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Adolfson & Peterson Construction (AP) has wrapped construction on Northwest Independent School District’s (ISD) Haslet Elementary School, located at 501 School House Road in Haslet, Texas. The two-story building is 100,431 square feet and features an open concept library, learning pods with classrooms and collaborative spaces and room for 850 students. “Haslet is a growing community, and this new facility provides ample space for current and future students,” said Bob Lemke, vice president of operations, AP. “Every square foot of the school’s interior and exterior is designed to promote collaborative learning. We’re proud to have worked on this unique project, and we’re happy it will be a prototype for future Northwest ISD elementary schools.” Nicknamed “The Nest,” the school’s high-volume learning commons and library were designed to emulate a tree house and act as a central point for the facility. Adjacent to the learning commons are classrooms, additional flex space, and focus rooms with movable walls that allow teachers to scale learning environments outside of the classroom and create greater adaptability for learning of all types. The facility also features curtain walls to allow for natural light. The school’s exterior features outdoor courtyards with usable space that is easily accessed by classrooms, as well as recreational fields, playground areas, decorative flatwork and new parking and paving. The project also includes a storm shelter, which required intricate preconstruction coordination with specific programming and sequencing. AP began constructing Haslet Elementary School in summer 2019 and completed the project ready for school to begin in fall 2020, despite 68 days of weather delays and local coronavirus containment measures. Huckabee served as architect on the project. AP’s recent notable North Texas school projects include Garland ISD’s Garland High School, Hudson Middle School, Abbett and Luna Elementary Schools; Arlington ISD’s Arts and Athletics Complex, Arlington and Bowie High Schools and Ashworth Elementary School; and Highland Park ISD’s Highland Park High and Middle Schools, McCulloch Intermediate, and Bradfield, Hyer and University Park Elementary Schools. AP is also currently constructing the Marshall Law and Medical Services Magnet High School for San Antonio’s Northside ISD.
RESOLUT RE recently closed 10 retail transactions in Texas. The deals included leases and sales in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston markets. Sabor Colombia has leased 1,500 square feet at Anna Plaza (13201 RR 620, Austin). Michael Noteboom and Andrew Perkel of RESOLUT RE represented the landlord. Sheryl Pickens of Real Estate Uprising represented the tenant. Selah Hills Church has leased 2,050 square feet at Live Oak Plaza (14370 TX-29, Liberty Hill, Texas). Emilie Niekdam and Phil Morris of RESOLUT RE represented the landlord. The Academy has leased 6,800 square feet at 13208 Morris Road in Austin. Janice Landers, CCIM of RESOLUT RE represented the landlord. Dutch Bros. Coffee has leased 1.02 acres at Stone Hill Town Center (18800 Limestone Commercial Drive, Pflugerville, Texas). Dave Burggraaf of RESOLUT RE represented the tenant. Josh Friedlander and Kevin Sims of NewQuest Properties represented the landlord. Live It Up Nutrition and Energy has leased 1,224 square feet at Palestine Retail Center (2213 S Loop 256, Palestine, Texas). Chris Flesner and Gavin Fite of RESOLUT RE represented the landlord. Hotel Equipment, LLC has renewed at 6701 Highway Blvd Office Building (6701 Highway Blvd, Katy, Texas). Dani Allison of RESOLUT RE represented the landlord. Main Squeeze Juice Co has leased 1,495 square feet at West Parkwood Place (1501 W Parkwood Avenue, Friendswood, Texas). Joaquin Orozco of RESOLUT RE represented the tenant. Paul N. Brow Architect, LLC has leased 450 square feet at Worksuites Sugarland (77 Sugar Creek Center Boulevard, Sugar Land, Texas). Dani Allison of RESOLUT RE represented the tenant. The Chipper has leased 1,377 square feet at Pin Oak Village (1251 Pin Oak Road, Katy). Dani Allison and Rick Gutierrez of RESOLUT RE represented the Landlord. Ryan King of Finial Group represented the tenant. An undisclosed buyer has purchased the 2,400 square feet retail building at 7635 Ley Road in Houston. Rick Gutierrez of RESOLUT RE represented the seller.
