ASG Real Estate Co. of Carrollton, a subsidiary of Kuwait's Alshall Group, acquired the southwest and northwest corners at Eldorado Parkway and Ridge Road in McKinney, a town that's up to 88,000 and another 300 single-family building permits turning each month. The average annual household income is $105,146.

A source says ASG paid $18 per sf to Dallas-based Vigor Properties for the corners, about three miles west of Eldorado and Central Expressway, where dirt's been trading for $25 per sf to equally eager developers. "A critical mass has been achieved that's enabling these projects to come together," Steven A. Lieberman, president of Dallas-based Retail Connection, tells GlobeSt.com. "It's a self-contained community that's now big enough to support its own retail base."

James Hankins, ASG's senior vice president of development, confides his build-out plan will put roughly 120,000 sf of retail on the southwest corner of Eldorado Parkway and Ridge Road while the northwest side probably will be parceled into pad sites for office condos, a product type with practically no competition in town. Hankins hopes to break ground in November on Eldorado Pavilion, eyeing a midsummer 2005 delivery for an estimated $14-million project that's yet to land on an architect's drawing board.

The McKinney story now includes three Wal-Mart Supercenters, one is up and two are coming, along with a second Home Depot store. "Anytime Wal-Mart buys that much land and does that much planning, you know you're growing," John Kassel, McKinney's executive director of development services, says.

Kassel says the development fire was fanned even more by last month's council approval of beer and wine sales. He confides inquiries have come in from the Issaquah, WA-headquartered Costco Wholesale Corp.'s World Market and Bentonville, AR-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s twin, Sam's Club, both requiring the change in the law before they'd build. As retailers of all sizes and types look to land, the telling is in the numbers of commercial building permits--311,986 sf issued in the first quarter versus 72,553 sf placed three months earlier. The second quarter has yet to be totaled.

McKinney's existing retail inventory is 1.5 million sf and that's without a mall on the roster. Vacancy is 4.5% versus the 10% average in Dallas/Fort Worth, according to research by Dallas-based Weitzman Group, which is in the midst of pre-leasing two of the town's top corners.

Weitzman's numbers put McKinney's average rent at $15.88 per sf in comparison to the metroplex's $13.61 per sf. Class A space has pushed above $20 per sf, particularly at the Central Expressway junction where a trio of retail developers is pushing out 350,000 sf on three corners for an all-star cast of national names.

Office development, as would be expected, is underway--three buildings about 50,000 sf each, one with a price tag of $200 per sf. On the industrial front, Simpson Strong-Tie Co. Inc. of Dublin, CA just applied for a 315,000-sf expansion and the locally based Encore Wire's secured a permit to add 162,000 sf onto its campus.

And the best part, says David Pitstick, president and CEO of McKinney Economic Development Corp., is the city, spanning 113 square miles, is just 25% built out. The development credit is being given to a bounty of high-end housing, a one-year-old customs office at the local airport and enough distance from Dallas--33 miles northeast--to establish its own identity.