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DALLAS-A developer and his Transwestern scouting team aren't benching a mixed-use plan with a minor league baseball stadium as the anchor. Several cities have come forward to field the play now that Dallas City Council has sidelined a Downtown site.
Transwestern's Urban Advisory Group, working since June 2006 to assemble the site, will be mailing letters Tuesday to Farmers Market property owners, effectively dropping options and gentlemen's agreements to 20 acres and thanking them for their support, James Quick, Transwestern's senior associate, tells GlobeSt.com. "We were impressed with how much owners in that area of town wanted it to happen," says Quick, who's teamed with Transwestern principal Sanders Thompson and senior vice president Sheryl Pickens to make the project a reality. The plan calls for a 10-acre stadium and 20 acres with roughly 1,400 apartments and retail.
"It would have been a good boost for the Downtown," stresses a landowner set to sell two parcels to the developer. "It was a fair price. We wanted it to happen."
Quick admits a number of properties were before the title company when Dallas City Council threw up the roadblock by voting to hold fast to a site for a homeless assistance center, which breaks ground later this month. The developer, whose identity remains under wraps, had offered an alternative site. Bound by $23.8 million in funding from a voter-approved bond in 2005, council instead urged the development team to press ahead on the mixed-use plan, with the homeless assistance center as a neighbor.
Quick says that's not likely to happen. "The only way the developer would consider the area is if the city really wanted to see that happen," he stresses. "Our desire was Downtown. The project is still viable. We're going to flesh out all our options." The options include other cities as well as Dallas proper.
The developer has been working with Scott Berry, president of Southern Independent Baseball, on the proposal. "The Southern Independent league would love to have a team going in Dallas by February 2008," Quick says, adding that the timeline is now up in the air. "As we identify our front-runner site, we'll just have to figure out what's practical."
Berry's Southern Independent Baseball league holds the rights to a Dallas club as a member of the 10-team American Association of Independent Professional Baseball. The association includes the Fort Worth Cats. The City of Frisco's success with its Rough Riders' farm team has shown to its Dallas County counterparts the depth of the economic gains to be made as home base for a smaller league.
As the Southern Independent Baseball plan took root, Quick says a competitor, United League Baseball, showed up on council's doorstep with an offer to put a team in Dallas. Quick points out that the leagues' difference is tied to the drawing power. The United League is made up mostly of Texas teams; the Southern Independent Baseball's network includes metros like St. Paul, El Paso and Shreveport, LA.
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