Wachovia, Applebee's Join Line-Up in Hispanic-Oriented Retail Center

DALLAS-With preleasing momentum peaking, the specialty team for the 175,000-sf Sierra Vista Shopping Center has put finishing touches to a 50,921-sf pad site sale to Wachovia Bank. The deal has closed just days before walls are set to rise on the Hispanic-oriented retail venue in South Dallas.

Juan Carlos Pina, part of a four-member international team with Henry S. Miller Commercial in Dallas, says tenants will get keys in July to finish out spaces for a late second-quarter grand opening. Preleasing pushed above 50% in recent weeks and the class A space should easily be 80%, possibly 100%, filled before Sierra Vista opens at the intersection of Illinois Avenue and Westmoreland Road, he says.

Pina tells GlobeSt.com that preleasing picked up substantially in the past 90 days as retailers reconciled the rents of $22 per sf to $28 per sf with the opportunity to be in a class A development with specialty appeal for the now well-recognized Hispanic spending power. Dallas-based Direct Development's 24-acre site has a five-mile trade area with 278,000 residents who haven't seen a new center of Sierra Vista's caliber go up in their Oak Cliff neighborhood in decades. "But, we have the incomes," Pina says, "and finally they get it." Traffic counts at the intersection exceed 50,000 vehicles per day, with the junction including a transit station.

Helping to fuel the preleasing campaign is a 55,790-sf prototype Carnival grocery store, which is roughly 30,000 sf larger than the norm for a 16-year-old concept created by locally based Minyard Food Stores Inc. Pina says the "design" is so hushed that even the developer and leasing team have yet to learn what Carnival is planning to unveil in the "lifestyle" format.

Still to come is possibly a Hispanic theater with first-run films, according to Pina who's opened talks with a Fort Worth operator. "It would make a lot of sense for the area," he says.

Besides Wachovia, the leasing team has cut a ground lease for a 4,500-sf to 5,000-sf Applebee's Neighborhood Grill and locked down side-by-side shop space leases with Starbucks for 1,700 sf and Wells Fargo, 3,250 sf. Other in-hand leases are held by Payless Shoe Source, 3,000 sf and Melrose, 12,050 sf. The pipeline holds another 20,000 sf, ranging from a new cell phone company poised to launch an expansion in the West to a Chinese buffet. Pina says the signed deals to date are averaging five-year terms.

Wachovia's newest building, about 4,000 sf, will break ground in the coming months so it will be ready to open in the fall. Mark Newman represented Wachovia with the Sierra Vista deal and teamed with Daniel Taylor with Staubach Co.'s retail division for a 52,800-sf ground lease at a 30,000-sf center planned for the corner of Beach Street and North Tarrant Parkway in Fort Worth. Mark Matise of the Browning Property Co. in Dallas represented the developer.

In the Sierra Vista deal, Derek Ferem with Direct Development teamed with the Henry S. Miller Commercial team to finalize the Wachovia sale. Besides Pina, the Henry S. Miller Commercial team, led by David Valdez, includes Stella Reynosa and Lydia Huang.