Our yearlong exploration of Grapevine Mills ends with a festive excursion on one of the City's most well-known attractions: the North Pole Express. But this themed train ride is more than one of 1,400 events in the Christmas Capital of Texas. It's also an important resource for one very important organization working to welcome new residents and economically disadvantaged families to Grapevine ..read more

Our ongoing tour of Grapevine Mills dives deeper into the shopping center than ever before, bypassing iconic destination retail and entertainment offerings to drop in on an area few guests ever see: a fully functional police substation right on site! Hear from officers who patrol and train on the grounds (and the management who are thrilled to host them, even if a few TVs are harmed in the process) in this, the penultimate episode of 'Growing Grapevine,' Season 2 ..read more

The next stop on our grand tour of Grapevine Mills comes with polished wood floors and family entertainment aplenty! Join us as we examine the public-private partnership that turned a JC Penny Outlet into a service for residents all across Dallas-Fort Worth. Fieldhouse USA solved a few problems for Grapevine's award-winning Parks and Recreation Department... including one massive expansion you'll never see coming ..read more

Grapevine, Texas is synonymous with dining, retail, and entertainment. But one of the City's fastest-growing companies is actually an unlikely tech startup: Sera Systems, a software developer serving technicians in the plumbing and HVAC space, is a multi-million-dollar publicly traded company with an unassuming headquarters just off Main Street. In this episode, our tour of Grapevine Mills pauses for a bathroom break so that we can interview the entrepreneur behind Sera and its sister company/beta testing field, BillyGo. You won't want to miss the story behind this unlikely pairing of pipes an ..read more

Our tour of Grapevine Mills takes an exciting turn down Main Street, thanks to the startup-friendly culture at Simon and in the City of Grapevine! In this month's episode, you'll meet Rachel Townsend-Cerny, owner and gallerist at RTown Art Gallery. A Grapevine native and the product of GCISD schools, Rachel is determined to grow the arts in her hometown. And she's not alone. Katy Lemieux and Valerie Walizadeh took a lifelong dream to Kickstarter and launched the City's first independent bookstore! Their improbable journey is just the beginning as we dive into the power of Grapevine, a post-CO ..read more

There's no shortage of cutting-edge entertainment users in Grapevine, but one batch predates the majority of well-known concepts. The Merlin Entertainments cluster - which consists of a LEGOland Discovery Center, a SeaLife Aquarium, and the first American Peppa Pig World of Play - draws hundreds of thousands of people into the City every year. In fact, their parent company is second only to Disney for visitor attraction. Join us as we explore the first truly revolutionary tenants of Grapevine Mills... and, of course, the daring sea turtle rescues associated with their work ..read more

This month, our tour of Grapevine Mills detours all the way to Santa Fe to answer a question we've been hearing a lot lately: What is Meow Wolf? There's no simple answer when it comes to Grapevine's newest destination attraction, so we pulled out all the stops to give you an insider experience at the House of Eternal Return. Audio elements and episode image courtesy of Meow Wolf; original photography by Kate Russell ..read more

Our tour of Grapevine Mills takes an unexpected detour to explore one of the most ambitious proposals ever entertained in this community: the establishment of a Fortune 100 International Headquarters in the heart of the City. What would have happened if Grapevine was selected to be the home of Amazon HQ2? Could something similar happen in the future? Are these projects worth pursuing in communities like ours? This hypothetical alternate history leans into a classic Hollywood trope: based on a true story ..read more

After opening to rave reviews, Grapevine Mills ran into tough headwinds in the mid-2000s. A dated aesthetic, less-than-perfect tenants, and a Great Recession should have spelled doom for the City's landmark shopping center... instead, Grapevine Mills now stands against the popular opinion that malls and physical retail are dying. Today, we're exploring the strategy that outperforms 99% of regional shopping centers ..read more

We travel back in time to witness the wildly successful launch of Grapevine Mills, complete with skate parks, theme restaurants, and an obscure little band called Hanson. Then ask... how long can the 90s aesthetic hold up? Grand opening footage and audio courtesy of KTVT, CBS 11 News ..read more