Buffett-backed Grandscape starts its new $45M ‘boardwalk’ restaurant district
Candace Carlisle | ccarlisle@bizjournals.com | Dallas Business Journal
The development group behind Grandscape — a $1.5 billion mixed-use development anchored by the massive Nebraska Furniture Mart — has started construction on its next phase of the 400-acre project, a $45 million “boardwalk,” district.
“We haven’t officially named it, but it’s the boardwalk district,” Jeff Lind, president and CEO of Grandscape and Nebraska Furniture Mart Texas, which are affiliates of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told the Dallas Business Journal.
The board walk at Grandscape will include a restaurant row overlooking a man-made lake fronting the Sam Rayburn Tollway.
Once filled, the 11-acre manmade lake fronting the boardwalk will bring an amenity to Grandscape, which has already landed a number of restaurants and 1,800-fan concert venue.
“This will be an amenity to serve those restaurant pad sites and give people a walking area with music and lighting,” he told me. “It will be a nice place to take a stroll.”
Recently, Grandscape landed the 1,800-seat concert venue Lava Cantina along the boardwalk and could land another five restaurants. Grandscape officials plan to keep the number of restaurants low in the immediate area to ensure there’s parking for restaurant-goers and areas for valet, he said.
The Warren Buffett-backed company has bucked the traditional development mode of using brokers to land big retail tenants, Lind said. Instead, the group is working directly with restaurant and retail owners from outside Dallas-Fort Worth to bring new concepts to the region.
“A lot of places are coming to us and those discussions are in progress,” Lind told me. “Expect more announcements before too long.”
Along with the boardwalk district, Grandscape has started construction on two multitenant buildings along Plano Parkway in between Bargain Way and Nebraska Furniture Mart Drive.
Two new restaurants — Dog Haus and Bread Zeppelin — are the first to join the buildings that would total more than 16,000 square feet in retail space. Both restaurants are slated to open in fall 2016.
Lind said he will take his time landing the right restaurants and retail shops within Grandscape.
Read the original article at The Dallas Business Journal
