Lincoln Property Co.’s plans for the intersection of Gaston and Garland prove we all should’ve bought there years ago. The real estate company is planning a vast, high-end retail development on the intersection’s three corners.
So far, Lincoln will say only that it is considering a grocery tenant for the 15-acre development.
That intersection is extraordinary because of its location and underutilization. It’s at the gateway of White Rock Lake, a few blocks from the Dallas Arboretum, a few blocks from a public golf course and adjacent to the Santa Fe Trail. That’s not even mentioning the hundreds of high-end homes in the area. Yet the intersection’s main tenants recently have been a liquor store, a pawnshop, a nightclub that neighbors deplore, Subway and the YMCA.
The White Rock YMCA plans to move to a more visible site, the former Trinity Lutheran Church, and it looks like Far West nightclub’s days are numbered.
Now that most of those properties surrounding Gaston/Garland are in the hands of one developer, it could be a game-changer for the neighborhood.
Lincoln has given up few details about the development, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speculate a little.
“There hasn’t been any retail around here forever, so I think they could get some quality tenants out there,” says John Whiteside, the real estate broker who listed the Trinity Lutheran Church site.
That intersection is “the last collage of ill-fitting businesses that used to be around Lakewood,” says Whiteside, a neighborhood resident since 1981. He recalls, for example, when there was a pawnshop in the Lakewood shopping center.
The former Backyard Beach Club could be a nice restaurant with access to the Santa Fe Trail, Whiteside suggested.
Whiteside notes that the apartments-turned-condos on Connecticut, adjacent to the YMCA, recently sold. “How smart were they at this point?” he says of the buyers. “They’re about to be right next to this high-end retail development.”
There are 14 acres of new apartments that just opened on East Grand at La Vista. And Shadyside, the 9-acre former apartment complex on East Grand that was torn down a few years ago, has a new buyer as well.
The way Whiteside sees it, all this bodes very well for property values in the neighborhood.
“If I had enough money, I’d go out and buy every house I could get my hands on right now,” he says.
