The news last week that a group of apartments in north Dallas is going to be torn down to make way for another town center-style development means that there are at least eight major retail and housing developments either operating, in the process of being built, or being developed in the Central Expressway-Tollway corridor.
Start at West Village, cross over to the proposed development at the Loews theater site, then up Central to Mockingbird Station, the Park Place center, the Timbercreek, Lake Highlands and Preston Hollow/Urban Village projects, and then over to the new north Dallas deal. Or are there some I have not noticed? That's only 10 miles from south to north.
Are there enough Gaps in the world to fill all that space? More seriously, given tight credit markets and the slowdown in housing, who is going to finance these deals and who is going to move into these homes?
There will be fewer retailers versus more when this cycle is complete....and the destination points such as Northpark where the foot traffic is the highest will continue to be the winners. The Park Lane development across from Northpark will also fare well as the combination of hotel, office and retail within walking distance of Northpark will provide a solid underpinning for this location and bodes well for Greenville Avenue redevelopment. Walnut Hill & Central redevelopment has the opportunity to do well if the developers are successful at balancing the residential with the retail, but we've seen what happened with the retail that fronted this area over the past 5-10 years - similar to what exists at Meadow & Central. And what retail amenities other than restaurants will the LH Town Center have to offer? - it will either have great difficulty attracting retailers or will strip other centers in LH clean of their more substantial tenants - leaving vacancies and empty storefronts either in the Town Center or behind in the older strip centers? And need I remind anyone what Walnut Hill and Audelia look like today?
Posted by: WCF | June 27, 2008 at 12:40 AM