GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: $100M Mixed-Use Plan Brewing

DALLAS-A trio of seasoned Dallas developers, flying a relatively new banner, is laying the foundation for a 700,000-sf, mixed-use project with a $100-million-plus price tag as a neighbor to NorthPark Mall. The first news to come from the camp is the hiring of a retail team to promote Park Lane Place.

The project got its start in June with the acquisition of NorthPark East, a trio of office buildings on 15.5 acres adjacent to a DART light-rail station at the junction of Park Lane and North Central. Developer Harvest Partners then slid in T.D. Briggs of Peloton Real Estate Partners in Dallas for office leasing and management. The residential and retail components will go up on a nearby tract, now under negotiation and off limits for details until the deal’s done. Real estate sources are pegging the project at $100 million or more.

Harvest Partners picked a “pair of hybrids instead of standard brokerage houses” by hiring Madison Marquette of Washington, DC and Harberg-Masinter Co. of Dallas for pre-development leasing for the retail, Bob Baker, Madison Marquette’s SVP and director of leasing for the West Coast, tells GlobeSt.com.

He and Madison Marquette’s Steve Wehr in the San Francisco office are handling the pre-development planning; Mark Masinter and Nick Koejmans, with Harberg-Masinter, are working the trenches to find and sign a mix of predominately national names. Baker estimates the first wave of announcements will come in 60 to 180 days, particularly since he says talks are underway with retailers for about half the space, which is designed as two-story, big box formats.

Besides the 252,000 sf of existing office, the Park Lane Place plan is being primed for upward of 400,000 sf of retail and 300 to 450 residential units that are on the drawing board as “for lease” product, but easily could swing to “for sale” condos, according to Baker. The plan for now is to deliver the project in two stages: spring and fall 2005. The retail contract is in place “basically to take it through the opening of the project,” Baker says.

Eliot Barnett, principal in Harvest Partners, says the emerging plan has equity backing from an institutional investor, but it’s not a done deal until the acquisition of the final parcel is completed. The hope of Harvest Partners, whose other principals are Tod Ruble and Blaine Lee, is to redevelop the office component and create market-rate family housing along with the retail space.