Celina Businesses Suffer Losses as Repeated Power Outages Plague Booming City

Stella's Ice Cream in downtown Celina has thrown out more than $70,000 worth of melted product in the past month alone, a staggering figure that captures how severely repeated power outages are draining the finances of small businesses in one of America's fastest-growing cities.

The losses at Stella's are not isolated. Katie Dunn, who owns Nowhere Bar and Little Wooden Penguin on the downtown square, counted roughly 17 outages in 2025 and at least four more before April 2026. "It was like 17 times last year. We've at least had four outages this year," Dunn said. The financial toll pushed her to spend thousands of dollars on a generator and transfer switch, costs she says many neighboring small businesses simply cannot absorb.

On April 2, a severe weather event triggered an outage lasting roughly 12 hours, forcing business owners to scramble over food preservation and staffing decisions. The disruption extended beyond the commercial district: Celina Early Childhood School and Lykins Elementary School both lost power that morning.

Mikala Everson, owner of Granny's Bakery, estimates she has lost at least $5,000 to outages. "After four hours, all of our production, our hours, our hard work goes straight in the trash," she said. With Oncor Electric Delivery as the area's sole provider, Everson sees no alternative path. "Unfortunately, Oncor being the only power supplier here in our downtown square, that makes it extremely inconvenient since nobody else can combat that issue." At Mangiamo Italian Market & Deli, manager Casey Harper warned the situation "could require a shutdown at this point. We're not only losing our product, we have workers that rely on this business."

The crisis is inseparable from the city's extraordinary expansion. Celina, located about 40 miles north of downtown Dallas and straddling Collin and Denton counties, tripled in population between 2020 and 2024, growing from 16,739 residents to an estimated 51,661. The U.S. Census Bureau named it the fastest-growing city in the country among cities with populations of at least 20,000, and Mayor Ryan Tubbs has described the pace as "astronomical," noting the city grows "about 20% every year." Its maximum projected buildout population sits near 378,000. Collin County as a whole ranked second nationally for population growth, adding nearly 43,000 residents between July 2024 and July 2025 to reach close to 1.3 million.

Oncor acknowledged the problem and in February 2026 launched a multi-phase reliability improvement project specifically accelerated because of the repeated outages. The scope includes installing more than 100 new poles, replacing approximately 400 crossarms, adding advanced circuit switches, and modernizing aging equipment. Oncor expects most of the work to wrap up by summer 2026, weather permitting. The April 2 event marks the second significant dispute between Oncor and Celina in 2026; in February, residents pushed back sharply over what many considered excessive tree pruning by the utility.

The Celina Economic Development Corporation brought downtown business owners together with Oncor representatives this morning at Celina City Hall. Dunn arrived with a clear ask: "The ideal scenario here is that we are able to identify all the businesses downtown that are having these problems, they get a switcher installed, and they get a generator, and Oncor says we're sorry about what happened."

Until the infrastructure catches up to the city's ambitions, merchants are improvising. "We are MacGyvering Celina right now," Dunn said. "It is a little crazy.