Drive east on US Highway 80 through Forney this month and the story writes itself: cranes, staked-out lots, a fresh Five Below sign, and enough orange construction fencing along Gateway Boulevard to convince anyone that this stretch of the city is where things are happening. Then take the exit into Historic Downtown and the story changes. The mural that's greeted Main Street for years is scheduled to come down for structural repair. No ribbon cuttings. No cranes. Just a quieter block getting ready for the busiest four months on its calendar.
Here's the part that surprises people who've only been watching the highway: as of mid-August 2026, almost none of the Gateway corridor's headline projects are actually open. Downtown, meanwhile, already has dates locked in from late September through the holidays. If you've been waiting on the corridor to catch up before you plan your fall, you'll be waiting past Christmas. If you've been ignoring downtown because a fence went up around one building, you're missing where Forney's calendar actually lives right now.
What's Actually Open on Gateway Boulevard Today
Two things. That's it.
H-E-B opened its 139,000-square-foot store at 11700 E. US Highway 80 on February 4, 2026, becoming the retailer's 11th location in the DFW Metroplex. It's a full-format store with a two-story True Texas BBQ restaurant, a pharmacy with drive-thru, and a fuel station with a car wash, and it's been open for six months now. Five Below opened nearby at 11610 E. US Highway 80 and has been serving customers since. Both are real, both are running, and both are the reason the corridor feels like it's already arrived.
Everything else people talk about when they talk about the Gateway boom, the second Chipotle, the BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse, Luna Grill, Taqueria Taxco, James Avery, is still somewhere between a permit and a groundbreaking. The Villages at Gateway is the umbrella name for this stretch of development, and it's genuinely becoming the area's primary retail destination. But "becoming" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
The Corridor's Real Timeline
Here's what's confirmed versus what's still on paper, based on the most recent permit filings and public announcements as of August 2026:
| Project | Location | Status as of August 2026 | Target Opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Second Chipotle Mexican Grill | 1970 Gateway Blvd, Suite 100 | Confirmed; $300,000 tenant finish-out planned | Construction begins Nov 16, 2026; opening targeted March 30, 2027 |
| BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse | Gateway corridor, 2.46-acre site currently vacant | Site plan went before Planning and Zoning Aug 6, 2026 | No date announced |
| Luna Grill | Gateway corridor | Listed as a target market on the company's own site | Summer 2026 company target, not yet locally confirmed |
| Taqueria Taxco | Strip near Peach Cobbler Factory | Sales tax permit issued July 9, 2026; signage up | Not announced |
| James Avery | Gateway address | Spring 2026 permit; confirmed by company press release | Fall 2026 target |
One detail worth clearing up if you already shop the corridor: the BJ's Wholesale Club has been open on Gateway for a while, and it's easy to assume the restaurant chain by a similar name is already there too. It isn't. BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse is a separate concept, and its site plan only reached the Planning and Zoning Commission this August. The wholesale club and the restaurant are unrelated companies sharing a name and a corridor, not the same project in two phases.
So the honest read on Gateway right now is this: it's the corridor with the most construction activity and the fewest open doors. The furthest-out date on that list, March 2027 for the second Chipotle, is more than seven months from today. If your mental map of Forney has this corridor as "basically finished," it's closer to a third of the way there.
Downtown Lost Its Mural. It Didn't Lose Its Calendar.
The mural at 117 E. Main Street is coming down, approved for removal by the Architectural Review Board at its June 23 meeting so the building underneath can get structural repairs. It's a visible piece of downtown's identity, and its absence is going to be noticeable for a while.
What isn't going anywhere is the calendar built around Bell Park, the Spellman Amphitheater, and the blocks between them. Brews on Bois D'Arc, the recurring downtown craft beer festival with live music and food trucks, has a September 26, 2026 date already on the books. It's a free event, though pets and outside alcohol aren't allowed. Three weeks after that, Forney Falloween returns on October 17, 2026. The event only launched in 2025, but it's already grown into a full downtown takeover around Bell Park: more than 40 candy booths, Halloween games and crafts, hourly contests, a family movie shown in the park, and a downtown market running alongside it.
National Night Out lands on Tuesday, October 6, which means the stretch between late September and mid-October has three separate community gatherings inside three weeks, none of which require driving anywhere near the highway. Further out, the city's downtown tree-lighting ceremony returns to Bell Park in early December with the usual mix of Christmas music, free hot chocolate, and a Santa appearance, carrying the calendar straight into the holidays.
The Spellman Amphitheater, which seats 5,000 and sits inside Forney Community Park, is the quiet workhorse behind a lot of this. It hosts concerts, festivals, movies, and theatrical productions across the year, and it's the kind of venue that makes a small city's event calendar look like a much bigger one's.
Why the Order Matters
Put the two timelines side by side and the picture flips from what the highway suggests. Gateway Boulevard is where Forney's retail future is being built, and it's a real future worth paying attention to. But the corridor's own paperwork says most of it won't be open until deep into 2027. Downtown, without a single new construction sign, already has a fall and winter calendar with names, dates, and locations attached.
If you're the kind of resident who plans weekends around what's actually happening rather than what's rumored to be opening, the next four months point downtown, not east on 80. The mural coming down is a real loss for how the block looks. It isn't a pause on what the block does. Brews on Bois D'Arc, Forney Falloween, National Night Out, and the tree lighting are all locked in, and none of them are waiting on a Chipotle.
That's usually how growth works in a city moving as fast as Forney is. The corridor everyone's watching for what's next is often behind the block everyone already knows how to use.
Whether you're settling into Forney for another season or just trying to figure out where the city's center of gravity actually sits these days, it helps to have someone paying attention to both sides of town. If you ever want to talk about what's changing here, or what any of it might mean down the road, Quentin Crayton is always glad to connect.