SkyWalker Property Partners has acquired a partially developed medical and office condominium park in Collin County and sold a 100-percent-leased MOB property in Hood County. The acquisition is Crescent Parc at 1400 N. Coit Road in McKinney, Texas, which has 61 medical and office condominiums in various stages of completion. The 13.2-acre project was bought out of bankruptcy and now is parked in the portfolio of When Opportunity Knocks LLC. The just-sold property is a 5,865-square-foot, two-tenant medical office building on 0.6 acres at 1308 Paluxy Road in Granbury, Texas, which had been part of the Cash Flow Fever Fund LLC portfolio for two years. The Granbury project is an outlier in comparison to balance of the fund’s portfolio as well as its sister funds, which are managed by North Texas-based SkyWalker Property Partners. Before marketing could begin, a full-price offer rolled in from a California investor with 1031 exchange funds to deploy. “It was the quickest deal I’ve seen. It closed in 20 days,” said Clint Holland, SkyWalker Property’s acquisitions director, who negotiated the sale on behalf of the seller of record, Granbury Illusion LLC. The Granbury buyer is IPX 1031 Investment Property Exchange Services Inc., intermediary for the Scanlin 1989 Trust. Randy White, an independent broker from Fort Worth, represented the buyer. The Crescent Parc transaction was vastly different. SkyWalker Property was up against at least 15 other potential buyers for the well-located development, which was sold by David Wallace, the Chapter II trustee appointed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Mart Martindale of Edge Realty Partners represented the seller. Crescent Parc was seized by bankruptcy court in early 2019 after its former developer was indicted by the SEC. When construction was halted, Phase I had 14 buildings with 61 office condos, totaling 86,954 square feet, in various stages of completion. Phase II, totaling 6.5 acres, had utility lines in place and dirt prepped to develop another 11 buildings. At the time, 30 pre-sale contracts had been signed, some of which were already at the title company. With the acquisition now closed, SkyWalker Property has ramped up construction on the 14 shells to create turn-key buildings for sale or lease. The structures average 8,222 square feet. “The challenge has been rebuilding relationships with the previously interested buyers,” Holland said. “I’m optimistic we’ll have these 30 sales completed within a month.” Crescent Parc is located near the intersection of Coit Road and East University Drive/US Hwy. 380 at the kissing point of Prosper, Frisco and McKinney. A vacant tract of land, which is predestined for retail build-out, is the only barrier between the freeway and the office park. Also close by is the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road. The development is surrounded by single-family communities. “We are right in the middle of the growth path. It’s an A+ location,” said Holland, who negotiated the acquisition for the buyer of record, McKinney Sunrise LLC. Of equal importance is the product type—single-story buildings with individual HVAC systems, tailor-made designs for medical and office users. Texas Health Frisco, a full-service acute-care hospital, is less than 4.5 miles away. Holland said 95 percent of the buyers to date are investors, who are signing one-year leasing agreements with Joe Martinez and Tonya La Barbara of Legacy Commercial Realty in nearby Oak Point for their buildings. “We think it is the perfect COVID-type of property. Users have full control of their spaces, including whether to open their doors or not,” Holland said. “It’s great timing to bring this kind of product online.”
As the pandemic tightened its grip on America, resident safety and wellbeing remained the highest priorities for High Street Residential, one of the most prolific multifamily developers in the Austin area. “We worked closely with our management partners to immediately adjust our operating practices to better enable social distancing within common spaces, such as creating a reservation system to better manage congestion within pool and fitness spaces,” said Matteo Pacifici, senior vice president at High Street. “We also implemented enhanced cleaning protocols to ensure safety within our common areas and enhanced our virtual leasing capabilities, providing new options for potential residents to research, tour and ask questions to property staff and residents virtually.”
While many of the changes made in multifamily environments were made with the short term in mind, it’s becoming clear that some may outlast the pandemic that prompted them. “We expect that the composition of units will change in the future as more residents adapt to working from home regularly. We expect buildings in the future will provide more flexible unit formats to accommodate working from home by offering more dedicated office space within units themselves,” Pacifici said. “We also expect to see a greater emphasis on common workspaces within buildings versus other amenity offerings.” In Dallas, multifamily development and construction company, Oden Hughes, is also designing its communities to better accommodate the increased number of employees who will continue working from home. “We’re incorporating large co-working spaces into more of our projects and creating separate spaces for working within more units ranging from small nooks to home offices,” said managing director Howell Beaver, who oversees development in the DFW area. Adapting to work-from-home demand isn’t the only trend these multifamily developers have observed throughout 2020. In Austin, Pacifici said a steady flow of out-of-state residents to Texas continues to bring young, well-educated employees to the city. “Despite this positive trend, we did see slower leasing activity from existing Austin residents,” he said. “As market conditions deteriorated in the spring of 2020, existing landlords offered attractive concessions and reduced rents to help retain existing residents. This led to less demand for new apartments by existing Austin residents.” The team at Oden Hughes is keeping its eyes on East Austin and Northeast Austin. “East