Cousins Christens 600-Acre La Villita

The first building wave for the La Villita community calls for 2,000 upscale multifamily units, 30 acres of boutique office buildings and service retail, 400 single-family homes and two schools. Planners already are working on a 200-acre second phase, but like the first it will take a few years to assemble. The crux of the 600-acre plan is to "reinvent" the land use so that Las Colinas, with its marble curbs, famous bronze Mustangs and image as a favored corporate address, can continue to grow. La Villita, where an acre of land costs $250,000, is projected to pump $300 million annually into the City of Irving's tax base.

Helping Cousins push out the project was the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas, which broke ground yesterday on a $3.4-million, 13,500-sf headquarters building on 1.2 acres. To date, Dallas/Fort Worth companies and individuals have donated two-thirds of the cost with in-kind services, materials and cash to make a wish come true for a foundation that's granted 2,100 wishes since 1982 for North Texas children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses.

Ground breaks again in March when Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. kicks off a $35-million, 409-unit multifamily project on 15.7 acres in tandem with Chicago-headquartered AMLI's $32-million launch of a 360-unit development on 16.3 acres. Also starting in the spring will be Portrait Homes of Chicago, which is holding enough land for a $17-million, 77-townhome project. Lincoln's units will average 950 sf and rent for $1,250 per month; AMLI's apartments will average 925 sf, and rent for $1 per sf. Portrait has set opening prices of $190,000 to about $220,000 for 1,600-sf to 2,500-sf townhomes.

In May, Goodman Homes, an affiliate of Hovnanian Homes of Red Bank, NJ, and Darling Homes, based in Frisco, TX, will ramp up work on models, priced upward of $250,000. Each residential developer has 113 lots.

As expected, competition was tough for the development rights, even for Lincoln Property's Jeff Courtwright, a partner in the Southwest region who spent the last five years courting Cousins for the corner of Royal Lane and O'Connor Boulevard. "I always thought it would be a great place to build," he says, predicting lease-up will take just a year.

Charles Cotten, Cousins' senior vice president and La Villita's master planner, tells GlobeSt.com that the long-awaited ground-breaking made him "anxious. It's not done. Now, we want to get to our next step and the next project." The multifamily developers, he quickly adds, "are the guys who are going to make it work."

Simultaneous construction schedules, though tricky to implement, will be key to creating a first-of-its-kind community within an established master-planned development. "You will see critical mass happen all at once," Taylor Bowen, AMLI's vice president of development, explains of the build-out plan for a high-traffic, high-profile property at a primary intersection. As always, office and retail development will follow the rooftops of La Villita, positioned within walking distance of the Movie Studios at Las Colinas, one of Irving's top-draw tourist attractions in a 21.4-million-sf office submarket with more than 2,000 companies and 40 Fortune 500 corporations and 1.3 million sf of retail.

Cousins is master developing La Villita on behalf of the Las Colinas Land LP, the largest landowner in the 12,000-acre Las Colinas. Carter & Burgess of Fort Worth is the master planner for La Villita, a conceptual plan created by the father of New Urbanism, Andres Duany, the visionary behind Seaside, FL.