Dallas Duo Primes Plan for 9,000 NW Acres

SAN ANTONIO-Two Dallas-area companies have banded together to prime 9,000 acres for mixed-use development in northwestern San Antonio. The majority will end up in homebuilders' hands, but a fair stake is being reserved for retail and condo build-outs.

Baruch Properties and Mockingbird Properties are now plowing the fields together in the Loop 1604-Interstate 10 corridor. Mockingbird's president Mitchell Vexler tells GlobeSt.com that he's lined up 1,000 acres in four transactions for commercial development from Baruch's land bank, amassed over the past 18 months in 20-some deals. Vexler estimates nearly $260 million to date has been spent to build the land bank--with more about to go on the line in the near future. "We've got a pretty big appetite," he says. "We are moving forward on going in for more." Coming up soon is a 302-acre pickup.

Vexler's most prominent piece abuts La Cantera on one side and the hillside estate of country music star George Strait on the other. Vexler is planning to sell 83 acres of the 800-acre tract to a lifestyle retail developer from California, who's getting a tract primed with entitlements and water rights for up to 1.5 million sf of two-story development. The deal is slated to close at the end of January 2007. Vexler, a high-end condo developer, has kept 18 acres on a hill overlooking the proposed retail for his pipeline. In 18 to 24 months, he plans to start construction on his specialty product, condos.

"We're creating the growth pattern," Vexler explains, adding the partners are putting in roads and utility lines and selling development tracts. "We'll do whatever it takes to get to a position to sell it. But, we're truly buying land that's ready for development. We're not buying land on spec." He says 80% of Baruch's bank already is entitled. So far, Baruch has sold tracts to Wall Homes Inc. of Arlington, TX, Miami-based Lennar Corp. and Pulte Homes Inc., headquartered in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

As the blocks get carved up, Vexler reserves tracts for multifamily development. "I'm racking up land for future development in growth corridors. I'm creating my deal flow," he says. "I just have to be patient."

Meanwhile, Vexler is fine-tuning a mixed-use prototype with ground-level retail and four floors of condos. The density, plus or minus, is 12,000 sf of retail topped off with 45 to 52 multifamily units per acre in an urban-village design intended for tracts of 20 acres or less.

"By partnering with Baruch, it gives me the opportunity to do what I used to do," says Vexler, who focused on land development from 1990-96 until he turned his focus to high-rise condo projects. He says the new partners also are eyeing development acreage in Dallas, Nashville, Seattle and Anaheim, CA. And, talks are under way about opening an office in Houston.