I've long been a proponent of Downtown Garland and have posted several times about revitalizing Downtown (here, here, and here). Recently, the Council approved an agreement with High Street Residential, a subsidiary of Trammell Crow, for development of a multi-use facility Downtown. I will be posting more on the development in the future.

An article by Richard Abshire in today's Metro section of the Dallas Morning News does a great job of explaining the project. The article also includes several conceptual drawings that give good perspective of the project. The version below is from the online posting and did not include the drawings. Try to get your hands on the printed version!

Downtown mixed-use project has Garland officials fired up

Work to start soon on development envisioned as a catalyst for area

 

12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, May 24, 2007

By RICHARD ABSHIRE / The Dallas Morning News

rabshire@dallasnews.com

 

Work will begin soon on a long-sought catalyst to Garland's downtown revitalization, a development that will combine more than 200 apartments and townhomes with shops, office space and parking structures on two city blocks near the DART light-rail station.

 

"I'm extremely pleased," said Mayor Bob Day, still thrilled after last week's groundbreaking. "Although it took longer than I wanted, it's finally here."

 

Laura Perkins Cox, the council member whose district includes the site, said, "I think it means a real jumpstart to redeveloping downtown."

 

The city is making the land available to High Street Residential, a unit of the Trammell Crow Co., through a long-term lease at a nominal rate.

 

When the $22 million project is finished, the city will buy the parking garages for about $7.9 million. The city's other financial support of the project will be about $500,000 in land preparation.

 

The bulk of the city's share – about $5 million – will come from the city utilities that will use a parking garage. An additional $2 million will come from the city's general fund, and about $1 million will come from money the city earned operating the Eastgate apartments for several years before their demolition.

 

City officials say no debt will be needed to cover the city's share.

 

Planners characterize the project as a transit-oriented development, one that emphasizes mixed-use, high-density, pedestrian-friendly schemes tied to mass transit. It's something city leaders have been talking about since before the DART rail station opened in November 2002.

 

Soon after the trains started running, Mr. Day organized the first of two Northside Conferences, council train rides to visit similar developments at the Mockingbird Lane station in Dallas and on the Red Line in Plano.

 

The key to making the development happen in Garland was a land swap. The city bought a lot on Garland Avenue between Main and State streets, where a Kroger store had closed, and traded it to the county for the subcourthouse at Fifth and Austin streets and the old tax office on Walnut Street.

 

The county land, in addition to property the city already owned in the block south of Austin Street, gave the mayor and council enough room to realize their dream of a project designed to spur the revitalization of downtown.

 

If Plano is any example, it's doable.

 

Frank Turner, Plano's executive director for development, said that city's downtown transit-oriented development is still progressing.

 

Officials began planning for it in 1997, five years before Plano's DART rail station opened in December 2002.

 

In the first development, Phase I of the Eastside apartments, Plano leased the land to a developer. In the second phase, the developer acquired most of the land privately, and the city contributed property it owned.

 

There has been widespread interest in the development, Mr. Turner said, with inquiries from as far away as Hawaii.

 

After the first two phases were complete, developers approached the city to cooperate on other projects – 15th Street condos and a development featuring townhomes in the $300,000 to $350,000 range.

 

Retail development has come more slowly, but full-service nonchain restaurants have opened, and Mr. Turner sees that as a good draw for the kind of traffic retailers look for.

 

Mr. Turner said he envies Garland because its downtown area is larger and there are already strong attractions, including the fine arts center, Plaza Theatre and restaurants. And a community college campus is coming on Walnut Street, just across the DART tracks.

 

But he cautioned against trying to repeat another city's experience.

 

"You have to deal with the dynamics and context of your own local environment," he said. "You're never going to replicate a project exactly."

 

Mr. Day, who will step down in a couple of weeks after two consecutive terms as mayor and service as a council member, credited council members who have served over the last several years for bringing to fruition not only the High Street project but also Firewheel Town Center, Bass Pro Shops and Centerville Marketplace.

 

"Any one of those is a once-in-a-decade development, and we have all four of them," Mr. Day said.

 

"It's a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude."

 

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