A new but well-known North Texas developer armed with a more than $800 million makeover plan is under contract to buy Collin Creek Mall in Plano.
Farmers Branch-based Centurion American Development Group has most of the mall under contract and is negotiating to acquire the rest, Mehrdad Moayedi, the firm’s president and CEO, told the Dallas Business Journal in an interview.
Moayedi’s plans include tearing down parts of the mall and restructuring others to use the shell. His vision also calls for hundreds of townhomes and condominiums, two office buildings of 300,000 to 500,000 square feet apiece, a 300-room hotel, a music venue that seats 2,500 to 3,000 people, a conference center, and 15 to 20 restaurants.
The development could also include high-end, for-lease residential in a 20-story high-rise, Moayedi added. It’s not expected to include traditional apartment units, which have in the past drawn opposition from Plano residents in the mall area and other parts of the city.
The developer said he has talked to Plano officials about construction plans, but the project is not yet on any public agenda.
“We’ve had some discussions with the (city) staff,” Moayedi said. “We’ve learned what their appetite is, and we understand what they like.”
The mall would open to the outside with plenty of green space, similar to NorthPark Center in Dallas, Moayedi said.
“We have an idea of trying to do some for-sale residential — townhomes and condos,” he said. “We’ve looked at some other malls that have been redeveloped successfully. They had a lot of residential added to them, and there was kind of a city core created with all the services that these residential users need, from banks to health care, to dental to whatever.”
The project price tag would be $800 million to $900 million, Moayedi estimated. Construction could start in eight to 10 months after rezoning and other necessary city approvals, and the project will unfold over the next four years if the economy cooperates, he said.
