THE LANDS IN THE MIDDLE

From his vantage point atop las Colinas’Urban Center, banker/developer Jim Conrad can almost see his childhoodhome in North Richland Hills. But thecity Conrad recalls was not a city at all,but a small community just evolvingfrom a typical small Texas town into a modern suburb. “There were only a few hundred people there at that time; ther was only one small strip center, and the roads to Dallas and Fort Worth were only two-lane,” laughs Conrad.

Today, the tall, pinstriped former Fort Worth policeman looks toward a North Richland Hills populated by nearly 40,000 people,a city growing by almost 60 newcomers each day. As you travel north along a boulevard called Rufe Snow you can find traffic congestion as bad as any in the Metroplex. But you can also find scores of eating establishments, new super-groceries and housing and apartment developments stretching as far to the north as the eye can see. “Just a few years ago Rufe Snow was almost a single-lane road with the world’s largest potholes. Now it’s a five-lane artery already carrying a capacity load of cars,” Conrad says.

Conrad’s development partner, Longview native Charles Powell, arrived in the Mid-Cities after graduating from the University of Texas some 14 years ago. “I showed up just after the airport had touched off the first boom, but it was only just beginning,” recalls Powell. “I was working for Sears Financial at the time putting together financing packages for real estate deals. Most of the cities out here were still pretty small; Las Colinas itself was only just beginning to take real shape.”

By the early Eighties, Powell and Conrad were both working for North Texas Bancshares, a bank holding company owned by Fort Worth tycoon and political baron Dee Kelly. Conrad served as president of the holding company, Powell as president of the flagship bank. During their years with Kelly, Powell and Conrad found themselves square in the middle of a boom that just wouldn’t quit. “The Bank of North Texas [owned by North Texas Bancshares] was a major player in financing development deals in the Mid-Cities area,” explains Powell, “and that put us in the right place to learn what was happening, where it was happening and how to make it happen for ourselves.”



THREE YEARS AGO the two young men decided to seek their own fortunes in the Dallas/Fort Worth Mid-Cities. They secured a bank charter in the long-standing boom town of Arlington and concurrently began developing small office projects and medical buildings in such growing Mid-Cities towns as Hurst and Bedford. Then, taking advantage of Powell’s previous experience with Sears, Conrad-Powell Investments bought a large tract of land at the intersection of Airport Freeway and Central Drive in Bedford. Sears had once intended the site to become a regional shopping mall, but had later canceled plans and sold the property to Dallas’ electronics giant E-Systems. “When the mall picture became overbuilt, Sears canceled their plans and sold to E-Systems. E-Systems had been quietly holding the property for years,” explains Powell.

Within a short time, Powell and Conrad joint-ventured their land to a major Dallas retail developer for cash and, most important for newcomers in the development game, a strong equity position. From there, the Conrad-Powell company’s ball began to roll. Today, the two developers have a 12-story office complex nearing completion in Arlington near the intersection of SH 157 and Interstate 30, just west of Arlington Stadium, and a 300-plus-acre mixed-use development in southwest Arlington. “This Shady Valley West project is on reclaimed flood plain and is some of the best development land in the city,” Powell says.

Both Powell and Conrad are quick to point out their story isn’t at all unique in the Mid-Cities; in fact, they see themselves as typical. “We’re just two guys among many, many who have found this area to be one of unparalleled opportunity,” Conrad says. “And the great thing is that you didn’t have to be in on the ground floor when the airport was just getting under way; this elevator has stopped at every floor for a new load.”

The idea that Arlington is now the ninth largest city in Texas is a little hard for many to believe. But the city that former Mayor Tom Vandergriff once termed “the hyphen between Dallas and Fort Worth” has become the archetypical suburban powerhouse city of today.

Indeed, Arlington was the first of the so-called Mid-Cities towns to take off. “The coming of the General Motors plant was probably what got this place moving,” agrees Vandergriff, “but our strength has always been location. People could live in Arlington, away from what they considered the hustle and bustle of big city life, and still have equal proximity to the two giants of North Texas.” Of course, it was exactly that sales pitch that brought such enterprises as Six Flags Over Texas and the Texas Rangers baseball team to the city.

