#1: 5,500 homes to spring up soon
Austin TX - 29 February 2008
An Austin-based developer is starting to turn dirt on the first two sections of a massive residential development it plans to shape in Leander and Liberty Hill, which will add about 5,500 homes to the area in the coming years.
Gunn & Whittington Development is developing Santa Rita, which has three subdivisions that will eventually be connected by amenities like a trail system, says Brad Whittington, owner of Gunn & Whittington. Rancho Sienna, which has frontage on Parmer Lane in East Leander, sits on 610 acres; Middlebrook, in Liberty Hill along Highway 29, spans 400 acres; and Santa Rita will span 1,200 acres in Liberty Hill. Whittington declines to give the project's total cost.
George Robinson, project manager with Gunn & Whittington, says construction on the first 167 lots of 1,450 planned lots in Rancho Sienna has started, and buildout will likely take five years. Construction on the first phase of Middlebrook has also started with the same buildout timeline, and Santa Rita is still in the planning stages, with buildout not projected for another nine to 10 years. Homes will range from the $140,000s to $220,000s in Middlebrook and from the $200,000s to $400,000s in Rancho Sienna and Santa Rita, he says.
Santa Rita may also contain an age-targeted portion that would be its own gated community with amenities separate from the rest of the subdivision, planned to hold about 3,000 total lots.
The planned homes follow the path in which growth patterns will likely flow, says Eldon Rude, Austin director of Metrostudy.
"One of the primary growth sectors will continue to be the area between State Highway 130 in the east and U.S. Highway 183 on the west," Rude says. "Over the last number of years, one of the most popular subdivisions in terms of activity has been Avery Ranch, south of FM 1431. As Avery Ranch begins to build out, the next logical area is Parmer Lane as you move north of FM 1431."
Rude says the national housing market's slump will continue to slow the demand for housing, but that the number of housing starts in Central Texas in 2008 likely won't be very different than the number in 2002 and 2003, both considered good years.
According to the Austin Board of Realtors, existing home sales in the Austin area fell 10 percent in January. But, local home prices continued to rise. The median price for a single-family home was $187,000 in January, up 7 percent from a year ago. Properties sold in January had been on the market for an average of 83 days.
Getting water and wastewater to sites along Parmer Lane is also proving challenging for some projects along Parmer Lane, Rude adds. All three of Santa Rita's sections are in municipal utility districts, Whittington says.
Robinson says the housing slowdown has made a slight impact on the pace of the developments.
"The builders are willing to contract out for a lot of lots, but are willing to take fewer lots at a time," he says. "So it's moving slower. What we're anticipating is that ... we're having a correction, and when we come out of the correction, we'll have lots on the ground -- while other people won't -- and we'll be able to move fast."
Barkley Wedemeyer, a Houston-based landowner who owns about 950 acres in Leander near Rancho Sienna, echoes Robinson's observations, saying potential homeowners will look for the next Avery Ranch-type development as growth patterns move north. Wedemeyer has petitioned the city of Leander to create three municipal utility districts that would cover 919 acres of the approximately 950 acres he owns, but declines to give details on what type of development he is planning or when it may take shape, saying only that he would like to create a mixed-use development with a residential component.
#2: Despite delays, developer says Leander X-Park is still a go
Austin Business Journal
Almost one year after a groundbreaking was planned, the 209 acres slated for the proposed Leander Sports and Entertainment Destination Center, including the site for the extreme sports park Texas X-Park, still sits untouched.
But the center's developer, Leander Capital Investors LLC, hasn't been idle during that time. A new site development plan designed to increase the proposed park's revenue in the wake of market woes has been approved by the city and includes plans for a 2,500-seat amphitheater.
Gary Blackwell, general partner with California-based Sixth Street Capital Investors, owners of Leander Capital Investors, says the combination of a longer than anticipated permitting process, delays on expansion and extension work on Bagdad Road and San Gabriel Parkway and the hit to national financial markets have been responsible for the delay. Although Blackwell is reluctant to aggrandize the proposed park's plans, he says he expects the permitting process to be complete in six to eight weeks, and a groundbreaking to happen by the end of 2008. Construction on the first phase will likely take about eight months, he says.
The addition of the amphitheater into the park's first phase should also help boost revenue, he says.
"One of the reasons we had to put the amphitheater in [was to] increase revenue," Blackwell says. "The revenue stream in the original plan wasn't enough to substantiate the park."
The Texas X-Park's first phase was originally planned to hold tracks and courses for everything from motocross and BMX biking to paintball on its 110-acre site. Those developments are still planned to take shape in addition to the amphitheater, Blackwell says, and the project's later phases are still planned to include larger developments, such as a hotel. He says Leander Capital Investors has spent about $2 million on development costs, and has increased the development's total cost, once projected to be $66 million at build-out, but declines to give an estimated number for the project's new estimated cost.
"These kind of sports venues have been planned around the country. Many of them never happened, but they get hyped up. I want to talk with a shovel in my hand," Blackwell says. "We own the land outright, and everything's ready. This is not something we're just doing for fun."
The commercial and retail portion of the center, Park Village, has also been subject to the delays in road construction. Bob Novit, with Quick & Company Commercial Realty Inc., is Park Village's broker, and says that development can't move forward until the intersection of Bagdad Road and San Gabriel Parkway is completed. The initial commercial and retail development is still planned to span about 170,000 to 200,000 square feet and include two hotels, a bank, restaurants and retail on 23 acres. Novit says Quick & Company hasn't been marketing the retail very actively, but will likely start a marketing effort anew in the third quarter of 2008.
PARC Management LLC will operate the park and Wormhoudt Inc. is designing it.
Kirk Clennan, economic development director for the city of Leander, says a recently announced Cedar Park entertainment center hasn't impacted Texas X-Park's plans.
(As taken from "WEEK IN REVIEW" report provided by:
Heidi Schoonover, Alamo Title Sales Representative, http://www.alamotitle-austin.com/)
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