Lincoln Property Co., which has plans to redevelop two corners of the intersection at Gaston and Garland, met with Lakewood Hills neighbors Tuesday.
The meeting brought the real estate company’s vision for the properties to light:
*Lincoln is negotiating a lease with Starbucks for a building the developer is planning at the intersection’s southwest corner, next to the two-story retail center that houses Subway. This Starbucks store would have a drive-through window.
*Lincoln would like to have a grocery tenant for the YMCA building: “We think this area can support” another grocery store, says Lincoln’s Robert Dozier.
*Lincoln brought Central Market to Dallas and has provided the San Antonio-based grocer with all of its Dallas-area locations.
*Far West nightclub’s lease is up in May 2013.
*Lincoln has approached the family that owns the pawn shop on Garland, adjacent to Far West. The company would like to buy that property as well, when the family is ready to sell.
*The real estate company intends to ask the city to rename Garland Road to Arboretum Boulevard. It’s uncertain whether any part of East Grand would be renamed and how far north Arboretum Boulevard would go before it turned into Garland Road.
*A working name for the planned development on the YMCA/Far West property is Arboretum Village, and it would be purely retail, so no office or residential components are planned.
*The developer and the city would like to create a connection from the rear of the YMCA/Far West property to the Santa Fe Trail and White Rock Lake.
*Lincoln eventually would push for city bond money to make improvements to the awkward Gaston/Garland intersection.
“We’re kind of long on Lakewood,” Dozier says.
After the company bought the Lakewood shopping center at Gaston and Abrams, where Ace Hardware is, potential tenants came calling in a hurry, he says. So that’s why the company bought more Lakewood properties. The company plans to move certain Lakewood tenants to the Gaston/Garland development, such as the UPS Store, to make way for a potential tenant, the burrito shop Freebirds, Dozier says.
The YMCA is moving, by the end of the year, to the two-story building on the southwest corner, and will take up the entire second floor. Once the Y moves to its planned facility on the site of the former Trinity Lutheran Church, as early as mid-2014, Lincoln plans to renovate the two-story retail center for new tenants.
The company hasn’t decided whether to demolish the YMCA/Far West building or renovate. That likely will depend on the tenant, and Dozier says the company does not have a deal in the works with any potential tenant yet.
