The $130M mixed-use development is coming to the University Hills area.
By Neal Franklin
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Women Breaking Ground
A group of women developers is planning a development in a southern Dallas neighborhood near where many of them grew up.
Women Breaking Ground is a collective of Black women developers and women in real estate who are working together in a field they say is male-dominated. The real estate industry doesn’t have a lot of women, said Rhonda Pratt, a co-developer at Women Breaking Ground.
“When you go to construction sites and you see these high rises going up, you’re lucky to find a woman doing anything in a hard hat,” Pratt said. “Even more so in the lead role, per se, which is the developer.”
Women Breaking Ground is putting more women in lead roles with a $130 million mixed-use development called Airborne at University Hills. The planned development will include retail space, multiple housing options and a hotel.
The 11.4-acre project at 7303 University Hills Blvd., near the University of North Texas Dallas campus, is set to start this spring. The nonprofit development group will host a groundbreaking event on Arbor Day as a fundraiser for the project.
Valerie Ballard, a developer who brought many of the project’s co-developers on board, said the planned development has 240 units and a hotel with 33 rooms called The Valor Hotel. The units will include spaces for students, seniors and some single-family homes.
The development will also have housing for veteran families. The project’s name, Airborne, is a reference to Ballard’s father Jesse Staten who served in an Airborne unit in the Vietnam War.
Women Breaking Ground was created when women started connecting with Ballard and expressing interest in real estate development after she was featured in news articles for her work on a tiny home project on West Elmore, Ballard said.
Many of the women involved with the project were in the real estate field, but weren’t necessarily developers.
Pratt worked at Health and Human Services implementing project management initiatives in the state. Others had flipped homes, worked in commercial development and other areas of real estate, she said.
Women comprise about 38% of the commercial real estate industry, according to a 2025 study conducted by CREW Network. Meanwhile, Black real estate developers represent about 0.4% of their industry, according to a 2023 report by Grove Impact.
Women Breaking Ground aims to shake up the industry and pull women together, Pratt said.
Pratt and Ballard both went to David W. Carter High School, about three miles from the development site. Ballard invited Pratt to the project after learning about Pratt’s work consulting in real estate.
Lorraine Love-Taylor, a co-developer on the project, has been a real estate agent for about 17 years. She said she’s always been passionate about becoming a developer and this project is an opportunity to help college students and the elderly.
Keesha Moore, a co-developer and president of African American Real Estate Professionals Dallas-Fort Worth, said she met Ballard through the professionals group and the organization locked arms with her on her project.
Moore said she wanted to work on the development because it was one of the communities where she grew up.
“I’m familiar with the area and I want to see the growth happen in the area that I grew up in, because it’s just been pushed to the back burner and nobody really wanted to do anything,” Moore said. “Now is the time for that to happen, and I want to be a part of that growth.”
Neal Franklin is a real estate writer for the Dallas Morning News. He previously worked as a business reporter at the Lincoln Journal Star.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
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