Austin remains very popular among young professionals drawn by the area’s close proximity to downtown and a great restaurant and bar scene that hopefully will recover by the end of the year,” said Oden Hughes vice president of development, Ben Browder, who oversees development in Austin. “Northeast Austin is also becoming more attractive as a major expansion of U.S. 183 nears completion. This project will significantly reduce commute times for workers heading downtown and to Northwest Austin.” Dallas suburbs are outperforming the infill markets as well, according to Beaver, who points out that is the opposite of what we saw coming out of the Great Recession. “The suburbs have been on fire, from both a leasing and transactions standpoint,” he said. “Our Lenox Castle Hills community in Carrollton was our best lease up yet company-wide, with all 430 units leased up in just over a year.” Beaver suggested that millennials are leaving the city after having kids, fueling demand for housing in North Dallas suburbs, such as Frisco, Plano, Garland, McKinney and Carrollton. “The trend has accelerated during the pandemic as more families and single young professionals have sought more living space,” said Beaver. Looking ahead, he said he’s optimistic about the multifamily sector in the Dallas market as the area adds new jobs and residents and home prices rise. Beaver said young professionals are drawn to Texas by the lure of the low cost of living and availability of high-paying jobs. “The Dallas economy is very diverse and also continues to attract companies seeking to lower their cost of doing business and the cost of living for their employees. CBRE, Charles Schwab and the aviation supply company Incora all announced plans to relocate their headquarters from California to the DFW area last year, while California-based advanced manufacturing firm Titans of CNC announced a major expansion in the area,” Beaver said. “We believe that more companies from expensive coastal areas will relocate to or expand operations in DFW in 2021 and beyond.” Similarly, Pacifici added that Texas’ capital city recovered a higher percentage of jobs lost during the pandemic than any other market in Texas and is outperforming most other major cities in that regard. “Austin is also benefiting from a wave of corporate office relocations and expansions announced over the last 12 months that will translate into thousands of new jobs in the metro,” he said. “These factors should contribute to improving performance.” Those relocations and expansions are predicted to add more than 10,000 jobs to the Austin market over the next few years. Tesla alone, Browder said, is expected to employ more than 5,000 people at its under-construction giga-factory. “At the same time, Austin’s extremely low housing inventory continues to push single-family home prices out of reach for more and more workers even in the suburbs,” he said. “The combination of strong population growth, low housing inventory and rising home prices will continue to fuel demand for more apartments in 2021, particularly in locations near employment centers, retail and recreational amenities.” If Austin and Dallas multifamily developers have proven anything this year, it’s that they can overcome once-in-this-lifetime challenges and even celebrate some successes, including Oden Hughes’ 10th year in business. “We broke ground on new developments in the Austin, Dallas and Houston areas while also continuing to grow our third-party general contracting businesses in these markets,” said Beaver. “It was a tough year for everyone, but we were very fortunate to be able to adapt.” Being able to find and focus on those silver linings is how the most successful developers push forward, a trait that will help propel them into 2021 and beyond.
Bellomy & Co. announced the sale of Kyle Premier Storage in Kyle, Texas. Kyle is 22 miles south of Austin. The Class A property comprises 707 units in 81,781 square feet. Bill Bellomy and Michael Johnson of Bellomy & Co. represented William R. Holms, an individual, Kyle, Texas-based seller. The team also procured the Delaware-based buyer, AGAP Kyle, LLC.
RCR Taylor Logistics Park opened January 15, 2021 with dual Class 1 rail service from Union Pacific and BNSF Railroads. The 755-acre site located in the city of Taylor, Texas and Williamson, County, Texas offers transloading, manifest, unit train and storage for national and international firms in the Austin/Central Texas area. The park is capable of handling multiple, non-hazardous commodities and looks forward to working with customers to meet their individual needs. Serving as a logistics hub for the Central Texas area, RCR Taylor Logistics Park will assist companies in increasing productivity and accessibility through offering dual Class 1 railroad service. Geographic location is extremely important, and Taylor, Texas compliments both Union Pacific & BNSF networks which serve the western and central United States. The rail park is strategically adjacent to major highways, toll roads, industry and rail corridors. Due to the lack of public Class 1 rail served industrial parks in the Austin area the rail park will change logistics for Austin and Central Texas. More than 5 million people live within 100 miles of the park and RCR Taylor Logistics Park will spur business and economic development, divert hundreds of truck routes and provide much-needed employment in this fast-growing region. RCR Taylor Logistics Park will give shippers a more direct and efficient route into the Austin/Central Texas markets as it is located in the Texas “Golden Triangle.” Williamson County and Central Texas are experiencing a tremendous amount of growth in the industrial development sector as the market continues to grow, and the Toll Road 130/Interstate 35 corridor is positioned for long term growth. Highway traffic is currently a hot topic and there are no signs of it declining. Any company shipping via rail is helping to reduce highway congestion, for on the average one rail car can hold four semi-trailer trucks of product. With the growth of Austin, the demand for rail freight tonnage will increase and RCR Taylor Logistics Park is prepared to expand and grow as needed.
