RLand Properties Unveils Plans for Retail Trio

FORT WORTH-RLand Properties has amassed 60 acres to develop three neighborhood centers with an estimated 230,000 sf and pad sites in North Fort Worth’s Texas 114 corridor. The land assembly took four years to complete in five transactions with local property owners.

Kipp Whitman, president of the Colleyville, TX-based development firm, tells GlobeSt.com that a 60,000-sf “upside down shopping center” will break ground at the end of 2008 near Harriet Creek and 170,000 sf in two centers, River’s Edge, will get under way in early 2009. The Tarrant County land assembly is “the only commercial land on 114, west of FM 156, up to Wise County that has city water and sewers,” he says.

With the last land deal now complete, Whitman says his team is close to signing deals with two national fast-food chains, a national automotive-related retailer for pad sites and has eight more prospective pad-site deals in the pipeline. He says he’s developed a “franchise” strategy that is resulting in 40% to 60% of RLand’s tenants at other projects signing up for space in its new developments, often long before ground breaks.