Now that Village on the Parkway has been sold, what’s next for the high-profile shopping center at the southeast corner of Belt Line Road and Dallas Parkway? According to Robert Dozier, executive vice president of Lincoln Property Co.’s retail group, big changes lie ahead.
Lincoln partnered with The Retail Connection and Boston-based Fidelity Real Estate Group to buy the seven-building, 380,000-square-foot project from J.E. Robert Co., which had taken ownership after a default by its former owner, DRA Advisors. The deal closed last week.
“Village on the Parkway is functionally challenged the way it’s currently laid out,” Dozier said. “What we are going to have are two zones—an entertainment zone on the southern end, with a movie operator and more restaurants, and a specialty grocer on the northern end.” Once that work is complete, the center’s core will be fine-tuned to improve pedestrian flow and make it easier to navigate.
Already the center has plenty of parking space to handle grocery and cinema uses. But when all is said and done, the density will be lowered. That’s because a now-vacant, three-story, 136,000-square-foot former Bed Bath & Beyond store at the north end will become a single-level store that opens to the development’s interior. Dozier said the revamping would provide also opportunities for existing tenants expand. One likely candidate is Gloria’s, a popular Salvadorian restaurant that fronts Dallas Parkway.
New lease announcements and construction work will heat up later in 2011. “There is a lot of demand from tenants that have voids in that market, so we have many options as we look at redevelopment,” Dozier said. “It gives us a lot of flexibility. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube. We keep turning it around as we figure it out.”
Although this is the first time Lincoln and The Retail Connection have owned property together, the two competitors have co-managed and co-leased a couple of projects in the past. Dozier said he was having lunch a few months ago with Steve Lieberman, CEO of The Retail Connection, when the topic of Village on the Parkway—and the buyer interest it was expected to generate—came up. “We said, ‘Why bid against each other on this, why not partner up?’ Both of our companies align very well together,” Dozier said. “We started talking about joining forces and creating a dream team and winning this thing. And that’s what we did.”
Dallas-based powerhouse Lincoln Property Co. was founded in 1964. Today it has more than 4,400 employees and about $28 billion in assets, with about $18 billion in commercial assets (office, industrial, and retail) and the other $10 million in multifamily assets. The company has offices in 40 major U.S. markets and another 300 management sites. Most of its retail projects are in the Southwest.
In terms of retail outlook, Dozier said Lincoln is actively pursuing a number of redevelopment projects. “I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities coming up as assets come through the banks and go back on the market,” he said. “We are bullish and are going to be in a buying mode over the next four to five years.
“We are lucky to be in Texas; it’s healthier here than in other parts of the country,” Dozier added. “We are seeing occupancy and tenant sales increase and rental rates increase. The retailers have gotten more efficient operationally. And now that sales are recovering, their bottom-line profits have increased.”
Lincoln likely won’t be doing much ground-up work this year, but it has lined up a couple of desirable tracts for the future. It owns 80 acres at the southwest corner of State Highway 121 and Preston Road, and it’s teaming up with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to develop 800 acres that Jones owns at all four corners of State Highway 380 and Preston Road. The first 700,000-square-foot phase, a power-center-style project on the northeast corner, is expected to open in 2014, Dozier said. It will be followed by 1 million square feet on the northwest corner, accommodating a variety of uses: lifestyle-driven retail, including department stores and a cinema, then folding in medical, office, and residential space. That phase should get developed during the next three to four years.
Along with his work for Lincoln, Dozier also is a restaurateur. He and business partner Bourke Harvey own Deli Partners, which has eight Jason’s Deli restaurants in North Texas, Arkansas, and Minnesota.
