Real Deals: Burleson officials clucking over Chicken Express HQ

Chicken E Food Service and Chicken Express hosted a groundbreaking ceremony in Burleson on Oct. 25 at the site of their state-of-the-art distribution center and corporate headquarters office. The facility will be in the 160-acre HighPoint Business Park on Interstate 35W near Bethesda Road and FM 917. The new facility will be nearly 100,000 square feet and will be expanded by about 25,000 square feet in the future, as growth continues. The 90,000-square-foot distribution center will have 24,000 square feet of cooler space and 18,000 square feet of freezer space. The corporate headquarters is also relocating and will occupy about 8,000 square feet. Site work has begun by Bob Moore Construction of Arlington, the design/build general contractor. The architect is Alliance Architects from Richardson and the civil engineer is Pacheco and Koch of Fort Worth and Dallas. Construction is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2014. The Chicken Express name was launched in 1988. Today, the company has more than 190 locations in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Bradley Ford and Justin Bond of the Burleson Economic Development Corp. represented the seller of the property. Kyle Poulson and Jack Huff of Transwestern Real Estate Group represented Chicken E Food Services as the buyer and development partner for the project. The Chicken E Food Service facility will be the first new building in the business park.

INDUSTRIAL SPACE Hillwood Properties officials say they continue to see demand for industrial space at Alliance and, as a result, the company announced plans to build a new speculative industrial building and a built-to-suit building. Alliance Center North 2 will be a speculative 1 million-square-foot industrial building, and Gateway 57 will be a 310,000-square-foot industrial site. Announced previously as a speculative build, Alliance Center North 1 will be completed as a build-to-suit. Construction on both Alliance Center North buildings will be complete by the end of May, and Gateway 57 will be complete in June. Alliance Center North 2 is included in the master development plan for Alliance Center North, which will offer more than 1.5 miles of frontage along Interstate 35W. Gateway 57 complements other industrial offerings within the Alliance Gateway, providing convenient access to Texas 170, Texas 114 and U.S. 377. “Hillwood continues to see increased demand in the industrial market,” said Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties. “These new industrial buildings will give us a competitive advantage under current market conditions, and provide our customers with direct proximity to the Alliance Global Logistics Hub.” The decision to develop Alliance Center North and Gateway 57 follows Hillwood’s strategic approach of keeping a substantial level of inventory available for future use. Historically, Hillwood has developed about 1 to 2 million square feet of speculative industrial space per year, on average, at AllianceTexas, according to officials. In 2013, Hillwood has notched several successes in the industrial segment, where leases exceeding 4 million square feet have come from Amazon.com, Wal-Mart.com, Motorola – a Google Company/Flextronics, and Carolina Beverage among others.

EUROPEAN WAREHOUSES Fort Worth-based TPG, a global private investment firm, and a partner, Ivanhoé Cambridge of Montreal, a large real estate company, have acquired PointPark Properties (P3) from Arcapita, an international investment company headquartered in Bahrain. As part of the transaction, the investors will also commit additional capital to strengthen P3’s balance sheet and to provide support for future growth. P3, located in the Czech Republic, is a specialist investor, developer and asset manager of warehouse properties, providing services to logistics, retail, automotive and electronics manufacturing companies. The real estate assets consist of 48 warehouses and a land bank allowing for the development of additional warehouse space across Europe. “P3 is a leading, full-service logistics platform with a high-quality portfolio of warehouse assets located in Europe’s core distribution hubs,” said Anand Tejani, TPG Partner, in a news release. “P3 is well-positioned to benefit from the positive macro trends driving the current growth in occupational demand for European logistics space.” TPG Real Estate is the real estate platform of TPG, a global private investment firm founded in 1992 with $55.3 billion in assets under management.

APARTMENTS SOLD Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services has sold the Bonnie Royal Apartments, a 64-unit multifamily property at 3241 Bonnie Drive in Fort Worth, according to Bill G. Jordan, regional manager of the firm’s Fort Worth office. Boyan Radic, Mason Green and Doug Banerjee, investment specialists in Marcus & Millichap’s Fort Worth office, had the exclusive listing to market the property on behalf of the seller, Bonnie Royal Holdings LLC. The buyer, a Dallas-based LLC, was also secured and represented by Radic, Green and Banerjee. Built in 1985, the property consists of all one-bedroom/one-bath units, about 600 square feet in size. On-site amenities include a swimming pool, picnic areas, laundry facilities and leasing office. The offering attracted six offers within a 30-day marketing period.

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MANSFIELD SAM’S Sam’s Club opened its Mansfield retail location at 1740 North Highway 157 on Oct. 24. The Mansfield Sam’s Club is the 77th in Texas. At about 136,000 square feet, the new store has a variety of members-only features including a bakery, a tire and battery center, a cafe and a fuel station. The new club brings 175 jobs to the area. Sam’s Club currently employs more than 11,000 Texans.

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