FORT WORTH, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
Fort Worth's Cultural District and the wider West Seventh Street corridor are brimming with new development. Nebraska-based Goldenrod Cos. plays a big part in that pipeline, with plans to add two mixed-use projects totaling about $400 million in investment.
Ground has been cleared for the projects — the Van Zandt in the 2800 block of West Seventh and One University in the 3000 block of Morton Street — but vertical construction hasn't started.
Dallas Business Journal spoke with Zach Wiegert, managing principal at Goldenrod Capital Advisors, for an update on the projects. He said the Van Zandt is scheduled to begin construction in February followed by One University in June. Wiegert sounded confident about recruiting corporate tenants, despite some challenging headwinds in the office market.
The Golden executive said plans have been tweaked slightly. Now, the Van Zandt should have about 13,000 square feet of retail, 100,000 square feet of office and 226 apartments, while One University will be around 115,000 square feet of office, 242 apartments and a 176-key Autograph Collection hotel called The Tycoon.
This conversation has been edited for grammar, length and clarity.
Dallas Business Journal: Part of the agreement with the city's economic development department entails attracting corporate relocations from outside the region. How confident are you that will happen?
Wiegert: We are very excited about the interest from corporate users that want to locate in this district of Fort Worth for their office. There's a big push for class A office with walkable amenities for quality retention, as far employees and for companies. And both these sites obviously fit the bill for that. I mean, there's so many walkable things to do from both these locations, plus they both have residential components to them, so obviously some of the people that work there could even live there. And there's retail there. So yeah, we're really excited. Obviously, we're working with a number of tenants for our office buildings, and just kind of figure out who wants their names on the building at this point.
Everyone loves the location. And as far as corporate [relocations] and expansions, Fort Worth is about as good as cities we're seeing in the country.
Do you anticipate this being local companies, or from across the country?
It's a mix of both. You'll see a lot of companies that have a presence in Fort Worth, because, I mean, it is the 12th largest city in the country, so there is a lot of companies that already have a presence there. But it's greatly increasing the amount of people they have in that market, kind of like JPMorgan over in Dallas. I mean, they always had people here, but now they have more people here than New York (editor's note: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been open about the company having more employees in Texas than in its home state of New York). I wouldn't look at it as like a [relocation] of an existing office. It'd be like, okay, we have 15 people there, now they want 150 people there.
A ton of office space is coming online in the Cultural District. What gives you confidence in this "build it and they will come" approach?
We have an office at The Crescent in Uptown Dallas and you've just seen the amount of development over here, in the office rates, the rates for apartments per square foot. You have the same access to the same talent pool for employees in the metro area. And here you can put your office in a place where, you know, the office rates are a little more affordable, and the rental rates on apartments are a little more affordable, and you still get that same quality of living and in opportunities.
There's so much brain power, with all the universities around. Obviously, you've got Texas A&M building over there [in downtown Fort Worth] ... and it just adds to the market.
So you feel pretty good about it?
I don't know many markets that are better than Fort Worth in the country that we see the trends that are all positive. Fort Worth is about as high on our list as they come.
When might we see announcements about tenants?
I would guess within a three- or four-month period after each of them break construction ground. No one really wants to put the pen to paper until you start going vertical.
