Postby Tivo_Kenevil » 08 Sep 2020 22:35
While COVID-19 has impacted many proposed developments in North Texas, it has done little to change the ambitious master plan for Trinity Groves. In fact, additional portions of the West Dallas development could break ground by the end of the year.
First to go vertical would be 366 new apartment units along Singleton Boulevard. Designs are already finished and plans have been submitted to the city for permitting, said Jim Reynolds, development partner at Trinity Groves and West Dallas Investments, the company that owns Trinity Groves.
Reynolds says once he and his development partners feel more comfortable about everything related to COVID-19, an official groundbreaking date will be set. The 80-acre development is already home to two apartment complexes that were built as part of a joint venture between West Dallas Investments and Dallas-based Columbus Realty Partners.
Reynolds is also hopeful that the development's first hotel and office building may not be too far behind. In early 2017, Reynolds detailed plans for a 16-story, 223-room Autograph Collection hotel and a five-story, 200,000-square-foot office building at Trinity Groves. The Marriott-branded hotel would be located at the corner of Singleton Boulevard and Amonette Street, where an abandoned concrete plant currently sits. The project is ready to go but is awaiting a joint venture partner to go vertical, said Reynolds.
The office building, which would be located at the northwest corner of Singleton Boulevard and Herbert Street, is also awaiting a joint venture partner to get started. Reynolds says the project will now be closer to 300,000 square feet and would be the first mass timber office building in Dallas.
"We're not built to do this much vertical construction, that’s why we’re looking for partners. We could have started some of the office by now, but again, we like to find partners who understand our vision," said Reynolds.
Whether the office building breaks ground as speculative would be determined together with the project's joint venture partner. West Dallas Investments has already been in discussions with a number of developers to partner on various aspects of its 9 million-square-foot master plan at Trinity Groves.
"We like the master plan and the mix of uses we have planned here. COVID isn’t changing our minds about that. We have the right mix of medium density residential and we feel good about the future of Dallas's office market. COVID hasn’t changed our minds whatsoever," he said. "If anything, it’s let our potential joint venture partners take a breath and have the bandwidth to take a deeper dive and understand these opportunities."
West Dallas Investments owns about 56 acres of undeveloped land in the area and new renderings released to the Business Journal show the true scale of what the group hopes to do at Trinity Groves. Despite numerous inquiries, the group does not plan to sell any of its land.
"People have wanted to buy sites or land from us and it's not even a discussion. We're not selling land out here," Reynolds said.
While the master plan has not changed, things have shifted a bit at the restaurant portion of Trinity Groves. Previously, Trinity Groves operated incubator partnerships between itself and restaurateurs where ownership was split 50/50. Though it is not going away from the incubator concept, the Trinity Groves ownership group now plans on incubating its own concepts while maintaining 100 percent ownership of each business.
"It puts us in a better financial situation," said Reynolds. "We're looking forward to creating new concepts, new buzz and another reason to visit Trinity Groves."
Since the start of the year, a handful of concepts have closed at Trinity Groves, both temporarily or permanently. Within the last four months, Trinity Groves partner Phil Romano has opened two new concepts, Sum Dang Good Chinese and Holy Crust. Reynolds expects more new concepts to open by the end of the year.