SNK Realty Breaks Into Texas With $250M Pipeline

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DALLAS-Phoenix-based SNK Realty Group, with three development sites in hand, plans to break ground in spring 2006 on an estimated 1,000 condos and apartments and retail space in Addison, Uptown and Grand Prairie. The build-out value is projected at $250 million for the merchant builder’s first push into Texas.

“Our game plan is to build the same organization in Texas that we spent the last 15 years developing in California, Arizona and other markets in the West,” says Hal Watson, SNK’s president and CEO. He tells GlobeSt.com that the three mixed-use developments are part of a $500-million joint venture inked a year ago between SNK and the Ann Arbor, MI-based Captec Financial Group Inc.

The Texas push begins in Dallas/Fort Worth, but extends to all major metros in the state, Watson says. He admits he’s in negotiations for additional development sites, but he’s not saying where–just yet.

Within a six-day period in mid-August, SNK spent $20 million to acquire a 2.6-acre city block in Uptown from the Kasnetz family of Dallas; 6.5 acres within a block of Addison Circle from local firm, New Source Partners; and 13.5 acres at the corner of Interstate 20 and US Highway 360 in Grand Prairie from Texas Land & Building Co. of Dallas.

Watson says SNK, which bought the McKinney Avenue tract off market, is negotiating with the City of Dallas to take over two alleys to boost its infill site to three acres.

Watson says the projects have yet to be given names and only Grand Prairie has been designed, but the trio will be a combination of traditional and stacked flats or townhouses. The tentative plan calls for 400,000 sf of residential and retail space on the McKinney Avenue tract, with the highest building rising 240 feet; 600 units of condos and rentals with 20,000 sf of street-level retail in Addison; and 236 apartments and 52 townhouse-style condos in Grand Prairie.

Watson, a Dallas native, says ground will break in the first quarter in Grand Prairie, with construction estimated to take 15 months. “It will be built, leased and sold before the end of 2007,” he says.

The Addison Circle and McKinney Avenue projects will deliver at the end of 2007. Watson predicts condos and rentals will be sold by 2008.

Watson isn’t overly concerned with the amount of competition in the Dallas/Fort Worth condo market. “The areas that we’re building are established infill areas for sale or rental,” he stresses. “There’s really no trailblazing going on with our investments there.”