Buckingham, TX

Buckingham was located in northern Dallas County near the Collin county line and was completely surrounded by the city of Richardson. The community was incorporated around 1958 and, as Richardson grew up around it, remained a small (159 acres) semi-rural enclave with about 150–200 inhabitants. In 1983 developers began purchasing the homes of the sixty-four families that lived in Buckingham, intending to convert the area to apartments, condos, and businesses. By 1985 most of the property in the community belonged to the Buckingham Development Venture. Before the residents moved away they cooperated with the developers to pass a liquor ordinance that made Buckingham a wet community in the middle of dry Richardson. Initial attempts to develop the town were squashed by the real estate crisis of the mid-1980s, and the Buckingham Development Venture went bankrupt in 1987. There were 102 residents in the community in 1990. In the mid-1990s development of Buckingham as an apartment and business district was finally underway, with several apartment buildings, liquor stores, a supermarket, and strip malls. These developments were contested by residents in the surrounding neighborhoods who were concerned about the commercial zoning given to Buckingham and the nature of some of the businesses located in the town. The city of Richardson annexed Buckingham in April 1996.