The Missing Piece Between M3 Ranch and Mansfield's New Costco Opens This Month

If you have driven to the new Chuy's on US-287 this summer, you already know the drill. You leave M3 Ranch, head out toward Heritage Parkway, and then you loop. Maybe you cut over through the frontage road, maybe you take the long way around Lone Star Road, but either way it feels longer than it should for a restaurant that is, on a map, practically in your backyard.

There is a reason for that. The road that would make this a straight shot is not finished yet. But the construction filings say it is supposed to be done right about now.

The Corridor Already Has a Pulse

South Mansfield's retail scene has been filling in fast along US-287 and the Lone Star Road corridor, and some of it is already open for business. Chuy's opened at 640 N. US-287 after a construction run that wrapped in late 2025, and it has been serving Tex-Mex to Mansfield diners long enough that reviews are still rolling in this August. A few doors down, BoomerJack's Grill & Bar opened in a newly built space at 660 N. US-287 back in March, bringing wall-to-wall sports TVs and two patios to a stretch of highway that did not have much of a nightlife scene a year ago.

The bigger draw is still finishing up. Mansfield's first-ever Costco has been under construction at the northeast corner of Lone Star Road and FM 917, a 157,281-square-foot warehouse with its own fuel station, built at a cost north of $19 million. Permit filings targeted substantial completion by May 21, 2026. Membership warehouses typically open within weeks of hitting that kind of construction milestone, so the store that has had a fence around it all spring is very likely stocking pallets and running samples by now. For anyone who has been making the drive to the Arlington, Hurst, or Fort Worth locations for a bulk grocery run, that is not a small thing.

Two more names are on the way but not there yet. LongHorn Steakhouse has filed plans for a 5,780-square-foot restaurant at 610 N. US-287, with construction scheduled to wrap by December 14, 2026, putting an actual opening somewhere in late 2026 or early next year. Hideaway Pizza broke ground on an 8,514-square-foot location at 680 State Highway 87 in early July, with a target completion of March 8, 2027. Neither one is seating guests yet, no matter what a passing glance at the construction site might suggest.

The Road You Already Live On

Here is the part that does not show up in any of the restaurant announcements. That Costco sits at the corner of Lone Star Road and FM 917, and FM 917 is the same road M3 Ranch residents know as Heritage Parkway. It is the road the neighborhood's own entrance sits on. Drive directions to M3 Ranch from I-35W tell you to exit onto FM 917, also called Heritage Parkway, and follow it 10.8 miles before turning into the community. Coming the other way from SH 360, it is a 2.8-mile stretch of the same road.

In other words, the new Costco and your neighborhood's front gate are on the same street. What is missing is the connection between them. A construction project extending Heritage Parkway south of Lone Star Road has been underway, with an estimated completion date of around this month. Once that segment opens, the road you already drive to get in and out of M3 Ranch becomes a direct line to the corridor, instead of a route that dead-ends short of it and forces the loop around through 287.

That gap between the retail opening and the road catching up is a big part of why this corridor has not felt real yet to people who live a few minutes away. The businesses got built faster than the connector did.

Why the Chains Showed Up Here First

None of this is happening in isolation. Reporting on the LongHorn project traced the timing back to a much larger residential plan south of Mansfield, one that could add roughly 10,000 homes to the area over time. National chains do not plant a flag on a stretch of highway because the view is nice. They do it because the rooftop count is about to change, and a warehouse retailer the size of Costco does not typically anchor a corridor unless it expects sustained traffic for years, not months.

For M3 Ranch, that means the corridor filling in outside your gate is not a short-term retail experiment. It is the leading edge of a commercial district that is scaled for a lot more growth than what has opened so far.

What This Actually Changes This Fall

If you have been avoiding the Lone Star Road side of town because the drive felt clumsy, that is about to stop being true. Once the Heritage Parkway extension opens, the calculation on a Saturday morning changes. A Costco run stops being a 20-plus minute trip out of the neighborhood and starts being a stop you make on the way to somewhere else.

In the meantime, the reasons to stay close to home have not gone anywhere. M3 Ranch's own amenity center, a 9.5-acre spread with a clubhouse, splash pad, playgrounds, and a resort-style pool overlooking a 3-acre pond, still hosts the neighborhood's community events and dive-in movie nights. The hike-and-bike trails that wind through the community's nearly 900 acres are not affected by any of the construction happening a few miles south. If anything, the next few months are a good stretch to keep doing what you are already doing inside the neighborhood while the road work outside it finishes catching up.

Worth watching over the next two seasons: LongHorn Steakhouse's construction timeline points to a late 2026 or early 2027 opening, and Hideaway Pizza just broke ground in July with a target of spring 2027. Neither is close enough to plan a dinner around yet, but both are confirmed enough to expect them to actually happen. The corridor is still assembling itself one permit at a time, and the Heritage Parkway connection is the piece that turns it from "somewhere near M3 Ranch" into "the other end of your own street."

If you are watching this corner of Mansfield change and wondering what it means for your home's value or your next move, that is exactly the kind of question Sandefur Realty Group tracks for clients living in M3 Ranch and across the rest of the DFW Metroplex. Reach out for a free home consultation and get a read on how this stretch of growth is shaping the neighborhood you already call home.