The 45,000-sf store most likely will be the last one to go up for awhile in the metroplex, David Hale, an associate broker with Julius M. Feinblum Real Estate Inc. in New York City, tells GlobeSt.com. Hale is the broker for Ashley Furniture affiliate Michael Levitz in Dallas and Greenfield Builders Inc., the Indianapolis-based buyer of the tract across the road from the 1.5-million-sf Grapevine Mills Mall at 3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway, owned by the Mills Corp. in Arlington, VA.

Dallas-based American Realty Investors Inc., led by Gene E. Phillips, was the seller. With Grapevine Mills Mall as the bait, the land in the immediate area has been fetching $13 per sf. The lengthy marketing period for a prime piece of land was attributed to the going rate for acreage and the undecided path for widening FM 2499, a project that will extend one of the retail corridor's primary roads right into the heart of the just-bought land. "It was difficult to get the right kind of interest at the right price," John Mathes with the Weitzman Group in Dallas says about acreage at a dead-end intersection of FM 2499 and Texas 121 and in a neighborhood that includes competitor, Rooms to Go.

Headquartered in Arcadia, WI, Ashley Furniture Industries Inc. is a network of independently owned and licensed retail stores that opened its first doors in North Texas two years ago along Hulen Street in Fort Worth. Since then, stores have been built in Arlington, Richland Hills, Plano and Mesquite.

Most often, Greenfield's MO is to provide turnkey construction services for all types of commercial projects, but that's not the case for the Grapevine Mills Mall location. Hale says Greenfield will be the owner.