During a city hall meeting on June 5, 2023, Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney was asked multiple questions about Universal Studios' new location's future.
When asked about a timeline, Cheney explained that Universal is in the design stages, but groundbreaking is expected later this.
“They are under design currently, my understanding is, with the intent to break ground by the end of this year with the potential delivery of that project in 2026 I believe as far as an opening date,” Cheney said.
The topic of traffic was also brought up again despite numerous meetings and studies held on the issue. Cheney said the traffic aspect is likely to most misunderstood part of the project.
“This project will actually be a traffic mitigation tool because it will actually generate less traffic counts and it would be off-peak traffic counts,” he said. "So rather than having high-rise office and multifamily where you may have 30,000 car trips a day kind of coming in and out at peak times, this would be about I think it was like a fifth of the traffic counts, and it’s spread out throughout the day.”
According to Cheney, the upcoming Universal project is a compact regional park designed to draw visitors within a maximum radius of approximately three hours by car. Universal Studios Frisco is expected to attract up to 20,000 visitors a day and more than 1,100 vehicle trips an hour during peak times.
“So our engineering team is very confident in our infrastructure plans,” Cheney said. “A big part of it is really the $200 million of roads that’s being invested right now. That was already planned before this project was announced and started design.”
Cheney gave no other information on the project, but Universal maps give residents an idea of what is to come.
Local Profile previously reported that on the city’s Universal page, all plans and studies are available to the public.
This story was originally published on June 8, 2023.
