Stand at the corner of Hunt and Tennessee streets this month and you'll see two buildings that have sat empty for a year and a half, now half gone. The former McKinney City Hall, a converted 1950s bank building, and the old Development Services building next to it were vacated in January 2025 when the city moved into a new Municipal Community Complex east of Highway 5. City council approved a demolition contract with RNDI Companies in March 2026, work started in April, and officials told the public it would take about three months. By that math, the lot should be cleared or close to it as you read this.

That single demolition is a small fact. What it sets off is not. If you pull up listings for "downtown McKinney" or "Historic McKinney" this week across different sites, you will get four different answers to a simple question: what does a home here actually cost?

• One neighborhood-boundary tracker shows a sold median of $599,000 for the historic district, down 8 percent year over year, with homes moving in 38 days.
• The asking-price version of that same boundary shows a $698,500 median list and a $710,895 average sale, with homes sitting closer to 54 days.
• Zip code 75069, which stretches well past the historic core, shows an average price near $940,000 as of May 2026, a number pulled up hard by some of the district's priciest properties, including large lots on Parker and Waddill streets.
• A separate portal's "Downtown McKinney" search returns a $429,000 median list price, but its own list of comparable neighborhoods for that search includes Stonebridge Ranch and Craig Ranch, both master-planned communities miles from the square.

None of those four numbers is wrong. They are drawing different lines on the same map, and one of those lines includes streets that have nothing to do with the historic downtown a buyer thinks they're looking at. The real story isn't a soft market or a hot one. It's that downtown McKinney is mid-construction on a scale that changes what a listing near the square actually means depending on which block it sits on.

A Government Building Doesn't Usually Move a Market. This One Is.

McKinney voters approved a $50 million bond in 2019 to fund a new city hall, because administrative and parks staff were spread across nine leased buildings costing the city $650,000 a year in rent. The new Municipal Community Complex, designed by Lake|Flato around the city's historic flour mill and set on 13 acres east of Highway 5, opened in January 2025. It includes a public art installation by Guido van Helten depicting a Juneteenth celebration and ties into the city's hike and bike trail network toward Old Settler's Park.

That move is why the old buildings at Hunt and Tennessee sat vacant for so long before anyone touched them. The city spent 2023 through most of 2025 trying to strike a redevelopment deal, including negotiations with a private partner, M2G Ventures, that fell apart in May 2025. Development Services Executive Director Michael Quint told council the project had gotten through "4.5 phases out of 6" before it stalled, and staff went back to the drawing board that August. Demolition wasn't approved until March 2026, nearly a year and a half after the buildings emptied out.

Quint has also been direct about what residents should expect during the work itself. As he told council in March, officials plan to keep every downtown business accessible on foot even while the corner is torn up:

"We recognize that folks are worried about the business impacts of this type of construction. As we've done with every downtown redevelopment project, we will make sure that every business has pedestrian access to it."

That reassurance matters for anyone touring homes nearby right now. The disruption is being managed, but it is not brief.

The Private Developer That Was Already Waiting

The city isn't the only party moving on this corner. A private developer, McKinneyEast, has assembled roughly 75 acres directly adjacent to the new Municipal Community Complex, bounded by Highway 5, Highway 380, and Airport Drive. Their own plan describes the goal as a walkable "live-work-learn-play" district built around the older East McKinney neighborhoods, with a master plan from architecture firm Corgan outlining a 32-acre core of restaurants, multifamily housing, offices, a hotel, and a conference center, plus an additional 28 acres reserved for future phases.

This is the part of the story that explains the timing rather than just the geography. A private developer doesn't assemble 75 acres next to a government building on a whim. The city's $100 million-plus investment in relocating and rebuilding its own civic core functioned as the signal that made East McKinney worth betting on. The Municipal Community Complex isn't just a new city hall. It's the thing that made the land next to the old one valuable enough to redevelop.

