I made it out to old Chicago, or more formally The District at Highland Village. The Main Street is basically a strip mall with two-story.... I made it out to old Chicago, or more formally The District at Highland Village. The Main Street is basically a strip mall with two-story buildings. Sure, if you lived in one of the townhomes you could walk over to the coffee shop should one open in one of the storefronts, but make no mistake, this ain't old Chicago and it's not very urban.

There are some interesting observations to be made about the architecture. One buiilding I noticed had fake bricked-in windows as if this happened over time. It does add some texture. In the front. however there are windows that look like the bottoms were bricked in, perhaps to prevent break-ins? I'm not sure what they were thinking with that. The four-foot wrought iron fence the article in the Grapevine Courier mentioned appears to be steel and hollow. The nicest touch was a Dr. Pepper sign painted onto the brick side of one of the commercial buildings.

If it were built as infill in an existing urban area, I may like The District. Here in a far suburb, almost an hour drive from Dallas, I'm not sure how much sense it makes. Only one of five or so blocks of townhomes laid out have been built. If that's complete, there's no obvious place to expand, so growing into a larger town seems unlikely. You can look through the empty storefronts on the Main Street and see a subdivision with large suburban houses behind it. The rest of the area seems suburban-commercial. Without a street grid, making a left turn out of the place at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning proved impossible, instead opting for a right turn and loop through a gas station.

I think the appeal here is for retiring boomers who don't want yard work. Surely they serve that purpose, except for the fact that townhomes have two floors. Perhaps to some extent stair climbing can keep us healthy longer, but if I were in the position I think I'd look for a situation where I could stay in my own home as long as possible. That would likely mean one floor.

Take a look: