A 119,000-sf Home Depot, sporting a new look, will break ground in the coming month on a 20-acre tract on the south end of town, Sam Paschal, executive director of Flower Mound's Economic Development office, tells GlobeSt.com. The $7.3-million project is the first project in the Lakeside Business District, which has been in the planning for nearly eight years as a commercial campus corridor with select retail development.

Ross Perot Jr.'s Hillwood has just started site work on an 80-acre tract that could end up the first industrial campus in the long-awaited Lakeside Business District. A ground-breaking date has not been set for the first phase of the planned 1.4 million sf of industrial product, Paschal says. Also waiting in the wings are a couple deals with third-party logistics companies. He says the high-level talks could bring some signings in the near future. Meanwhile, developers are at the drafting table for a 100,000-sf office project, the first for the business district.

On the north end of town, Direct Development of Dallas is just starting work on a 300,000-sf, 30-acre retail project that will be anchored by a 175,000-sf Super Target. Paschal pegs that development at $20 million to $30 million. There will be no phased-in development, just a one-shot delivery of a Tuscan Italian-design center that's set for early summer 2003.

Paschal says Flower Mound's development is "the best kept secret in North Texas." The two retail projects alone are projected to pump $500,000 per year in sales tax revenue into the community that is 90% residential.

Home Depot represents a coup for the community in that the popular retail look was altered just so the retailer could get a piece of the action. Greenberg Farrow Architecture of Dallas has cloaked the traditional design in limestone while the landmark orange-lettered sign will be copper. Home Depot is shooting for a November delivery.

Paschal said Home Depot "understood how important it was to have a certain look for that property and they listened to the community." The look is strategically tied to developer Alan Stewart's Lakeside DFW project, a six million sf, mixed-use Verizon "smart" project on 163 acres, and 361 acres earmarked for five million sf in a joint project by Silverwing Development of San Francisco and Denver-based Hampton Partners. In fact, it was Silveron's owners and a private investor who hawked the 20-acre tract to Home Depot, with five acres set aside for pad site development, according to Paschal.

Lakeside Business District's development is mortared in office and industrial campus undertakings, with retail playing an ancillary role. But as so often happens, the best laid plans go astray and retail just happens to be rolling out first.