At this morning’s The Real Estate Council’s Market Matters program, Karahan Cos. president and CEO Fehmi Karahan was asked about the next Legacy West. Toward the end of a keynote conversation, moderator Greg Kraus with Invesco Real Estate asked Karahan, who developed Legacy West with partners KDC and Columbus Realty, what factors would need to come together to create a project that could rival the $3 billion development at Legacy Drive and Dallas North Tollway in Plano that has become home to corporations like Liberty Mutual and Toyota.
Karahan’s reply: it would be pretty tough to duplicate.
“It’s going to sound like Legacy is one kind, but it is one kind,” Karahan says. “It’s not because of me. The vision of the Perot family—you have to go back 35, 40 years ago [to see] how they [turned] 2,600 acres of land into a premier business park. So what makes The Shops at Legacy? We’re surrounded with the who’s who in corporate America with Frito Lays and Dr Peppers. And trying to get 100,000 people employed in that radius is going to be difficult for anyone. There are a lot of announcements in Allen, McKinney, and these parts trying to attract these types of corporations, this type of density, residential development. … The reason [we’re] successful is that we’re not just for Legacy Business Park, but we pull from very large radiuses. I think that trying to do these kinds of developments in a very difficult retail environment is going to be difficult. … I don’t think you can easily put it together. Many things have to come together.”
