Patel and his brother, Ray, who is president of the company, hope to be the first out of the ground although their neighbor also is waiting in the permit line. The Comfort Suites is ticketed for completion in November. "It's our first new construction in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, but it's not our last," Andy Patel says. Details about the Hampton Inn were unavailable by press time.

Cartwright says Pinnacle Pointe's pad sites "have gone very quickly." Retail pads, ground lease or sales, are quoted at $20 per sf and the smaller industrial tracts are tagged at $4.50 per sf. Principal started with 86 acres, but sold 32 acres last fall to Voorhees, NJ-based US Cold Storage Inc. Word on the street is the company plans to develop 500,000 sf in phases.

Principal developed 83,000 sf of retail, attracting names like Conn's and Staples and broke the balance into pad sites. Pad site development already has seated Sonic, Taco Bell and International House of Pancakes. Work is about to begin on a 50,000-sf pad site, which has been ground leased to Pollo Campero, a brand of Campero USA Corp. The Guatemala-based chain opened a US headquarters in Dallas last year and has been staking claims in the metroplex. It's also rumored to have a ground lease to a site at Interstate 30 and Eastchase in Fort Worth.

Cartwright credits the I-30 changes, particularly the Cockrell Hill ramp, with creating the retail leasing momentum for Principal's brokers, Darrell Hernandez, executive vice president and partner for United Commercial Realty/ChainLinks in Dallas, and his associate, J.D. Robertson. "Interstate 30 access was limited, but with the extension to La Reunion Boulevard, it's generating retail interest," Cartwright says. "The game has changed."