EXCLUSIVE: $45M Land Deal Speeds Up Development Plan

Prime Income's broker Bruce Endendyk, first vice president for CB Richard Ellis Inc. in Dallas, confirms for GlobeSt.com that he nailed down the off-market deal in two months of talks with Jack Harvard of the Nash Group, also in Dallas, who represented the seller of record, McKinney Ranch Ltd. According to local sources, the seller is a high-powered family from Mexico that's owned the land nearly three decades.

The original estimate was it would take several years to lay roads and utility lines into the prized land, but the recent sale has stepped up the development schedule. "They're trying to get it all in now--in a year to a year and a half," says Brian James, McKinney's planning director.

The acreage has yet to be platted, but its high-density zoning could allow for 24 to 48 units per acre of multifamily product and up to seven single-family lots per acre. Estimates aren't available for the amount of retail and office space that could be developed. James says the seller "came in a few years ago and got the zoning," but the plan has been idle ever since.

"They can be very creative with regard to what they do there, based on the rules that they have for the property," says David Pitstick, president and CEO for McKinney Economic Development Corp. "The zoning is unusual. Basically it rewards density as long as it's mixed use."

As McKinney gained in popularity with single-family homebuilders, city officials took steps to protect their tax base by creating the 4,500-acre regional employment center, designating high-density, mixed uses in a New Urbanism-style environment. Prime Income's acquisition, Pitstick says, "is dead center in the employment center." And though, the land "has no real frontage on [Texas] 121, there are several major planned thoroughfares for it," he says.

Dallas-based Prime Income reportedly bought all that the family owned in the area. With the deal done, local sources say Prime Income's Craig Sessions is making plans to market tracts to developers. Word on the street is local developer David Craig has dibs on a portion of the land abutting his single-family community, Craig Ranch. Prime Income's land is positioned less than a mile from 1,000 acres recently bought by DR Horton Inc., a Fort Worth-based homebuilder now mapping out up 4,000 single-family lots for the Virginia Parkway-Custer Road claim. Sessions and Harvard did not return telephone calls for comment about the transaction or McKinney Ranch's timetable.