Walk the Douglas Avenue side of Highland Park Village this month and you will hit plywood before you hit a storefront. The corner at Douglas and Mockingbird, the one shoppers use to cut from valet parking toward the Preston Road stores, has been narrowed by construction fencing since early summer. Regulars have started rerouting without asking why. That instinct to just walk around it is understandable, but it skips over what is actually a fairly unusual moment in the Village's ninety-five-year history.
The short version: this is not a tenant losing a lease or a single storefront getting a facelift. It is the first capital project the property's new ownership structure has put its name on, and the filing behind it tells you more about how that ownership intends to operate than the construction itself does.
Two Buildings, Not Seven
Highland Park Village is seven separate buildings arranged around Preston Road and Mockingbird Lane, on a block bounded by Preston, Mockingbird, Livingston Avenue and Douglas Avenue. Only two of those seven are inside the current construction footprint. Building C, which fronts Douglas Avenue, and Building D, at the corner of Douglas and Mockingbird, are the only structures affected. Everything on the Preston Road frontage and around the property's central court, where most of the weekend foot traffic actually happens, is untouched.
That distinction matters more than the dollar figure attached to the project. Building C and Building D are on the quieter edge of the property, away from the entrances most shoppers default to. If your Village routine runs through Sadelle's for brunch, Cafe Pacific for a client dinner, Bistro 31 for a weekday lunch, or Mi Cocina on a Friday night, none of that changes. The construction is real, but it is contained to a corner most people only pass through, not the one they linger in.
Here is what is actually inside the fence line, according to the filing:
| Building | Frontage | Square Footage Added | Tenants Inside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building C | Douglas Avenue | 3,500 sq ft | Oscar De La Renta, Ceron Highland Park |
| Building D | Corner of Douglas & Mockingbird | 7,000 sq ft | Balmain, Veronica Beard, Brunello Cucinelli, Loro Piana, Vacheron Constantin |
That is 10,500 square feet total, a modest addition against a property that spans roughly 250,000 square feet across all seven buildings. This is not a redevelopment. It is a targeted expansion of two of the smaller structures on the block.
The Number That Cut Itself in Half
The filing itself is where this story gets interesting. Highland Park Village LP submitted plans to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation in mid-April 2026 with an estimated project cost of $25 million. Four days later, that number was revised down to $11 million in the same filing window, before a shovel had even touched the ground.
A swing that size, in that short a window, usually means one of two things. Either the initial number was a placeholder meant to leave room for scope changes without triggering a new filing, or the actual construction plan firmed up fast once the ownership group settled on what it wanted. Either way, the lesson for anyone tracking this project is not to treat the filed dollar figure as fixed. State filings of this kind are explicitly preliminary, and this one already proved it inside a single week. If the number moves again before the work wraps, that would be consistent with how the project has behaved so far, not a red flag.
Who Is Actually Behind the Fence
The name on the permit is Highland Park Village LP, managed by Gillon Property Group. That entity did not exist before August 2025. It was formed to consolidate the Washburne and Hunt-Hill family real estate holdings, the same family that has controlled Highland Park Village since 2009, when Ray Washburne, founder of the Mi Cocina restaurant chain, and his wife Heather Hill Washburne bought the property for $170 million alongside Heather's sister Elisa Hill Summers and her husband. Heather Hill Washburne is the granddaughter of Margaret Hunt Hill and the great-granddaughter of H.L. Hunt, which places this ownership squarely inside one of the state's longest-running real estate dynasties.
Gillon Property Group's own announcement described Highland Park Village as the centerpiece of a portfolio that includes 81 properties across ten states and more than 14 million square feet, with Drew Steffen, who previously ran Highland Park Village's management company directly, now serving as the consolidated firm's president and CEO. In other words, this is not a new owner learning the property. It is the same team that has run it for over fifteen years, now operating under a formal corporate structure for the first time, and choosing the Village as the first place to put its name on a construction filing.
The architect of record is Omniplan, the same firm that has handled prior renovations at the property, including the rooftop social club conversion at Building G. That continuity is worth noting for anyone worried that new corporate ownership means a different look or feel. The filing suggests otherwise. This reads as the same incremental, tenant-driven approach the Village has used for decades, just under a new operating name.
When asked directly about the plans, a Village spokesperson kept it brief: "We have no details to share at this time, but are excited about the upcoming plans." That is not a denial or a delay signal. It is a property that has not finished deciding what goes into the finished space, which tracks with a filing that changed its own cost estimate before construction even started.
The Timeline to Actually Watch
The filing lists a start date of June 1, 2026, and a completion date of June 1, 2027. If that holds, the fencing residents are seeing now is roughly three months into a twelve-month window, putting completion sometime around early summer next year. TDLR filings carry a standard disclaimer that details are subject to change, so treat that date as a working estimate rather than a locked calendar entry. Given that the cost estimate already moved once before ground was broken, a shift in the completion date would not be surprising.
For daily purposes, that means most of the next several months look like what residents are seeing right now: a fenced corner at Douglas and Mockingbird, full access everywhere else, and no announced changes to hours, parking, or valet routing on the Preston Road side.
What This Actually Tells You
The easy read on construction fencing at a luxury shopping center is that something is wrong, a tenant left, a lease fell through, the property is scaling back. The filing says the opposite. A newly consolidated family ownership group chose two of the property's smaller, less visible buildings as its first visible investment, kept the same architect who has handled the Village's renovations for years, and is expanding square footage rather than removing it. That is a bet on continuity, not a retreat.
For anyone who has lived near Highland Park Village long enough to remember previous renovation cycles, that pattern will look familiar. The property has been renovated in careful, incremental phases for decades, expanding without changing its Spanish-Mediterranean style or its status as a National Historic Landmark. This project fits that same shape. The fencing on Douglas Avenue is not the Village changing. It is the Village's owners proving, four days into their own cost estimate, that they are still doing this the same way they always have.
If you are watching Highland Park or University Park for reasons that go beyond a Saturday shopping trip, whether that is a future move, a home sale, or simply understanding how a neighborhood anchor is evolving, Sharon Quist tracks these kinds of shifts as part of her ongoing work in the Park Cities and surrounding luxury corridors. Request a private consultation with Sharon to talk through what current changes at the Village and elsewhere in the neighborhood mean for your specific plans.
