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Last updated: August 24, 2007 09:05pm
Balcones Details $90M West Love Market Plan
By Connie Gore
DALLAS-After 17 months of closely guarded work, Balcones Realty Partners is unveiling its plan for a 37-acre assembly beside Love Field. The developer will plant a $90-million redevelopment with 365,000 sf of upscale retail and restaurant space as its first project in the region.
In September, Balcones, an affiliate of El Segundo, CA-based Golden Boy Partners, will start to close deals with 10 property owners for their infill land, bounded by Mockingbird Lane, Maple Avenue, Forest Park Road and Empire Central. Site work will ramp up in April 2008, with the first six months dedicated to scraping and readying the dirt for construction of the 10-building West Love Market.

Jorge Ramirez, managing principal of the one-year-old Balcones Realty Partners in Dallas, tells GlobeSt.com that he has two more redevelopment projects he's pursuing for the inner-city redevelopment platform of the California-based operation. Golden Boy Partners, formed in 2005, is a partnership between championship boxer Oscar de la Hoya and real estate investor, John Long, CEO and founder of Highridge Partners, also based in El Segundo.

As Ramirez laid the groundwork and locked up land, talk about his plans made it to the street, some fact, some fiction. "The biggest hurdle was assembling the property. It was done in a manner that people didn't know what we were doing or who we were," Ramirez says. "It was all very quiet. By the time it got to the last couple of parcels, everyone knew who we were." With the series of closings about to get under way, Ramirez is discussing the build-out plan, which calls for retail space to come on line in fall 2009.

Talks are under way with a big-box anchor. West Love Market's tenant mix is expected to be predominately national in nature, crisscrossing the spectrum from grocery to sporting goods. "We've made some very good progress with our anchor," Ramirez says. "Once we get that secured, we'll be in a position to break ground." Leading the talks with prospective tenants is Tim Hughes of Falcon Realty Advisors in Dallas.

Ramirez says the project's in-depth studies show little competition in its target market, particularly in the new and upscale brackets in a diverse neighborhood with a 400,000-resident close-in trade area, $87,000 per capita annual income and 500,000-worker daytime population, mostly due to the neighboring medical center.

Dallas-based O'Brien & Associates Inc. has designed a Spanish Mission-style center that's densely landscaped, has red tile roofs and California charisma. It also will feature a two-acre public park. "We wanted to create something that was inviting to everyone," Ramirez stresses. "And, we want to be known by the project not the tenants." That strategy is what led to the decision to wed its name to its well-known neighbor, Love Field. "We felt giving it a geographical tie was more useful to this location," he stresses.