Nance Farm Master Plan
- Location
- DeSoto, Texas
- Period
- 2008–2009
- Firm
- MESA Design Group
- Disciplines
- Historic Preservation, Cultural Landscape Planning, Master Planning
A MESA Design Group project for the City of DeSoto and the DeSoto Texas Historical Foundation, completed with a multidisciplinary team. Work completed with MESA Design Group as part of multidisciplinary project teams.
Project imagery and photography courtesy of MESA Design Group.
Context
Nance Farm preserves the surviving core of an 1851 farmstead within a changing suburban context. The master plan considered how historic structures, agricultural interpretation, education, community use, and phased investment could reinforce one another.
My role
My documented work included future-use scenarios, cost projections, meetings with Booziotis, conceptual-plan revisions, compilation and revision of the final book, and rendering the site plan. The project and recommendations were produced by the broader MESA team and its collaborators.
Design challenge
The central question was not simply what to preserve, but how to make preservation useful and sustainable over time. New community and educational functions needed to support the historic setting without erasing its agricultural character.
Approach
The team combined existing-condition analysis, opportunities and constraints, future-use scenarios, conceptual planning, and cost thinking. The plan treated buildings, circulation, open land, interpretation, and operations as an integrated cultural landscape.
Result
The work culminated in a detailed master-plan report, conceptual site plan, preservation and use strategies, and a framework for phased implementation.
Looking back
Nance Farm taught me that stewardship is a design discipline: the best plan protects what matters while making it possible for people and institutions to keep caring for it.