The 32 1/2-acre Marketplace at Town Centre's team has brokers at the bargaining table over the last two pad sites and 11,000 sf of un-ticketed inline space. A seafood eatery, home-cooked food restaurateur and national credit tenant are looking to land a spot in a project that has opened the doors to a "tight market," Barnett confides.

The 266,000-sf Marketplace is a joint venture project of Canyon Partners and Atlanta-based JDN Realty. Ground broke about 30 days ago on 180,000 sf of inline space in the suburb's retail heart, catty-corner from Town East Mall and at the intersection of Interstate 635 and Town Centre Drive.

Site work got under way in spring 2001 as a 16-acre Home Depot, which owns its site, and an 86,000-sf Kohl's anchor paved the way for the hardy pre-leasing. The newest signing will bring a 66,646-sf Applebee's Bar & Grille, which started construction as soon as the papers were signed. The Dallas-based Weitzman Group's team of Karen McCully and Robin Barrow brokered the deal for Applebee's, marking the 14th Dallas-Fort Worth location for the Overland Park, KS-based chain. Jim Pangman of Dallas' Pangman Real Estate Services is the joint venture's broker. The Marketplace at Town Centre is a design of Dallas-based T.L. Callaway Architects Inc. and is being built by Mycon General Contractors Inc. of McKinney, TX.

The project's success has Barnett wishing he had more land in the immediate area to expand. The project is bringing retailers who wanted to crack the tight market, but had no development site available to them, he explains. Meanwhile, existing retailers have been jumping on board as a means to shed 1980s-vintage buildings for newer space. Come late summer or early fall, the center will deliver such DFW market staples as Macaroni Grill, Linens n' Things, Michaels, Ultimate Electronics, Ross Dress for Less, Staples, Dress Barn, Famous Footwear, Bath & Body Works and Cinemark.