Office projects marching to mixed-use drum of Legacy Town Ctr.

April 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A recent series of announcements shows that office tenants and developers are flocking to sites in and around Legacy Town Center.

Flower Mound residents and politicians who are considering the mixed-use zoning application for the 150-acre Lakeside DFW might look to Legacy Town Center, which is a super-sized example of what could happen in Flower Mound. As the mix of uses have evolved over the past 12 years, Legacy Town Center has added significantly to the residents’ quality of life and the city’s coffers.

Two of the developments, Encana and Crow (#1 and #3) are located in or adjacent to Legacy Town Center. Their 661,000 sf that will come on line in 2012-14 compares with the 800,000 sf of office space developed at the Town Center during its first 12 years.

The accompanying graphic and list below include some of the large relocations, expansions, and speculative projects announced in the past 18 months.

1. EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. is completing the first part of a $1 billion, three-building complex on a 7-acre tract just north of Legacy Drive in Legacy Town Center. The first 13-story tower includes 320,000-square-feet and accommodates the firm’s 650  employees. Encana is the largest single employer in Legacy Town Center.

2. Heady Investments is constructing a six-story, 164,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Headquarters Drive and the Dallas North Tollway at Legacy Town Center. The speculative project, which kicked off late in 2011, was predicated on the lure of Legacy Town Center.

3. Trammel Crow announced in late April that a new partnership has been formed with real estate investment trust One Liberty Properties Inc., which owns the southeast corner of Legacy Drive and the Tollway, to construct a 13-story, 341,000-square-foot building there. Comments from the developer (see below) suggest that the mix of uses at Legacy was critical to their development decision.

4. Capital One announced in April the construction of two additional buildings (a total of 400,000 s.f.) to its five-building campus near Legacy Town Center where it plans to house up to 300 new employees.

5. MedAssets signed a 15-year lease in March to occupy a new four-story, 225,000-square-foot office campus in Legacy business park east of the Dallas North Tollway on Legacy Drive.

6. Ericsson, Inc., the communications giant, is building more than 250,000 square feet next to its existing corporate campus on Legacy Drive west of the Tollway.

Office tenants gravitate toward mixed-use projects that offer retail, restaurants, and rentals. (Photo courtesy of the City of Plano)

What’s all the fuss about?

“Legacy is one of the best office markets in the country,” Denton Walker, Crow senior managing director, told Steve Brown of The Dallas Morning News when discussing the site at Legacy Drive and the Tollway where they will build a 13-story speculative office building early next year.

“We’ve just started talking to potential tenants,” Crow managing director Adam Saphier told Brown. “We think we have a great site, with the proximity to all the retail and apartments.”

The tract sits on the west side of the popular Shops at Legacy, which has grown steadily since development started there about 12 years ago. It features:

  • over 600,000 sq. ft. of retail
  • over 3,600 units of multi-family (40-80 units/acre)
  • 289 townhouses
  • one 356-room Marriott Hotel
  • one, five-screen Angelika Film Center
  • over 800,000 square feet office space and growing

With a vacancy rate hovering around 10 percent, West Plano ranks as one of the tightest, and most expensive, suburban office markets in North Texas.

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Filed Under: Legacy Town Center, Mixed-use in DFW, Office market

Analysis: Legacy Town Center’s success has been enhanced by the thousands in Legacy business park, and vice versa

February 6, 2012 By 4 Comments

Looking south from the north roundabout at Lakeside DFW, one sees empty fields east and west of Lakeside Parkway.

The empty fields at Lakeside DFW contrast with the hubub of this street scene in Legacy Town Center. (Photo courtesy of the City of Plano)

About 13 years ago, similarly empty fields sat along the north and south sides of Legacy Drive just east of the Dallas North Tollway in Plano.

Then construction began in 1999. By 2000 and 2001, a few shops, a luxury hotel, and 384 apartments were completed on the south side of Legacy Drive. Ever since, Legacy Town Center has grown non-stop.

