Condos Planned on Henderson St.

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Tue, Mar. 28, 2006
Condos planned on Henderson St. By SANDRA BAKER STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER FORT WORTH -- CityHomes, the division of Dallas-based Centex Homes that builds urban town houses, including the popular Addison Circle in Addison, has bought a small tract on Henderson Street just west of downtown where it plans a 50-unit condo development called Fronterra. Fronterra will have 50 units in a "stacked flat" configuration. The single-floor condominiums will range in size from 1,000 square feet to 1,300 square feet and in price from $200,000 to $300,000, he said. This is CityHomes' first Fort Worth project, but it won't be the company's last, said Steve Magee, vice president of land for Centex Homes' DFW division. CityHomes is looking at a few other sites in and around downtown, including a possible location in the Trinity Bluff development on the north end of downtown, Magee said. CityHomes closed the deal last week to buy the land in Fort Worth from the Moorman Meador Estate. Meador sold Oldsmobile and Chrysler cars in Fort Worth beginning in 1957 and once operated a car lot at the site. Meador died in 2003. The land is on the west side of Henderson Street bounded by Lexington, 10th and Texas streets. It includes a small parcel on the west side of Lexington Street, but not the corner of 10th and Henderson, where there is a Domino's pizza shop. Magee declined to disclose a sales price. The asking price was $1.5 million. The land is between Firestone and AMLI Upper West Side, two large apartment communities on Henderson Street developed in the 1990s to begin meeting demand for downtown residences. Magee said he expects to draw potential buyers from those complexes. Magee said CityHomes views the site as unique because of its close proximity to jobs in downtown and the medical district, as well as to entertainment in the Cultural District and Sundance Square downtown. "We haven't had a negative comment on the site yet," Magee said. Magee described the three-story building as urban and cool, with an elevation that fits the streetscape. "It's a new product for our CityHomes brand," he said. "We've been methodically moving this brand into urban settings." Fronterra will have garages that give residents internal access to their units, and the third-floor condos will have extra ceiling height, among other features, he said. The site, slightly more than an acre, will be cleared, and after infrastructure is completed, construction on the condos will begin in about eight to 10 months, he said. A vacant former Meador body shop at the corner of 10th and Lexington streets will be demolished. In addition to CityHomes' District A project in Addison Circle, the company has four projects in Dallas and one in Irving.