A Whataburger restaurant sitting near the site where the Dallas Cowboys once played is getting a $400,000 facelift. The store at 850 Market Place Blvd in Irving will undergo a hood replacement and relocation along with a drive-thru replacement featuring a sliding door, with work slated to run from October 20 through December 1, 2026.
State Filing Details the Scope of Work
The renovation plan surfaced in a filing received by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, according to MySA. Texas requires commercial construction or renovation projects valued at $50,000 or more to register with the state agency for architectural barriers compliance, per the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which mandates plan reviews and post-construction inspections by Registered Accessibility Specialists. That threshold is why routine kitchen and drive-thru work at an active fast-food restaurant ends up as a public state document rather than staying behind the scenes.
The Irving restaurant is one of four Whataburger locations operating within Irving city limits. As with most TDLR filings, the timelines listed are subject to change without notice, the station's report notes.
A Second Filing Lands the Same Week
Whataburger did not stop at one filing. The chain submitted a second $400,000 project on the same day for a store at 2710 FM 407 in Highland Village, identified as Whataburger #1494. That project is also scheduled to wrap by December 1, 2026.
Hoodline's own reporting on a similar $400,000 filing in New Braunfels described an interior overhaul rather than a new store, with TDLR descriptions classifying the work under tenant finish-out codes.
The Land Around the Old Stadium Site
The Irving store's address carries some local irony. Texas Stadium served as the Dallas Cowboys' home field in Irving from 1971 until it was demolished in a controlled implosion on April 11, 2010, according to Wikipedia's history of the venue. The Cowboys won all five of their franchise Super Bowl titles while playing there, per the same historical account cited by MySA.
The area around the former stadium site has drawn long-standing economic-development attention, with projected tax-increment-zone growth. An entity affiliated with Las Vegas Sands Corp., tied to Dallas Mavericks controlling owner Miriam Adelson, acquired roughly 259 acres across eight properties near the former stadium site for potential commercial and mixed-use development, according to The Real Deal, with the land sitting along Highway 114 and Loop 12 near the Elm Fork of the Trinity River.
A Growing Chain
The Irving and Highland Village filings arrive amid a broader capital push across Whataburger's dominant home-state footprint. The chain operates more than 1,200 restaurants across 17 states as of February 2026, with nearly 800 of those in Texas, according to ScrapeHero.
That expansion and remodeling pace traces back to a 2019 ownership change. Merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners acquired a majority stake in Whataburger from the founding Dobson family in June 2019, according to Nation's Restaurant News, sparking an accelerated capital improvement program for store remodels and regional expansion.