“We have been able to give people a destination,” Shops at Legacy developer Fehmi Karahan told Steve Brown of The Dallas Morning News in November 2010, “a place they can go with a feeling of being someplace else without leaving the Dallas area”

“It’s a vision that has come together even through the bad times.”

“We now have over 30 restaurants in the development in every price range,” Karahan added in his interview with Brown. “People are cutting back on maybe their travel, but they still want to go out to eat.”

What ignited the success of Legacy Town Center?

The proximity of so many large corporations served as perhaps the most important catalyst for Legacy Town Center by providing a nearly insatiable demand for restaurants and conveniently located apartments.

The employees from firms like JCPenney, The Frito-Lay Company, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Countrywide Home Loans, Ericsson, McAfee, Inc., Pepsico, Intuit and Cingular Wireless were hungry for convenient places to “do lunch,” run errands, and “get together after work.”

Restaurants need solid traffic at both lunch and dinner to prosper. Legacy Town Center had both. Today, over 50,000 live and work in the Legacy business park. Those numbers provide lots of fuel for the business at Legacy Town Center.

What’s the most important use in Legacy Town Center’s mix of uses?

Legacy Town Center features lots of multi-family with retail below on the street level. Both components have contributed to the success of the project. (Photo courtesy of the City of Plano)

“Housing is an important piece, but the magic is all in the retail,” noted Dallas apartment developer Robert Shaw in the Dallas News story.

“At the very beginning, Legacy Town Center had an original plan that was good,” added Shaw, who has built a multi-family project at Legacy virtually every year since 2002. “And they had someone who was able to bring the magic of the retail all together: Fehmi Karahan. He was the one who stepped up and put his heart and soul into it.”

“I have restaurants in mixed-use projects all over the state of Texas,” said restaurateur Kent Rathbun in the Dallas News story. “And I can certainly tell you that Fehmi is a huge part of the success of [Legacy Town Center].”

It was in 2002 that Karahan took Rathbun to the top of the EDS headquarters building for a bird’s-eye view of the area surrounding the site.

“Looking in all directions, I could see the rooftops of homes,” Rathbun said. “It drove home the fact that people would come if you offered them the right product.”

Legacy Town Center today

The Marriott at Legacy Town Center and upscale apartments surround the lake and central plaza at Legacy Town Center. (Photo courtesy of the City of Plano)

It is estimated that 4 million people visit Legacy Town Square every year. It features:

  • over 600,000 sq. ft. of retail
  • over 3,600 units of multi-family
  • 289 townhouses
  • one 356-room Marriott Hotel
  • one, five-screen Angelika Film Center
  • over 800,000 square feet office space and growing

Last year, EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. began building a $1 billion, three-building complex on a 7-acre tract just north of Legacy Drive in Legacy Town Center. The first 13-story tower includes 320,000-square-feet and accommodates the firm’s 650  employees. Encana is the largest single employer in Legacy Town Center.  Two 12-story office buildings are also planned for the site.

In November 2011, Heady Investments began construction on a six-story, 164,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Headquarters Drive and the Dallas North Tollway at Legacy Town Center. The speculative project was predicated on the lure of Legacy Town Center.

While the thousands in the Legacy business park helped provide the demand that Legacy Town Center needed in 2001-09, the tables have turned. The Town Center now serves as the primary amenity that attracts employers –  not just to the business park, but to the Town Center itself.

 

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Filed Under: Featured, Legacy Town Center

Legacy Town Center attracts nearby six-story spec office building

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The lure of Legacy Town Center has attracted developer Heady Investments to start construction of a six-story, 164,000-square-foot building on speculation that tenants will bite.

Headquarter I near Legacy Town Center

The Headquarter I office building is being constructed on speculation that prospective tenants will want to be located near Legacy Town Center.

Construction on the 5.2-acre site at the southeast corner of Headquarters Drive and the Dallas North Tollway at Legacy Town Center began at the end of November.

