Walk the Dove-Davis loop most evenings and you will pass the same landmarks you always have. Shade structures spaced along the path. A drinking fountain near the trailhead. The pedestrian underpass that lets you cross without waiting on traffic. It is the kind of infrastructure that gets taken for granted precisely because it works, and Westlake has kept it working long enough that the town has held Tree City USA status for 22 consecutive years, with four Growth Awards along the way.
Keep walking toward the SH-114 and SH-170 interchange, though, and the picture changes. Construction fencing. Grading equipment. Signage for something called Front 44. That is not an extension of the loop you just walked. It is a second trail network, built by a different owner, for a different audience, and the two are not the same project wearing two names.
The Loop You Already Know
Westlake's public trail system is compact but genuinely interconnected. The town's own trail map names six distinct segments: Dove-Davis, Solana, Granada, Glenwyck, Entrada Loop, and Entrada Canal, each color-coded with trailheads, parking, shade structures, and drinking fountains marked along the way. The most-used combination, the Dove-Davis, Glenwyck, Granada, and Solana loop, runs 3.4 miles with a modest 121 feet of elevation gain and takes most walkers just over an hour. It is leash-required for dogs, rated easy, and reviewers consistently mark April through July as the best stretch to use it.
That loop is civic infrastructure. It was built and is maintained by the Town of Westlake, it shows up on the town's own parks and recreation pages, and it exists to move residents between the Glenwyck Farms neighborhood, the Solana business district, and the Entrada development on foot, not to serve any single employer or landowner.
The Network Taking Shape at Circle T Ranch
Front 44 is something else. It sits on Circle T Ranch, a 2,500-acre property owned by Hillwood chairman Ross Perot Jr., positioned at the front-most 44 acres of the ranch facing the 114/170 interchange. Circle T is already home to Charles Schwab's corporate campus, Fidelity Investments, and Deloitte University, along with a nine-hole private golf course. Hillwood's construction timeline puts groundbreaking on Front 44 in 2026, with the first wave of retail slated for 2027, and the finished project is planned to include more than 65,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, a 150-room hotel, a 54,000-square-foot office building, and a roughly 10,000-square-foot outdoor plaza.
Front 44's own marketing describes the site as connected by more than 10 miles of walking and biking trails, more than three times the length of the town's most popular loop. That is a real number, and it is worth taking seriously. But read the rest of the pitch and the intended audience comes into focus quickly: it is framed as uniting work, gathering, and experience for the corporate campuses already on the ranch, the roughly 7,000 people who work at Schwab and the 6,000 at Fidelity, plus visitors to Deloitte University, which already draws about 75,000 guests a year and is expanding toward 150,000.
Two Systems, Not One
Here is the distinction worth holding onto as a resident, not a buyer or seller, just someone deciding where to walk tonight.
| Town Trail System | Front 44 / Circle T Ranch | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Town of Westlake | Hillwood Development |
| Length | Six named trails, 3.4-mile core loop | 10+ miles, per Front 44 marketing |
| Built for | Residents moving between neighborhoods | Corporate campuses, hotel guests, retail visitors |
| Status | Open now, maintained for two decades | Groundbreaking targeted 2026, phase one 2027 |
Nothing in the town's own trail materials or in Front 44's marketing describes the two systems as linked. That may change as construction finishes, but right now they are parallel networks serving different purposes on adjoining land. If you are hoping the Circle T mileage will simply widen your existing evening route, the honest answer is that it was not designed with that in mind. It was designed to keep Schwab and Deloitte employees moving between office buildings and a hotel without needing a car.
What's Actually New on Your Walk This Year
While Front 44 is still mostly rebar and site plans, the town's public calendar has quietly given residents more reasons to be outside this year, and all of it is already open.
The spring concert series moved to a new venue for 2026: the Terraces at Solana, at 1600 Solana Boulevard, right beside Town Hall. Both spring shows were free, with food and drinks available starting at 5:30 p.m. and music from 6 to 7 p.m. The lineup included Tall & Sweet, a Sabrina Carpenter tribute act, on April 23, followed by the Texas Born & Bred Band on May 7. The Westlake Together series has also teased a later performance by Lover, a Taylor Swift tribute band, and the town has been asking residents to share photos under the hashtag #westlaketogether. The series doubles as the town's 70th birthday celebration, counting back to Westlake's 1956 incorporation.
Families with school-age kids got two other additions worth knowing about. Bandana Bonanza ran April 18 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Westlake Academy, with wristbands sold in advance. And Camp Forge, the Academy's summer program, expanded for 2026 to welcome K-12 kids from the surrounding community, not just enrolled students, and ran June 1 through 26. If you assumed Camp Forge was closed enrollment, that assumption is now out of date.
The Solana Club hosted a Family Health & Fitness Day with the Westlake Fire-EMS Department, offering a free open house with Zumba for all ages and blood pressure and BMI screenings. The town's Spring Cleanup ran May 2 from 9 a.m. to noon at the 1600 Solana Boulevard parking lot, with drop-off stations for electronics recycling, document shredding, and bulk and brush trash. A fire station open house followed on May 9 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2000 Dove Road.
None of these events required construction to finish. They are proof that the civic side of Westlake, the side that maintains six trails and a Tree City designation, is still the part of town doing the daily work of bringing neighbors outside together, while Circle T Ranch builds something adjacent but separate.
Walking Westlake Through the Rest of 2026
The honest way to think about this year is that Westlake's daily walk has not gotten longer yet. It has gotten more interesting to watch. The six trails you already use are still the ones carrying foot traffic between Glenwyck Farms, Solana, and Entrada, still shaded, still marked, still the route worth taking on a July evening. Front 44's ten-plus miles are real and on the way, but they are being built for a different daily rhythm than the one most residents keep, at least for now.
If you live here, the practical takeaway is simple: keep using the loop you know, and keep an eye on the Front 44 timeline for 2027, because that is when the question of whether these two networks ever meet will actually get answered.
If you are watching Westlake from the outside and wondering what a neighborhood with this kind of infrastructure and this kind of corporate gravity actually feels like to live in day to day, that is a longer conversation, and it is one Hacker Property Group has with families considering Westlake, Southlake, and Trophy Club every week. Let's Connect.
