What's Coming to Abilene: Kyle Paul on 1,000+ New Homes, New Commercial Developments, and Where the City Grows Next

Abilene is growing, and if you want to know where, it helps to ask the person buying the land.

Kyle Paul founded Kyle Paul Construction in 2016. In the decade since, he has built more than 700 homes across Abilene and developed the neighborhoods many of them sit in. We sat down with him for the first episode of our new podcast, This is Abilene, and he walked us through everything currently in the works.

Some of it hasn't been widely discussed. Here's what's coming.

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The 280 acres on Southwest Drive

The headline is a piece of land most Abilene residents have driven past their whole lives without thinking much about it.

Kyle has purchased 280 acres along Southwest Drive, covering both sides of the road from Elm Creek to Rebecca Lane. That's the corridor near the Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, and Walmart, and it's already one of the busiest stretches in that part of town.

The land had been held by a single family for roughly 40 years. The deal closed late last year, and master planning has been underway since. Crews are clearing the site now.

Kyle's assessment: "That's kind of the next breakout site for Abilene."

He's working with commercial development partners to attract tenants, and he was direct that he couldn't name any of them yet. But he was clear that these tenants could be some of the retail giants Abilene residents have been begging for!

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475 acres and close to 1,000 homes

Across the street from Highland Farms, between Buffalo Gap and Abilene, Kyle owns 475 acres that will become the largest master-planned community he has developed.

The plan calls for close to 1,000 homes, with substantial shared amenities like pools and a fitness center, and more still being worked out. It's the scale of development that Abilene hasn't really seen before, closer to what you'd find in a Dallas suburb than what's typical here.

Asked whether he'd build all thousand himself, he was honest about it: "That's a lot of homes to bite off." To date, he has been the exclusive builder in his developments, but he left the door open to partnering with other Abilene builders on a project this size.

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Meadow Crest: a New Neighborhood near Dyess AFB

For anyone stationed at or moving to Dyess Air Force Base, this one is worth watching.

Meadow Crest will sit off Dub Wright Boulevard, roughly a mile from the Dyess gate. It's a Dwell Homes neighborhood with 146 lots, built in a single phase rather than staged, with homes expected to be ready to build on in early 2027.

The price point is in the $300,000s, positioned a little more aggressively than The Harvest, with somewhat smaller homes. These will follow the "Dwell Homes Defined Custom Process," their approach to custom home building that simplifies the buyer experience by allowing buyers to choose from a selection of floor plans, finishes, and design options curated by their award-winning design team. This streamlined process keeps buyers on budget and on schedule while still creating a home that's uniquely theirs.

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The Harvest, Phase 3

Dirt work has already started on Phase 3 of The Harvest, adding 86 lots to a community planned for five total phases and more than 500 lots.

Homes there will be ready to build on in early 2027, priced between $400,000 and $500,000. Kyle is also revising the floor plan lineup for The Harvest, as the smallest plans are being retired, and the offering will extend up to 3,000 square feet, and will follow ther Defined Custom Process.

The Harvest has a state-of-the-art outdoor living space that boasts a sprawling pool, a relaxing covered cabana, in-pool tanning ledges, multiple outdoor grills, an event lawn for gatherings, and a lazy river, complete with a custom waterfall bridge, for kids big and small.

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New retail on South Clack

The South Clack development, where Five Guys, R-Lux, Teapeaocia, and more businesses have opened, isn't finished!

KidStrong is expected to open by the end of the year. It's a kids' fitness concept with memberships and camps, brought to Abilene by local ENT Jason Alvarado as the area franchisee.

Summer Moon is also expected to open their second Abilene location in this shopping strip.

And there's more coming just south of the existing buildings. Kyle is targeting a fall 2026 start on additional retail and restaurant space, designed with an indoor-outdoor feel.  In Kyle's words, it will have "a little bit more big city feel to it than just the traditional retail strip."

He couldn't name tenants. He did smile about it.

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Where does Abilene grow from here?

Kyle's hope is a city that has a population under 200,000. Making Abilene big enough for big-city amenities, but staying small enough to avoid big-city traffic.

On direction, his read is that all of it is still in play. Growth to the south faces a constraint most people don't know about: annexation rules changed, and the city can no longer involuntarily annex adjacent property. Residents have to request it. That makes pushing city limits southward difficult.

East toward Potosi has room. North has water capacity.

The biggest obstacle facing developers isn't direction at all. It's floodplain. Reclaiming land affected by it is difficult and expensive, and it shapes what's buildable more than most people realize.

Water availability is the other constraint. Before buying any large tract, Kyle's team commissions a feasibility study — if the utilities can't serve the number of meters a development needs, the land isn't worth buying at any price.

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What's coming, at a glance

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Thinking about new construction in Abilene?

Whether you're looking at The Harvest, watching for Meadow Crest, or trying to understand where the city is headed before you buy, we'd be glad to talk it through. We've been working alongside Abilene's builders for years, and we know these communities from the ground up.

Call or Text: (325) 603-8110 Email: info@harbinteam.com Website: www.tonyaharbin.com

The Tonya Harbin Team | Real Broker, LLC. | Real • Personal • Trustworthy

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Disclosure: Kyle Paul has had a professional relationship with the Tonya Harbin Team since 2017. We've represented Kyle as a seller, buyers in his communities, and he renovated our office. We think that context makes this conversation more useful, not less, but you should know it going in.

This interview is the first episode of This is Abilene, our podcast putting a face and a story to the people who build this city. Watch the full conversation on our YouTube channel.

Timelines, pricing, and plans described here reflect what was accurate at the time of the interview and are subject to change.