The one-million-sf first phase, which could be hiked to 1.2 million sf, has placed two of five anchors and is nearing the end of negotiations for a third. Little Rock, AR-headquartered Dillard's Inc. and Foley's, owned by St. Louis-based May Department Stores Co., are signed for the long term to 200,000-sf stores while talks continue with Kansas City, MO-based AMC Entertainment Inc. for a 16-screen theater to anchor an entertainment component. The final breakdown of shops versus entertainment space has yet to be etched in stone, a General Growth spokesman says.
What has been defined is the concept: a retail resort with 1.7 million sf at full build-out. Hillwood's earmarked 2,500 acres for Circle T Ranch to leave another legacy in the northeast Tarrant County corridor aside from the Alliance Airport-area development, much like it is doing in Dallas with the redevelopment of a brownfield site where its Victory district is anchored by the $420-million American Airlines Center and is adding Westin Hotel & Residences in a build-out that includes office and multifamily product.
The Shops at Circle T Ranch went on the drawing boards in 1993 when Hillwood bought the property and immediately started talks with Chicago-based General Growth. Five years later, the duo penned a joint venture. With malls and lifestyle centers abundant in Texas and showing varying degrees of success, the Hillwood-General Growth team's challenge was to find a surefire hook rather than rely on a "build it and they will come" plan.
"The goals from the onset were not to have a typical mall at the intersection of two freeways," says Darrell Lake, senior vice president of Hillwood Properties and the man on the ground since 1993. There will be no ring road, no mall-like periphery development.
A six-lane Westwood Parkway will be built to loop around the resort and connect to the Texas 114 interchange and a to-be-named junction at Trophy Lake Drive. Lake tells GlobeSt.com that Hillwood owns the entire 1,000 acres with access to the planned parkway and it's not planning to sell to any other developers. The one caveat is the team's open to talking to developers who "can bring a name like Harrod's of London to the table," he says of a retail concept being seeded by monikers with appeal to upper middle- and high-income consumers.
The overall plan includes a resort hotel with a golf course. Lake says talks have begun with hoteliers, but nothing is definite at this stage. In fact, it's still undecided whether to go the boutique route in a 60-room, five-star setting or develop a 400- to 500-room facility much like the Hyatt Hill Country with a bent toward business travel and family vacations. The expectation, he says, is the hotel and estimated 200-acre golf course will open simultaneously with the Shops at Circle T Ranch in late 2006 or a year later, but no more.
The build-out plan includes 700 acres of open space with a public park as the gateway to the 40-acre Lake Turner surrounded by restaurants, entertainment venues, an amphitheater and maybe even a chapel for weddings. A "Grand Avenue" will connect the retail resort and the lake.
The "Shops" site plan still needs approval by the Town of Westlake, but the anticipated groundbreaking is fourth quarter. The 4,000-acre town and its surrounding communities represent the fastest-growing corridor in Tarrant County. There are more than 40,000 new homes, many in Hillwood-developed communities, within a 10-mile radius of the JV's retail resort. It's also just five miles west of the Sidney, NE-based Cabela's project site for its first sporting goods store in Texas. A 200,000-sf store is expected to break ground in June on land being bought from Hillwood.
The Circle T Ranch development, part of the 15,000-acre AllianceTexas, already includes corporate campuses for Fidelity Investments and DaimlerChrysler as well as a private golf course surrounded by estate homes. The future holds more corporate campuses, hotel and two more golf courses...with the Shops at Circle T Ranch as the $200-million-plus trigger.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
