Wylie EDC Sells First Piece of Redevelopment Site

WYLIE, TX-Shafer Property Co. expects to break ground within 90 days on a 23,000-sf retail project, taking the lead on a city's plan to transform industrial land into higher-end uses. The well-known Dallas developer has bought a highway-fronting 3.2 acres from Wylie Economic Development Corp., which has the back two under contract to the Cirrus Group and Baylor Healthcare System for a satellite medical campus.

The Shafer Plaza project, carrying an all-in cost hovering $5 million, should be ready to turn over to tenants in September, David McNeil, Shafer's EVP, tells GlobeSt.com. The project is still on the design boards, but the preliminary sketch calls for 17,000 sf of shop space and two pad sites. NCA Architecture of Dallas is crafting the design.

McNeil says Texas Credit Union is on board as the first tenant, preleasing 4,000 sf for the long term. By groundbreaking, he says he expects half of the inline space will be committed. The class A space, on the market for $27 per sf, is being put before local and national retailers to get neighborhood-type services into an emerging retail pocket for a high-growth corridor. "It's been a positive response," he says about the developer's first project in Wylie.

Stephen Summers with Dallas-based Staubach Co.'s retail group tried nearly a year on behalf of the Wylie EDC to interest shopping center developers in the northwest corner of FM 544 and US Highway 78. He says Wylie's steadily growing housing starts ended up sparking a bidding war among four retail developers after the Wylie EDC razed a warehouse to prep the site for redevelopment. According to Summers, Shafer is required to lay underground utility lines on the land.

Summers says the Dallas-based partners, Cirrus and Baylor, have placed a contract for the two-acre balance of the tract, but a closing date has yet to be firmed up. In keeping with the partners' past performance, ground will break within weeks of any land acquisition.