In less than nine months, more than 270 acres on the outskirts of Dallas city limits have gone or are close to going to the likes of Argent Property Co., Beck Realty Co., First Industrial Properties, AVW Development Co., Taylor Farms, Hardy Fruits and Vegetables, the now defunct Panattoni-Hillwood joint venture, Hillwood Investment Properties and Panattoni Development Co. The Dallas County hotbed of activity is Pinnacle Park, a south Dallas project that is breathing new life into a 900-acre former quarry and cement manufacturing site for LeFarge Corp.
William Boeck, Morning Park president, says closings have been set for a 60-acre tract being sold to Panattoni, five acres to AVW Development, nine acres to Taylor Farms and seven to Hardy Fruits and Vegetables. He rattles off the pending and sealed deals like a father calling out his children's names.
Until the summer 2000 sale of a 50-acre tract to Argent, Morning Park had hawked just 201 acres to Industrial Development International and Cigna, which has three of nine buildings completed of a $100-million undertaking, says Boeck. The IDI-Cigna buy had been the only acreage at the time not landlocked, he explains. That's all changed with the opening of the Cockrell Hill interchange along Interstate 30 and the soon-to-open six-lane, divided highway that has established an east-to-west development girder to Interstate 20.
Until recently, Pinnacle Park had represented the largest undeveloped land mass in Dallas limits due in part to its southern positioning. Dallas, the experts will tell you, develops north not south, but Boeck and his partner, Joseph Georgusis, set out seven years ago to change all that, buying the depleted property from LeFarge. "Lots of square footage will be going up at one time," says Boeck, who helped to prove that "major players will come south of the river."
To date, the only really noticeable structure is SBC Communications' 200,000-sf building that Boeck is constructing on the property fronting Interstate 30. "By springtime, there's going to be a lot of activity," Boeck tells GlobeSt.com. "We always saw Pinnacle Park as a mixed-use business park, but what we didn't see is how quickly it would go."
Boeck says the hook all along has been to lure the "best of the best" of Dallas' industrial developers to the site. The road infrastructure does just that. The acreage is naturally ticketed for distribution centers of all sizes, light manufacturing and offices. It's a perfect fit for the acreage, some of which offers a Downtown skyline view, and the right jumpstart for south Dallas, which has been looking for an adrenalin boost for some time. South Dallas holds 40% of the city's land mass, 90% of the land that's available to develop and only 14% of the tax base, he says.
Even Texas Industries, owner of 450 acres abutting Pinnacle Park, is jumping into the development rush, gaming out plans for projects. Houston-based Stuart & Stevenson has bought one chunk and is working on a 40,000-sf oil service building, according to Boeck.Boeck confides that Morning Park has 60 acres in reserve for a 500,000-sf to 750,000-sf retail development, which he hopes will break ground in 2002, and another 25 to 30 acres earmarked for hotel and restaurant projects. He says Morning Park presently is in the final negotiating stages with a hotel operator for a piece of the action.
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