Two Years of Construction Stand Between Now and the Payoff

Here is the friction a buyer needs to price in before comparing a listing near the square to one three blocks away. The city has laid out a two-phase infrastructure plan for Hunt, Tennessee, and Lamar streets, rebuilding water, sewer, storm drainage, and sidewalks in the footprint around the old city hall site. Phase one is expected to run from late 2026 to late 2027. Phase two follows from early 2028 to late 2028.

Layered on top of that, the city is in schematic design for a parking garage at Hunt and Kentucky that could hold anywhere from 330 to 630 spaces across up to six levels. If that garage gets built, Central Park would need to relocate to the east side of its current lot, on a timeline officials haven't set yet. Meanwhile, the Texas Department of Transportation is separately reconstructing Highway 5 itself in phases, and the city is extending Virginia Street toward Airport Drive with construction anticipated to begin in mid-2026.

Individually, none of these projects is unusual for a growing city. Together, they mean that a home sitting inside this construction footprint through 2028 is a different asset than a home on a quiet residential street a quarter mile away that never sees a lane closure. Both might get called "walk to the square" in a listing description. They are not carrying the same near-term experience.

Why the Numbers Split the Way They Do

This is where the pricing data starts to make sense instead of contradicting itself. The historic district's sold-price boundary, the one showing a median down 8 percent, is likely picking up more transactions on or near the active construction corridor, where sellers are pricing in disruption and buyers are negotiating accordingly. The asking-price version of that same boundary, sitting nearly $100,000 higher, may be capturing listings deeper into the residential core, where century-old homes on Church, Waddill, and Parker streets carry a scarcity premium that has nothing to do with what's happening at Hunt and Tennessee.

The zip-code average near $940,000 is doing something different again. It's blending in the district's largest lots and highest sale prices with a 1920s bungalow two blocks over, which is exactly the kind of blended number that tells you less the more precisely you look at it. And the portal listing homes in Stonebridge Ranch and Craig Ranch under a "Downtown McKinney" label is simply using a boundary too broad to mean anything at all.

None of this is a data error. It's four different ways of drawing a line through a neighborhood that is, right now, split between a construction zone and everything around it.

What This Means If You're Looking at a Listing Near the Square

Before comparing a downtown McKinney listing to a median price you found online, ask which side of Hunt and Tennessee it actually sits on. A home within the infrastructure footprint slated for 2026 through 2028 work is going to carry more noise, more traffic detours, and potentially more parking disruption over the next two years than a home a few blocks into the residential historic district. That's not a reason to avoid the area. It's a reason to time your expectations correctly and to ask a listing agent directly which construction phase, if any, touches that specific block.

It's also worth watching what the city decides to do with the old city hall parcel itself. Quint has said the McKinney Economic Development Corporation is in early, informal conversations about redeveloping that site for office use, testing market interest rather than issuing a formal request for proposals. If that becomes a daytime office population walking distance from the square, it changes the retail and restaurant math for everyone living nearby, in a way that won't show up in any median price for another few years.

A Few Direct Questions

Is the demolition at Hunt and Tennessee finished? Based on the city's own timeline, work that began in April 2026 and was expected to take about three months should be complete or very close to it. The site will likely sit as a cleared lot while infrastructure and redevelopment plans move forward.

Will the old city hall site become homes or offices? As of the most recent council update, the city was exploring an office redevelopment through a partnership with the McKinney Economic Development Corporation, still in early, informal stages.

How long will construction affect downtown? Plan on multiple years. Public infrastructure work on Hunt, Tennessee, and Lamar streets runs in two phases through the end of 2028, with the Highway 5 reconstruction and Virginia Street extension proceeding on separate but overlapping timelines.

If you're weighing a home near Historic Downtown McKinney against something in Trinity Falls, Craig Ranch, or another North Texas community, the median price alone won't tell you what you need to know right now. The team at Patton International Properties can walk a specific block against this construction timeline with you, compare it honestly to what else is available across Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties, and help you figure out what you're actually buying before you make an offer. Let's Connect.