ANNA, Texas — A new City Hall and fire station are under construction in Anna, a city of about 20,000 residents 42 miles north of Dallas along U.S. Highway 75.
A new 85-acre, rail-served business park with infrastructure is available for the next wave of growth.
The massive Mantua development straddling Anna and Van Alstyne is expected to have more than 6,000 homes and over 600 acres of commercial, office, and mixed-use space.
The way Mayor Nate Pike sees it, Anna is a still-small but fast-growing city with big plans.
“In 2017, we really started changing the overall culture of the city,” Pike said on a recent exclusive tour of the city with the Dallas Business Journal.
“We were a place that was real quiet. No one heard a lot out of Anna. But I, along with the City Council at the time, had big visions for what could be accomplished in Anna.”
As people, homes and businesses push northward from Dallas-Fort Worth through Frisco and McKinney, the area next in line is Anna.
Pike, who was elected mayor in November 2017, has overseen a nearly total makeover of the city staff.
Anna is one of the five fastest-growing cities in North Texas, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show. The city limit sign from 2010 says the population is 8,249 but Pike puts the number of residents closer to 20,000 today. By 2050, the city will have a population of more than 100,000 if the current pace of growth continues, he said.
Anna has issued more than 2,500 single-family building permits since 2018. To put that in perspective, the city issued about 2,300 building permits between 2010 and 2018.
“We’re getting people moving in from all over the country right now,” Pike said. “We’ve got people from California moving in. It’s interesting to watch. As we see new people coming into town, they’re from all over the place. Different cultures. Different backgrounds.”
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