Cadence's development strategy calls for land banking the tract for 24 months to 36 months before pushing dirt, Troy Wicker of Dallas-based Wicker & Associates tells GlobeSt.com. The investment group also owns tracts in the Tarrant County community of Mansfield and Ft. Worth in a similar strategy. Wicker says the buyer "traded off" other land holdings to emerge as the winner in the land lottery, but to his knowledge, none of the hawked land is in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex.

The Bridges of Frisco Office Park will be a series of build-to-suit projects as well as offer a hotel site and perhaps a few retail pads. Negotiations already are underway with hotel developer prospects, Wicker confides.

Retail development will be limited due to the site's proximity to Chicago-based General Growth Properties' 1.6 million-sf Stonebriar Centre, one of the Dallas-Ft. Worth's premier shopping venues that is giving stiff competition to the veteran player to the well-heeled crowd, the Galleria in North Dallas. Cadence's new land bank doesn't come without competition from other Frisco office developers, going up against the 162-acre Hall Office Park and Billingsley Co.'s 300-acre International Business Park.

Craig Wicker, president of the real estate firm, negotiated the pact for Cadence and St. Joe Commercial. The Dallas-based firm had the property listed for six months, attracting a half dozen bidders for the site along the Dallas North Tollway. In Troy Wicker's words: the best offer got it.

St. Joe Commercial president Fred Herring says his firm will use the funds for its core assets, an ongoing strategy to reallocate capital from Texas development and infuse it elsewhere, the chief benefactor being Florida's Great Northwest "where we have unique competitive advantages." Herring's prepared statement also says the funds "are also being deployed to acquire mature, investment-grade properties in a tax efficient manner."