GSA Holdings, Commodore Map Out $100M-Plus Plan

PLANO, TX-GSA Holdings LLC and Commodore Partners Ltd. could break ground at year’s end on a 100,000-sf class A office building, the flagship real estate for Veritas Point, a 32-acre foothold with more than $100 million of build-out promise. The partners are considering a spec start based on market response to a recent mailing.

Austin-based GSA Holdings’ next-door project, the 40,000-sf Plano Federal Courthouse, was the firing pin for its joint venture arrangement with Dallas businessman Carl Westcott, chairman of Westcott LLC and general partner of Commodore Partners, which owns the hard corner of Preston Road and Headquarters Drive. “The synergies from being next to the courthouse and across from the Children’s Medical Center will bring legal and medical tenants,” says Heather Densmore Shover, senior associate for Stream Realty Partners LP in Dallas. “We’re expecting strong interest from the legal and medical communities.”

Steve Glasgow, managing partner for the 18-month-old GSA Holdings, says Veritas Point will be a mix of class A office and hospitality space–at least three office buildings and one hotel, possibly two. “We have 32 acres. You can do quite a few buildings. It will depend on the traction we get in the market,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “But we knew once this [courthouse] got on the ground, there was going to be a pretty strong demand for peripheral development.” Based on the standard coverage formula, the site could support about 488,000 sf.

Stream’s initial mailing generated a half-dozen of inquiries within days of it hitting mailboxes. “This is the kind of response they were needing and hoping for,” Shover says. She and Stream senior associate Benjamin Hautt are ramping up marketing with a $24 per sf plus electric quote.

It’s no secret that the Dallas North Tollway submarket has been one of the region’s leaders in signed office deals this year. Its top-of-the-line rates are pushing $30 per sf. Among the recent coups is a 100,000-sf deal ready to be inked for the corridor’s largest new class AA, the 363,313-sf Granite Park III situated at the tollway and Texas 121 intersection.

If Veritas Point breaks ground as planned, the three-story, 100,000-sf office building will come on line in fall or late 2008. Its sisters will be about the same size or larger. The federal courthouse, rising on a six-acre tract, will deliver at the end of first-quarter 2008.

Glasgow says the fed’s GSA signed a 15-year “firm term” lease for the courthouse, jump-starting the privately owned GSA Holdings’ plan to develop complementary ancillary space. Hospitality and office space are naturals as are a copying service and nationally-branded coffee shop, he says. Veritas Point’s architect is Page Southerland Page LLP of Austin.

Veritas Point is the first development in Texas for GSA Holdings, which has a partner in Los Angeles who has completed and owns similar government projects in California. “It was founded essentially to pursue and acquire GSA properties in Texas,” Glasgow says, adding there are “a few more” already on the drawing board.