JV Ready to Pull Trigger on $30M Power Center

Ground will break in early September on Rockwall Crossing, where 120,000 sf has been preleased to Bed Bath & Beyond, Circuit City, Dollar Tree, PetsMart and TJ Maxx. The pipeline has TGI Friday closing this week and another 40,000 sf of signed leases coming before construction starts on a 26-acre site with 1,500 feet along the frontage road to Interstate 30, Jim Weir, vice president of Dallas-based Woodmont Co. tells GlobeSt.com. The center will sit on the eastern side of the suburb's only retail corridor. The commitments in hand for Rockwall Crossing means "most every box will now be there," he says.

Weir says the all-in development cost is close to $30 million. The acreage was bought two weeks ago from a pair of local investment groups. The project site is across the freeway from a Wal-Mart Supercenter and sits in the same neighborhood as Target and Kohl's.

"There's a lot of demand and a lot of folks who want to be there," says Weir, who negotiated the land sale along with Woodmont senior vice president Greg Rabin. Weir predicts Rockwall Crossing will open doors next summer at 80% to 85% occupancy. Rent is running from $18 per sf to $30 per sf. And, the big boxes that have signed are inking minimum 10-year leases. The remaining 110,000 sf will be filled with mini-anchors and shop space tenants, mostly national names interspersed with a few local retailers, he says.

Weir says the preleasing drive has gone through the paces with the usual speed for a power center proposal. Running the anchor tenants' negotiations were Steven A. Lieberman, president of the Retail Connection, representing Bed Bath & Beyond; Robert Aycock with Princeton Partners, TJ Maxx; Claudia Hutchinson and Myles Kelley, both with the recently formed Realty Ventures, Circuit City; Warren Creason with Creason Commercial, PetsMart; and Weir and Woodmont senior vice president Jennifer Frank, Dollar Tree.

The Dallas-based partners have set up the JV so that L&B, representing a pension fund client, will oversee construction, leasing and management. Woodmont's post-construction role is to lease and manage Rockwall Crossing.