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DALLAS-Principal Financial Group and Holt Lunsford Commercial have started dirt work on the new gateway retail component of a 300-acre industrial park in southwest Dallas. The 87-acre gateway fronting Interstate 30 calls for 650,000 sf of new light-industrial product on its rear tracts.

The behind-the-scenes plan for the past five years has been to level the playing field so the five-million-sf Turnpike Distribution Center, of which Principal owns 2.8 million sf, could stay competitive with its neighbor Pinnacle Park, developed in the mid-1990s with direct interstate access. "We were a very easy feeding ground for tenants to move out of Turnpike to Pinnacle Park," John Gorman with Dallas-based Holt Lunsford tells GlobeSt.com. "We are no longer a feeding ground."

Gorman started working the plan in August 2001. "It's very rewarding to see the fruits of our labor coming into its own," he says. The Principal-Holt Lunsford initiative has resulted in a new interchange at Cockrell Hill Road and infrastructure upgrades of interior roads in the vintage industrial park. But now, it's time to roll out the underlying reason for the hefty investment--a 100,000-sf shopping center with nine pad sites on 35 acres and 650,000 sf of light-industrial space on 52 acres.