But the past decade has seen a long list of other Mid-Cities towns join the ranks of super-boom towns. Referred to by some as the “Balkans” of Texas, the area contains such cities as Richland Hills, North Richland Hills, Keller, Col-leyville, Grapevine, South Lake, Hurst, Bedford, Euless, Blue Mound, Irving and Grand Prairie. Some might now include the incipient boom towns of Haslet and Roanoke, located in far north Tar-rant county and southern Denton county respectively.



WHY THIS PHENOMENAL growth? “There can be no doubt that the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport is at the heart of the story,” explains Herman Smith, a long-time developer in the Mid-Cities and a former president of the National Association of Homebuilders. “Before the airport, the area was growing, especially Arlington, because of several factors, factors that still hold true. But it was clearly the airport that put us into warp drive.” Among the key factors enumerated by Smith are relatively lower land costs, relatively greater ease with which a new resident can live in the vicinity of his or her workplace, an easier, less pressured lifestyle and good schools.

Can the boom continue? Smith certainly doesn’t believe the area is immune to national economic conditions or the normal down cycles of the development industry. He does believe, however, that a number of trends will allow the Mid-Cities area to continue to grow at an above-average clip. “The airport will continue to generate jobs and growth for some time to come. As more and more flights are added, especially international flights, more industry will move in.”

Smith also sees basic relocation trends favoring the Mid-Cities. “Labor-intensive industries, those requiring large workforces of assembly-line workers or large clerical staffs, need a large expanse of parking; they cannot afford to have all their employees paying high parking rentals in or near downtown.” He adds that companies hiring many young women need to be located where mothers can get to schools quickly and with minimum traffic congestion: “The Mid-Cities can meet these requirements.”

Still, there are clouds on the Mid-Cities horizon. As Arlington patriarch Vandergriff points out, “These towns are not going to be immune to standard urban problems. Crime rates are going to increase and traffic congestion will ultimately become as much a problem for them as for other cities.” Indeed, Vandergriff’s concern over Mid-Cities traffic put him in the forefront of a recent fight to gain voter approval for a mass transit program for Arlington, a proposal that voters soundly rejected. Why? “One of the attractions of Arlington and other Mid-Cities towns has been low taxes,” explains Vandergriff. “Many of our residents moved here from very high-tax states where government expenditures on services ran to extravagant levels. Many of these folks clearly thought the transit plan would send us down the same road.”

Other Arlington leaders believe that transit problems in the city have not yet reached the critical mass that causes voters to recognize the problem as real and in need of solution. Vandergriff concurs. “Right now, there is a more immediate concern over taxes. But in time this will change. Hopefully, it won’t be too late.”

Considerations of mass transit aside, Dallas land broker Bill Koenig, a young man quite active in the northern reaches of the Mid-Cities, believes transportation will be a key to the region’s continued expansion. “There is not an area in ONE IMPONDERABLE in the Mid-Cities future is politics. To date, the most interesting aspect of this boom land’s politics has been its growing Republicanism in state and national elections. But many of the newcomers have yet to take part in the more local political concerns of municipal government and school districts. “It takes a while for people newly arrived in an area to begin to take an interest in schools and roads,” says Powell. “Frankly, many of these people are so new they haven’t even met each other.”

Exactly what will happen as the tens of thousands of newcomers move into the political mainstream at the local level is anyone’s guess. “Certainly, with a population so young there is likely to be strong support for the area’s schools,” predicts Powell. “But we could see growing resistance to development that increases traffic, resistance much as is beginning to appear in North Dallas.” Vandergriff, defeated in his bid for a second term in Congress last year by Republican Dick Armey, agrees: “Just because many of these new voters vote Republican doesn’t mean they aren’t opposed to the bad side effects of growth. They are. And at some point they are going to enter the local political arena in force.”

Interestingly, another portent for a continuing Mid-Cities boom lies in the story of a Fort Worth freeway. Although still mired in court challenges and local politics, the plan to widen Interstate 30 through downtown Fort Worth and the Mid-Cities and Dallas is deemed essential for Fort Worth’s long-term economic health. But the lengthy construction period will almost certainly focus development efforts on that city’s east side, the Mid-Cities side. This additional activity near the Mid-Cities cannot help but add more fuel to the boom’s fire.

Certainly, one day the flame will burn lower, but that time does not appear to be at hand. For the foreseeable future, the elevator that Herman Smith and Tom Vandergriff boarded on the ground floor and Charlie Powell and Jim Conrad boarded on the way up should have several more stops.