"We're on the front edge of the process," says Ron Clary,executive director for the Fairview Economic Development Corp.Infrastructure work for the commercial land will begin in the firstquarter in tandem with construction on a two-mile stretch of thefuture Fairview Parkway, the necessary catalyst for jumpstartingdevelopment. He says the first phase will take 2.5 years tocomplete.

Clary says Fairview's acreage, an assembly by three landowners,on the parkway's northern side is platted for 3,500 multifamilyunits, including townhouses, 1.4 million sf of high-rise officebuildings, one million sf of mid-rise office space, 600,000 sf ofretail and 300 single-family lots while the southern portion isslated to hold nearly 1.3 million sf of low- to mid-rise officebuildings and 800,000 sf of retail. Platting for the Allen land isstill under way.

"There will be no vertical development for six to 12 months,"Murl Richardson, president of Dallas-based Richardson Properties,tells GlobeSt.com. Richardson controls 350 of the 800 acres inFairview by virtue of a development agreement with a local family.Acting as Sloan Creek Ltd., Richardson will be selling 200 acres tomall developer, the MGHerring Group of Dallas, which also has 180acres under contract in Allen to set up a seamless development ofretail and residential space between the two cities, situated about30 miles northeast of Downtown Dallas. The proposed open-air mall,the Village at Fairview, will be the centerpiece, but it's far frombeing the only piece, Richardson and Clary point out. MGHerring isplanning to deliver one million sf on both sides of theFairview-Allen line in fall 2008.