The names behind the business are familiar in metroplex commercial real estate circles and each of the businessmen - Eric Langford, William K. Wells and Roger C. Gault - have done many a development, but always with someone else footing the bill. This time, it's different. "I thought I knew how to build buildings, but it's an education to sign on the line personally," Langford told GlobeSt.com. And he's busy signing those contracts, just recently inking a land deal for a Plano site and looking ahead to a closing in two weeks on a Richardson tract.
Aptly named Onyx Business Center 1 and Onyx Business Center II, the structures are located on separate parcels, but still within the Telecom Corridor's bounds. Ground will break at the end of March on both projects, which have been designed by Batten Architects of Dallas.
Langford's home turf of Richardson will see a 45,149-sf, single-story building go up in the heart of the Telecom Corridor on a 3.7-acre tract at 1819 Firman Dr. between Campbell Road and Collins Boulevard. Onyx is buying that parcel from a joint venture represented by Michael McMahon.
Onyx Business Center II is ticketed for about a five-acre parcel, bought from the Biallargeon family, in the Palisades area of Plano, on the east side of Place Avenue north of 10th Street. The 66,476-sf design is capable of supporting light manufacturing tenants and will be positioned in such a way that expansion acreage could be had down the road.The structures are tailored to tenants needing 4,800 sf to 65,000 sf, delivering a built-in leasing asset. "Small increment capabilities are in short supply in the Richardson and Plano area," says Langford.
Onyx has chosen sites in a high-profile corridor that had more than one million sf leased last year and has about 400,000 sf under construction right now. But Langford says the team's not celebrating just yet: "We're happy to be at this stage. We'll celebrate when it's leased."
He says he's not overly concerned about undertaking a spec project in the midst of all the talk about a recession. "My opinion is sometimes the best opportunity is when the other folks don't believe there's an opportunity," he assesses of the move. Besides, he says, expressing an aura of confidence, he and his partners know that market all too well, its capabilities and its space demands.
Onyx, which manages about three million sf in the metroplex, is turning over leasing duties to Mike McCarten and Jeff White of Mark V Commercial of Dallas. Langford says the Onyx partners had considered keeping leasing in-house, but decided to "give them a shot" since they had brought the acreage to the negotiating table.
Key Bank has provided the construction funding for the $8 million in developments in the North Central Expressway corridor near the George Bush Turnpike. A general contractor decision is pending.
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