Who Is Jack Watson and Why Is He Buying All That Land?

Realtor Jack Watson seems a prime candidate to do business with the city under proposed plans to redevelop the land bordering downtown. Since last June, Watson has been quietly putting together a string of small land purchases between Central Expressway and Baylor Hospital, which so far total no less than 50 transactions averaging about 8,000 square feet apiece. Watson has been buying the land as a trustee, paying cash for most of the approximately 400,000 square feet. He refuses to identify the project’s investors.

The land falls within a four-sided figure bounded by Ross, Washington, Gaston and Central Expressway. Zoning is hodgepodge – industrial, commercial, office and multi-family.

Owners in the area tell us Watson is offering about $1.50 a square foot for the land – a fact substantiated by a few deals recorded in deed records which include details of promissory notes. If Watson’s investors choose to develop the land under the proposed city program, and if the development fails, the city might buy the undeveloped land for as much as $2.25 a square foot – 50 per cent more than Watson apparently has paid for it.

The proposal, advanced by City Manager George Schrader, is based upon a novel premise. The city would take some of its cash and purchase the land, and act which merely would convert one city asset – cash – into another – land. The city would hold the land until another developer was willing to pay at least $2.25 a foot for it.

For months speculation about who Watson is fronting for has run wild. So far we’ve heard Mr. Big might be Trammell Crow, the Las Colinas Corporation or Woodbine Development Corporation. Crow just shook his head when asked about it. Las Colinas is tied down developing its own 3,500-acre project near Carpenter Freeway and Woodbine is busy developing ReUnion, a $210 million project in the Union Terminal area.

Watson has his office in Republic Bank Tower and only last year put together a parcel of land along the north edge of downtown for the Howard Corporation, a wide-ranging subsidiary of Republic National Bank. Howard calls its property Uptown North and has paid handsomely for it, in one 1974 transaction, more than $37 a foot for the property at Live Oak and Harwood. Watson’s new property borders on downtown just like the Uptown North property, so some speculate that instead of fronting for a syndicate of individual investors, the Howard Corporation might possibly be the backer. Watson isn’t telling.

Although Southland Financial Corporation’s major development effort these days is the 3,500 acre Las Colinas Carpenter Freeway development, it might also be eyeing some downtown redevelopment. Suggesting this is a string of land purchases, curiously enough beginning in June, 1974, just like Watson’s.

Lynch Properties Inc., a subsidiary of Southland Financial Corporation, has purchased approximately 150,000 square feet of land, mostly parking lots, in an area bounded by Live Oak, Central Expressway, Pacific and Olive. Lynch also leased an additional 40,000 square feet in the same area. Adding these acquisitions to the 83,000 square feet Lynch bought or leased in the same vicinity during 1973, the company now controls approximately 273,000 square feet of land, mostly parking lots, in this small area.

There is a considerable difference, though, between the price Jack Watson is paying for his land and the price that Lynch appears to be paying for its property. Lynch has assumed promissory notes (from Jack Watson, oddly enough) which indicate the land may be selling for as much as $25 a square foot – far more than the $1.50 Watson has been paying. Lynch’s property, unlike Watson’s, is on the downtown side of Central Expressway.

At the price Lynch has paid, obviously the city’s proposal to buy land from unsuccessful developers at $2.25a square foot wouldn’t interest Lynch. Southland Financial and Lynch’s intent remains a mystery.