Trader Joe's, condominium plans target city Downtown District

A major grocer is coming to Southlake Town Square and the idea of condominiums for lease is getting residents' attention, as the city's central development continues to unfold.

The announcement that Trader Joe's will build a location at Central Avenue and Southlake Boulevard was met with enthusiasm when it hit the web. But the latest residential plans were not so popular. In fact, one resident group started a Facebook site called "Southlake Stop Apartments Now."

The plan calls, in part, for a condominium building with 40 units that would be offered for sale, lease to purchase or simply lease for $3,000 to $5,000 a month.

Developer Frank Bliss of Cooper & Stebbins physically cringes when he hears the word "apartments," but many of the residents at a recent public hearing before the City Council recited a mantra: "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck."

The proposal was tabled by the City Council Sept. 3, with four council members expressing unofficial, tentative support. Council members Carolyn Morris, Randy Williamson and Pam Mueller said they could not support it.

Bliss was scheduled to return to the council on Sept. 17, but requested the agenda items be tabled until Oct. 1.

The skirmish over housing is not the first, and likely isn't the last. Slightly less than half of Town Square is developed today—about 1.3 million square feet of more than 3 million in the master plan, according to the developers.

A real downtown

On a given day, parents with strollers, out-of-town shoppers staying at the Hilton and teens headed for The Buckle walk amid busy restaurants and thriving retail establishments at Southlake Town Square.

With the addition of Trader Joe's coming in 2014, the development is gaining the elements of the real downtown the late developer Brian Stebbins envisioned.

Bliss said Stebbins saw 19 years ago that downtowns across the U.S. were being pulled apart, parceled out to strip malls and other locations. He wanted to create a downtown that went back to an earlier way of life.

"When we were growing up, you went downtown not necessarily because you knew what you were going to do, but because whatever you were going to do, it could be done downtown," Bliss said.

Under that philosophy, Bliss said the developers knew a grocer would be needed. They thought about Kroger, Tom Thumb, Whole Foods and Sprouts, but none seemed quite right. Then Trader Joe's came to Texas last year.

Bliss reached out. Cooper & Stebbins had the property, Trader Joe's had a plan that would fit the spot perfectly and a lease was signed in early September for the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Southlake Boulevard.

Known for inexpensive wines and offbeat favorites, such as cookie butter, as well as low price points, Trader Joe's started in California in 1967 and opened its first East Coast store in 1997.

The total space at the Southlake location is 13,500 square feet, according to a statement from Trader Joe's, a size that is similar to the chain's other stores.

Bliss said about 3,000 of that will be used for deliveries and other back of the house functions.

Expected to be completed sometime in 2014, the building will be designed by architect David M. Schwarz, as was much of the rest of Town Square. Schwarz also designed the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth and Frisco Square among many other projects in Texas and nationwide.

The design of Trader Joe's, Bliss said, is inspired by the Charleston [South Carolina] City Market, a collection of brick market buildings that borrow from Italianate, Victorian and Romanesque revival styles. The current buildings at the City Market were built in the mid- to late-1800s, which is the time period Schwarz plans to capture.

Revised plan

The housing also would be Schwarz designs.

The condominiums are part of a plan revision Cooper & Stebbins submitted to the city that also calls for 60 Garden District homes and 33 Brownstones, a lower density than the original plan, approved in 2011. That proposal called for 130 Garden District homes, 10 Brownstones and did not include the condominiums. The plans changed after market research showed the new configuration would be more appealing and also in response to future possibilities in the area.

The developers have always considered housing key to Town Square.

"The best downtowns in the world have people living in them," Bliss told the City Council.

Southlake residents have balked before at residential plans. They protested when Cooper & Stebbins first proposed the existing three-story Brownstones at Town Square in 1996, Bliss reminded the council, by purchasing a full-page advertisement in the newspaper and sending letters to the editor.

City Council member Laura Hill said she was one of the loudest protesters then—and added that she was wrong.

"It's not an easy topic," said Mayor John Terrell, adding that he appreciates the council's determination to vote for what each member considers best for the city.

A chief worry among residents then and now is density.

Some of the residents who protested and submitted a petition opposing the project, signed by 500 people, fear reduced property values and a change in Southlake's atmosphere.

One woman who spoke likened Southlake to Swiss Avenue in Dallas, where she said high-density housing led to gunfire in the area.

Residents also spoke in support of the condos, including a longtime Southlake resident who said he was on a waiting list to buy one of the units when they are built.

The goal, Bliss said, is to eventually sell them all.