If you’ve ever driven out to the Stockyards for a rodeo night, a show, or just an evening at Hotel Drover soaking up the vibe, you already know the pull of that place. Cobblestone streets on Exchange Avenue. Real longhorns walking right past you on the twice-daily cattle drive — the only one like it in the world, still running at 11:30am and 4pm most days. A rodeo every Friday and Saturday night at the historic Cowtown Coliseum. Billy Bob’s Texas, the world’s largest honky-tonk, lighting up under neon a few blocks over. It’s genuinely one of the few places in North Texas that still feels like Texas the way people picture it, and millions of visitors a year make the trip for exactly that.
Now a new $160 million project is coming to that same district — and this time, it comes with a genuinely good real estate story underneath it.
The Announcement
The company behind the new resort, Delightful Development, is partnering with Dallas-based Woodbine Development — the same company behind Reunion Tower — on a project at the northeast corner of Main and 23rd Street, right along Marine Creek.
A Familiar Name Behind This One
The person leading this project, Craig Cavileer, is actually the same executive who led the Stockyards’ original transformation years ago — Hotel Drover, Mule Alley, the whole modern feel of the district you already know. He’s since started his own company, Delightful Development, and this new resort is his next big swing at the same neighborhood, this time alongside Woodbine.
The plans are ambitious: two independently positioned luxury hotels totaling 225 rooms, a shared underground parking garage with more than 350 spaces, roughly 30,000 square feet of green space and entertainment area, a resort-style pool with cabanas overlooking Marine Creek, and close to 18,000 square feet of meeting space — including a 4,000-square-foot event barn and a 7,500-square-foot grand ballroom. A new promenade along the creek will connect the resort directly to Tim Love’s Lonesome Dove restaurant and the existing Mule Alley retail corridor via a low-water crossing.
It’s structured as a public-private partnership with the City of Fort Worth, and the tax increment reinvestment zone board overseeing the Stockyards approved the financing agreement on August 5. Groundbreaking is targeted for fall 2027, with an opening planned for spring 2030.
One More Thing
Woodbine’s involvement is a real thread worth watching here — this is a Dallas firm with deep roots (Reunion Tower among them) taking a serious swing at one of North Texas’s biggest tourist draws. It’s early. Groundbreaking is still more than a year out, and a 2030 opening means this is a long game. But it’s a genuinely fun one to watch unfold, and I wanted you to hear about it here first.
