The hat company's corporate chiefs have penciled a closing in the first week of January with the Baptist Foundation, Allen Gump, EVP and director of the industrial division in Dallas for Colliers International Inc., tells GlobeSt.com. The plan calls for a groundbreaking in January or February, with occupancy anticipated in midsummer, he says.
Gump says the search began because the top-name hat maker's parent company in Los Angeles, gripping the reins for the past year, prefers to own rather than lease. The search for existing product or land focused on the Garland area. "There's very little to buy," Gump says, "but lots to lease." Plus, he adds that the area's land "suitable sites" have been depleted because major developers, with a penchant for long-term leases, have been wholesale buying the stock. The Baptist Foundation, though, is a retail seller. Its land, he says, is "too far a field for the development community."
Milano Hat is getting a site near the George Bush tollroad, setting up an easy delivery connection to the rest of the metroplex. Gump says the tract, backing up to acreage ticketed for a city park, is only the second commercial site to be carved from the foundation's foothold in northeast Dallas.
For the past decade, the 21-year-old manufacturer of felt and straw Western hats has headquartered and operated out of 10203 Corkwood Rd., owned by Madison Realty Investors of Dallas. In July, its execs signed a short-term lease for 32,311 sf of operating space to carry it through the build-to-suit's completion.
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