people who live in Celina want a walkable evening they can extend past 8 PM without driving anywhere.
Lucy's, for its part, is the constant. Lucy's on the Square resides in a more than 100-year-old brick building in Celina, Texas, about an hour away from the hectic bustle of Dallas. A block over, The Wick is open Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 8-3 and Friday and Saturday 8-7, right off the square in downtown Celina at 107 S Colorado St. Those two anchors plus a Friday Night Market plus a summer dive-bar opening is a functioning downtown ecosystem.
The summer calendar, in one glance
Here is where the two poles land, week by week, for the rest of the season.
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| July 10 (Fri) | Celina Friday Night Market | Downtown Square, 141 N Ohio St |
| August 7 (Fri) | Celina Friday Night Market | Downtown Square |
| August 21 (Fri) | Movie Night at the Park: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie | Old Celina Park |
| August 26 (Wed) | Costco Celina opens | South Preston corridor |
Splash & Blast, Celina's fireworks night, ran June 27 at Old Celina Park from 5 PM, so if you missed it this year, mark the last Saturday in June for 2027. Movie Night at the Park is set for August 21 at 7 PM, screening The Super Mario Galaxy Movie at Old Celina Park. Bring low chairs. Old Celina Park's slope reads shorter than it is once the sun drops.
The Creeks at Celina, and why the pond matters
If Preston Road is the pantry and the Square is the living room, The Creeks at Celina is trying to be the porch.
The Creeks at Celina is a boutique 28,000-square-foot lifestyle and dining destination situated at the northwest corner of the Dallas North Tollway and Frontier Parkway, developed by Weitzman and designed as a high-end "social porch" for West Celina, unique for its integration with a 6-acre scenic pond, featuring restaurant end-caps with large waterfront patios. It sits a half-mile east of the new H-E-B and is positioned as the primary "daily needs" hub for the Light Farms and Sutton Fields communities. Its early anchors are Haraz Coffee House and Capo's Pizza & Pasta.
A pond is the tell. Every North Texas suburb has strip retail. Very few of them build patios that face six acres of water. If you live in Light Farms or Sutton Fields and you have been driving twenty minutes to Frisco to find a coffee shop with an outdoor seat that isn't three feet from a parking lane, this is what changes that. If you live on the east side of Celina, it probably doesn't rearrange your Saturday, and it isn't supposed to. The Creeks is regional in ambition and hyperlocal in daily function.
What to do this weekend if you already live here
A practical read on how these three poles fit into an actual summer weekend:
- Friday evening, cadence mode. Walk the Square from the corner of Ohio and Walnut. Grab dinner at Lucy's or coffee and a swirl at The Wick, then hit the Friday Night Market if the date lines up. If Nowhere Bar is open by the date you read this, that is your last-stop shuffleboard.
- Saturday morning, errands mode. Preston Road. If you have kids who have grown out of last summer's cleats, Academy at 3525 S. Preston Road solves that in one stop. Torchy's for lunch after.
- Saturday evening, porch mode. Drive to The Creeks at the corner of the Dallas North Tollway and Frontier Parkway. Order Capo's, walk the pond loop, let the kids run out the last hour of daylight.
- Sunday, event mode. Check what is on at Old Celina Park. In August, that includes the Super Mario Galaxy screening on the 21st. In September and October, the calendar shifts back to Beware! of the Square and Celina Oktoberfest, both on the Downtown Square.
There is a version of this summer where a Celina resident spends every weekend on one of those three poles and never repeats themselves. Two years ago that was not true. It is a real change, and it is worth noticing before the tenant list on Preston Road settles and the story stops being interesting.
If your household is starting to feel the pull of a different Celina neighborhood — closer to the Preston corridor, closer to Light Farms and The Creeks, or closer to the Square where the evenings are walkable — that is a conversation worth having before the summer's new addresses start moving comparable sales. The Mendez RE Group works Celina and the surrounding Collin County suburbs with a bilingual, family-first approach, and we are happy to talk through what your current home is worth in this market. Get Your Free Home Valuation and we will take it from there.
