GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Homestead's Inaugural Sale Sets Up $300M-Plus Project

EULESS, TX-Labeling the deal as purely luck, a Dallas development group has acquired 183 acres in simultaneous, off-market transactions with 23 heirs of land homesteaded in the 1800s and their neighbor. The land assembly will be built out with $300 million to $350 million of mixed-use, lifestyle product.

Kent Donahue, owner of Donahue Development Corp., tells GlobeSt.com that the just-bought land will be planned for 800,000 sf to one million sf of retail, restaurant and entertainment space plus a “to-be-determined” residential component. The buyer of record, Glade 121 LP, got one mile of frontage along Texas 121 and a foothold at the hard corner of Cheeksparger and Glade roads in Euless with the first pass of the Harrington land since it was homesteaded.

Donahue says the New Urbanism development should be ready to break ground in third quarter 2006. A conceptual plan for the “121 gateway district” has been filed with the city. Donahue is interviewing architects and leasing agents for the development, which has yet to be named.

Donahue says talks began in December 2004 with the Harrington family heirs. “It was just timing,” he says about lobbing the unsolicited offer. “Some of the family members were maturing and felt it was time to sell. And, we were at the right place at the right time. We got lucky.” Ray Utley with Henry S. Miller Commercial represented the Harrington heirs and the Mahr Co. of Dallas and independent broker Allen Jordan negotiated for the buyer.

“It’s a fine piece of property,” Utley says. “For a number of years, people have tried to buy it.” The deal had a lot of moving parts, including securing individual interests from 23 heirs. “It was very convoluted,” he adds. “We’ve been working on it for quite some time.”The acreage is bounded on the south by a Wal-Mart Supercenter and on the north by a Super Target. The acquisition was financed through the Texans Commercial Capital LLC of Richardson.