If you spend any time in Frisco — much less work, live or play there — it’s difficult to imagine this boomtown ever winding up in the trash heap of urban history.

Yet that's the doom-and-gloom scenario a recent Manhattan Institute policy director posed in his "North Texas must stop building disposable suburbs" essay, published a few weeks ago in The Dallas Morning News.

Michael Hendrix, who grew up in Arlington in the 1980s and now works in New York, described Dallas-area suburbia as cities that “stagger on, zombielike, as bills pile up” for aging roads, malls and housing because of bad design and even worse financial planning.

Hendrix also forecast that residents and business owners will burn through the best years of cities such as Frisco, Prosper and Flower Mound, then forsake them for the next shiny locale.

Having spent much of the past year reporting on cities throughout North Texas, my view of the suburbs — both their present and their future — is a lot more optimistic than what Hendrix described.

But I’m no suburban studies expert, so I decided to talk to someone who is: George Purefoy, the only city manager Frisco has ever had and the top boss there since 1987.

Frisco City Manager George Purefoy at his office last week in the municipal building that bears his name. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

By the time Frisco recruited him in 1987, Purefoy had put together a diverse resume. He worked as a city police officer while attending the University of Texas at Arlington, did his graduate work at East Texas State University and served in Texas city halls in Boerne, Taylor Lake Village and Columbus.

A gentle-spoken humble guy of deep faith and warm laughter, Purefoy is equally comfortable dropping a Merle Haggard lyric or a biblical reference into his answers about building up cities.

This tall, lanky Texan and the once-sleepy town blessed with a killer location on the Dallas North Tollway have grown up together — and both are better for that partnership. Elected officials come and go, but Purefoy, along with a committed city hall staff, has been the constant for almost 32 years.

In that time, Purefoy has read countless hot takes critical of suburbs. He told me that while Hendrix painted with a broad brush in his essay, Frisco indeed worries about some of the issues the Arlington native raised in his essay.

That’s why guiding the city in ways that will ensure not just investment but reinvestment is a top priority for Purefoy.

“We realize we are a shooting star right now,” Purefoy said. “After that star reaches its apex and begins falling back towards earth, will the work we’ve done to sustain Frisco work? Only time will tell.”

Even before Purefoy arrived in Frisco, residents had already decided they wanted to be a complete city, not just a bedroom community. “People were hungry for growth — I know that sounds crazy given how so many people regard growth today,” he said.

Frisco's historic water tower still stands not far from another of the booming suburb's housing developments. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

Purefoy said he’s enormously proud of how Frisco has grown. But, he said, “when I drive around, I see the warts and where I would have made different decisions or just done better.” That goes for all sorts of municipal items that, with 20/20 hindsight, would already be bigger: roads, sidewalks and waste-water treatment plants.

Purefoy also sees the problems caused by less-than-the-best zoning in some areas. “I probably wouldn’t have so much of [State Highway] 121 lined with car dealerships,” he said, although he also remembers the days when — unless you wanted a Ford — you were out of luck.

But Purefoy believes that Frisco has avoided many of the biggest traps that come from slipshod and hasty development because the city shares a border with Plano, which “has done everything well. It challenges us to be better than we would have been otherwise.”

For example, much has been made of Frisco beating Plano in the battle of State Highway 121 because it landed Stonebriar Centre on the northeast corner of 121 and the Dallas North Tollway. But Purefoy points to the still-developing Legacy West, on the southwest corner, as proof that “Plano is doing just fine.”

“Legacy West has beat us on nearly every corporate relocation that we went after,” Purefoy said.

That’s why Frisco approved recent zoning changes to allow the already successful Hall Office Park to add more mixed-use features that will make it competitive with Legacy West.

Purefoy’s view of the region is a barbell of development, with downtown Dallas at one end and West Plano and Frisco at the other.

Certainly, age brings new challenges to suburbs, Purefoy said, but he questioned what essayist Hendrix would see as a better alternative to individual suburbs. “If everything had been sucked into Dallas, would everything be great? I don’t know that things would be better," he said.

Given Frisco’s blistering-hot success, I joked with him about repaving — in gold — the massive entrance to the municipal center that bears his name. He quickly shut down that idea: “That’s certainly not the image I’m trying to be a part of here.”

His preferred image for the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center — and the city as a whole — is “hopefully one of hard-working people who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

As for the Purefoy name on this building and a Frisco elementary school, he groaned a little and said, “I just try not to talk about it.” Then that self-deprecating humor re-emerged: “There may be a sewer plant around here somewhere with my name on it too.”

At 66, Purefoy also gets a kick out of the guessing game that surrounds his yet-to-be-determined retirement date. When we talked last week, he suggested his last day at the Purefoy Municipal Center is likely about 18 months away.

“Or it could be the next council meeting, if they decide to fire me,” he added with just a hint of a smile. The Frisco City Council is undoubtedly wiser than that.

While his workdays aren’t as long as they once were, Purefoy said the weight of running Frisco — and making sure it doesn’t become another disposable suburb — still often interferes with a good night’s sleep. But he sees nothing wrong with that tossing and turning.

“Why would you want a job where you’re not earning it every day?”