The project, having yet to attract a major tenant, illustrates the power of a well-oiled mixed-use development to attract development to properties surrounding it, even in a market as uncertain as today.

Developer Randy Heady says he’s got a number of tenants interested in the building, called Headquarters I at Legacy Town Center, which is scheduled for completion by December 2012.

Brokers representing tenants seeking between 50,000 and 100,000 square feet of space have already begun contacting Heady.

Heady Investments secured construction financing of about $16 million on the speculative first phase of the project through Bank of the Ozarks. The project will cost an estimated $26 million to construct.

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Filed Under: DFW market, Legacy Town Center, Office market Tagged With: ,

Mixed-use projects make good business and environmental sense

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

While most of us think of mixed-use projects as the latest trendy development in real estate, a case study by the EPA concludes that examples like Legacy Town Center are far more significant.

Legacy Town Center was created on an empty field amidst an existing office park of large corporate campuses when Ross Perot of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) sought to attract employees by creating a town center near the office where they can live, shop, eat, relax, and run errands during lunch.

It ranks as “first in the country to create mixed-use infill by building a town center in an existing office park,” according to a story called Smart Growth Illustrated, published by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The concept recognized that new-economy employees work flexible hours and would enjoy a convenient place to shop and dine.

In 1994, Hewlett Packard’s telecommunications business unit chose Legacy Town Center for its headquarters because employees would enjoy its location and conveniences, while it also made good business sense.

In addition to attracting companies that care for their employees, mixed-use projects help reduce miles driven by workers going out for lunch.

Before Legacy Town Center, half the workers in the large corporate campuses in Legacy would leave the office park at lunch to run errands, driving between two and five miles, according to a study cited by the EPA story.

A 1994 study by the Federal Highway Administration documented that people who work in locations that provide a wide range of services within walking distance of the office are more likely to consider car pooling, van pooling, and mass transit.

A mixed-use town center allows workers to choose how they get to work and where they eat lunch and run errands, which reduces congestion and pollution during the morning, lunch, and evening rush hours.

A mix of housing, retail, office, restaurants, lodging, and entertainment lies within a ten-minute walk of one another on the 150-acre Legacy Town Center site.

“As in a traditional town center, the buildings are built near the street with sidewalks in front and parking around the side and back,” the EPA story explained. “This design encourages office workers and residents to walk to daily errands and restaurants while allowing visitors to park once and enjoy the entire area on foot.”

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Filed Under: Legacy Town Center, Zoning Tagged With:

Visions of Legacy Town Center dance in residents’ heads after Dec. 1 tour

December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Applause broke out on all four buses as approximately 127 Flower Mound residents left for home after a tour of Legacy Town Center in Plano.

“It was very enlightening,” said Tom Hayden, Flower Mound councilman. “Flower Mound needs a place like this.”

The tour was sponsored by Realty Capital to help give Flower Mound residents a sample of the kind of development that resembled their desires (as collected on over 300 surveys).

Sidewalk at Legacy Town Center lit up during the Christmas season.

“There are about 30 restaurants in Legacy Town Center,” said Richard Myers, managing director of Realty Capital, “and they produce a lot of sales tax every night.”

The residents who took advantage of the offer to tour Legacy were treated to the dinner of their choice.

On each bus, residents were asked about what they noticed above the restaurants.

Legacy Town Center was founded in 1997 by Ross Perot, who saw that his development for campus commercial was losing steam. He engaged Andres Duany to design an urban hub to his sprawling development.

Nine developers have contributed to the project that sits on 150 acres and includes:

  • nearly 800,000 sq. ft. of office space
  • over 400,000 sq. ft. of retail
  • 3,500 units of multi-family
  • 289 townhouses
  • one 356-room Marriott Hotel
  • one, five-screen Angelika Film Center

The city of Plano kicked in $1 million for public park facilities.  It also provides economic development incentives to corporate tenants.

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Filed Under: Legacy Town Center Tagged With: , , , , ,