Once a rural community in the Houston-Galveston MSA, Dickinson is quickly becoming a city hitting its stride. Situated between downtown Houston and Galveston along Interstate 45, Dickinson’s location makes it the perfect place for businesses and mixed-use development as it is minutes away from world-class medical, international travel, education, entertainment, and industry.
Dickinson established itself initially as a farming community alongside the Bayou. Formed along this navigable waterway around 1850, Dickinson became a central stop via the Henderson Railroad between Houston and Galveston. The primary attraction to the city was the local soil’s proven suitability for growing fruit, cane, berries, and potatoes, eventually becoming known as the Strawberry capital of the world.
During this time, Fred M. Nichols converted over 40 acres of his private estate into a public park known as the Dickinson Picnic Grounds. Over the next 3 decades, large groups came out from Galveston to picnic and holiday on the grounds. A Texas Coast Fair was organized there in 1896, and a harness racetrack where the great harness champion Dan Patch supposedly ran was built to attract more people to Dickinson. By 1911, the Galveston and Houston Electric Railway Company had 3 stops in Dickinson, and prominent Galvestonians had established the Oleander Country Club and built homes there.
Gambling became prominent in Dickinson and stayed active until 1957. When the state laws changed and outlawed gambling, Dickinson became a family community that enjoyed boating, canoeing, fishing within the Dickinson Bayou, and direct access to the Gulf of Mexico.
Today the City of Dickinson maintains a bedroom community feel sitting on the outskirts of the big city and covering about 10 square miles that are quietly nestled into a forested area along to the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike neighboring cities, Dickinson is not focused on heavy industry allowing the city to attract those who demand a better-relaxed quality of life away from the stresses associated with highly built-out industrial communities. Societies such as Texas City and La Porte, which Dickinson is between, are heavily industrialized, limiting their capacity to provide housing and a quality-of-life environment that most families desire.
Dickinson has a goal to attract qualified and quality businesses but to achieve this; we need to support our business community by providing a qualified workforce. In Dickinson, we have many partners to develop our workforce with proven success, starting with the Dickinson Independent School District. DISD is a highly rated school district, per the latest state accreditation status, ensuring our students graduating from high school have a quality foundation for employers and college.
The College of the Mainland is the county’s local Junior College and is working to open a satellite operation at the future I-45 / FM 517 mixed-use development. Within a short drive are many prestigious four-year colleges and universities.
The DEDC also has a business incubator where one of its tenants, a first of its kind 501c3 nonprofit organization called Higher Up Texas (HUT), has partnered with Dickinson ISD, AMOCO Federal Credit Union, College of the Mainland, and others that teach life skills to young adults and guide them to their successful futures. HUT saw the potential and recognized that the future workforce was in dire need of tools, connections, opportunities, and community to realize their career dreams and goals.
Dickinson’s industry focus is on providing retail spaces with high traffic counts, headquarters with expansive property to develop on, office space for both small and large businesses, and mixed-use developments.
The real-estate focus for Dickinson is centered around upscale affordable housing, rural living, and exquisite residential properties with direct access to the Dickinson Bayou and its tributaries. Many of the homes along Dickinson Bayou range from a quarter-acre property to estates that span over 17 acres. These bayou front properties are within attainable price ranges that offer the potential for investment, redevelopment, or renovations.
Dickinson is now focusing on being a business-friendly, resident-focused organization. The City’s efforts are locked in on infrastructure improvements, redevelopment of underutilized spaces, and expansion of transportation corridors to attract and incentivize commercial and mixed-use developments.
Currently, I-45 is undergoing a major multi-year renovation and expansion by the Texas Department of Transportation through the middle of our community at the crossroad of FM 517, a four-lane thoroughfare.
The highway expansion has already attracted a significant mixed-use development on a former underutilized 16-acre retail property. This development will front Dickinson Bayou and I-45 and incorporate the benefits of the bayou for a central hotel and conference center venue, class-A apartments, retail shopping, and quality dining establishments.
With the high traffic counts due to the freeway frontage, the city is in the process of developing a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone of about 135 acres. This TIRZ would allow existing businesses the opportunity to expand their operations while attracting developers who could redevelop underutilized interstate highway property. The available properties that border the Interstate allow for vertical development up to 6 stories without a variance per the City’s current land-use regulations.
Like any aging community, things change, and the city is working tirelessly to remain competitive. One effort to embrace change has been to allow Comcast and Frontier Communications to make Dickinson into a Fiber City by installing new fiberoptic lines and services to the homes and businesses throughout the community allowing speeds up to 1 Gigabit of internet speed. This also enables medical uses, trade desks, and headquarters of various sized industries to be competitive in today’s environment. As part of that change, the city and the Dickinson Economic Development Corporation recently hired Halff and Associates to create a new Comprehensive Plan, an Economic Strategic Plan, Future Land Use Zoning Plan, and to help City staff update city codes and ordinances to a unified development code.
Dickinson IS a business-friendly community with a desire to treat all developers and businesses as customers. In an effort to ensure that the development process is seamless and that businesses are able to obtain their permits and open their businesses with ease, the City has hired new staff who are experts in their field. The entire team is dedicated to ensuring the business community is provided with an excellent experience, while the community’s interests are protected. They recently welcomed a new City Planner, Communications Director, Technology Director, and Assistant City Manager.
Recently surpassing 20,000, Dickinson is in a growth boom with five housing subdivisions under construction. Four of them are along the Dickinson Bayou, and one is just off the bayou either for sale or rent products to allow for a very diverse clientele depending upon their needs. Other housing developers have been touring the city looking for property they can develop into for sale and rent offerings due to the demand facing Dickinson and the surrounding areas.
Housing growth creates opportunities and needs for commercial services along our significant corridors of Hwy 3, FM 517, FM 646, and I-45 to provide services to customers with an average income of $106,000 and high education.
Dickinson IS a city that has arrived. I invite you to explore the City of Dickinson, Texas, and be part of our success story that is being written by opening your business in our community. You’ll want to be a part of what’s coming.