Group Plans New $50M-Plus Commercial Zone

CARROLLTON, TX-Five Dallas investors are mapping out a 40.8-acre redevelopment plan for a new Asian town center in North Dallas. Anchoring the rollout will be a Texas newcomer, H Mart, an East Coast chain with the combined punch of a Whole Foods, Central Market and Wal-Mart.

Richard Kang, managing principal for the investment group, tells GlobeSt.com that the credit for the region's new destination grocer goes to local broker, Edward Schleigh, who's been looking for the right spot for five years for H Mart's inroad into Texas. Kang says the chain's also looking at a site in Houston.

H Mart has bought a 75,620-sf empty box at 2625 Old Denton Rd. in a direct deal with the Hayward, CA-based Mervyn's LLC. Kang says H Mart's planning to invest $10 million just into the retooling, which will have a store-within-a-store format with 22 to 30 vendors in addition to its wares.

Meanwhile, Kang says the investment group has bought the abutting 178,524-sf Furneaux Creek Shopping Center as the key piece for the plan and has a surrounding 18.3 acres under contract and set to close before the year ends. Furneaux Creek, also a 2625 Old Denton Rd. address, was marketed for $6.7 million by Manuel Ramon and Ron Hebert, Dallas associates with Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co., who are selling the Texas portfolio of Seattle-based Pacific Rim Land Holding Co. LLC.

Kang says the just-bought center will be renovated, but the group's waiting on H Mart's redesign of its box. In the interim, he says the focus will be to fill the 60% vacancy with specialty retail targeting the city's large Asian community and professional offices.

Several partners in the group are property owners in the Asian Trade District along Harry Hines Boulevard, but Kang says the retail plan for the Carrollton center and surrounding land isn't going to follow suit as an import mecca. Kang says the town center and H Mart, taking up 22.5 acres, will be a stand-alone project while the other 18.3 acres will have separate identities and uses, possibly even a hotel. If H Mart's website is any indication, the goal is "to harmonize with neighboring business so effectively as to create a new commercial zone."

Kang says the group eyed Furneaux Creek when it first came to market, but it went under contract before they could act. "One day we were checking the website and this was back on the market," he says. "We hurried to get this done. We got lucky."

Ramon says the short return to the market drew seven offers due to development opportunities with frontage along the George Bush Toll Road. "I think they were the right buyers for this deal," he says. "We had quite a bit of interest so we were able to be pretty aggressive on the terms."

H Mart, planning a "super-size" store, is a 24-year-old chain based in Lyndhurst, NJ. The corporation has four stores each in New York and New Jersey; two each in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia; and one in Georgia. It has are three franchises in Woodside, NY, Edison, NJ and Denver plus distribution centers in New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In recent months, a store opened in Niles, IL, which Kang says rang up 80,000 receipts in its first three days.

The anchor for the Carrollton Asian Town Center will open in October. "We are really anxious for them to come here," Kang says.