Evergreen Realty Advisors

September 01, 2006

Times Square at Craig Ranch to feature Retail, Luxury Apartments

Gail Kalinoski, Contributing Editor

Evergreen Realty Advisors and DXE Commercial Development will build ground-floor retail and 320 upscale apartments on a 4.62-acre site in the Town Center of Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas.

Construction on the $80 million Times Square at Craig Ranch (pictured) is scheduled to begin next month and be completed by spring 2008. The Class A, five-story building will have over 800,000 square feet of space including the garage. There will be an additional 80,000 square feet of space for prime retail use. Amenities will include a pool, lounge room and workout facility

The rental apartments will be 60 percent one-bedrooms, 38 percent two-bedrooms and 3 percent three-bedrooms, said Steve Everbach, managing partner of Evergreen Realty Advisors. "We think there will be a combination of empty nesters, young single professionals and young couples," Everbach told CPN this afternoon.

He said the residential rentals would average about $1.30 per square foot. Retail leasing would be about $25 a square foot, triple net, Everbach said. He said they have spoken with interested retailers that could take a majority of the space. "We are pretty confident we will be fully leased before the building opens."

It is the first vertical residential construction in the 2,500-acre, master planned community of Craig Ranch, located on Highway 121 and Custer Road in Collin County. David Craig, chairman and CEO of Craig International and founder of Craig Ranch, told CPN the new project is expected to be a gathering place for residents and visitors. "It really kicks off the 'new urbanism' town center that is essential and becomes the heartbeat of the community," he said.

The site is located across from the $45 million TPC Craig Ranch Golf Course and Cooper Aerobics Center. A Golden Tulip Hotel will also be constructed in the town center and Craig said he expects to announce another town center building with for-sale condos above retail within 90 days.

JPI will handle the residential leasing and management and The Weitzman Group will manage the retail leasing and management

Times Square at Craig Ranch was designed by PB2 Architecture and Engineering and Precept Builders is the general contractor. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, LP, in Dallas, arranged financing, which includes Bank of America, Washington Mutual and TriSail Capital Corp. of Boston.

Everbach said it was challenging to get the financing because they were selling a new concept.

Robert Blount, a Holliday Fenogilio Fowler analyst who worked on the deal, agreed. "The financing structure was complicated only because of the size of the transaction and the fact that Times Square is the anchor development of the town center," he said. "The capital providers first needed to see and understand the impact that this development would have on the overall master planned community."

Original article appears on CommercialPropertyNews.com