Entries for October 2008

The apartments, The Lofts at Watters Creek, are scheduled to start renting in November. When construction wraps up, there will be 301 luxury apartments according to Dull. The builder, Southern Land Company out of Tennessee, is also trying to be socially aware, putting in windows with higher efficiency ratings, using energy efficient appliances, starting a recycling program before their first tenant has even moved in. Keeping in step with the upscale feel of the center, the lofts have ten-foot ceilings, granite counter tops and hardwood flooring, among other amenities.

“It would be a thousand times easier to slap up garden apartments and we’d be done and on to the next project,” said Southern Land’s Jim Cheney. “But this is our first mark in Allen and we want people to walk away with a true sense of what we’re about.”
 

Southern Land Company and Tucker Hill, along with the McKinney Performing Arts Center, bring an old fashioned Hollywood themed Halloween to McKinney for children of all ages.

Join us for thrills at ole Tucker Hill on Sunday, October 26 at 5p.m. This family friendly event will have something for everyone.
 

Andrea Conte will lead a 3-mile walk on Saturday, November 1st in the Franklin community of Westhaven, to benefit the Williamson County Child Advocacy Center (WCCAC), an organization that serves abused children. Conte, the First Lady of Tennessee, is a long-time supporter of Child Advocacy Centers. Registration will begin at 7:30 a.m. and the walk begins at 9:00 a.m. The registration fee is $35 and $5 for children age 12 or under. A family registration is also available for $60.

In spring 2006, 13 employees from Southern Land Company's architecture department in Franklin, Tenn., flew to Dallas and canvassed neighborhoods including Swiss Avenue, Munger Place and the Park Cities, armed with notebooks and cameras.

Their mission: Find the most charming, most enduring architectural styles and re-create them at Tucker Hill, an 800-acre master-planned community in McKinney. Called the "new old house movement" by Building Systems magazine, new-home construction that borrows the architectural grace and attention to detail of earlier eras is luring prospective homeowners away from McMansion styles to houses that look like the ones their grandparents grew up in.
 

North Texas apartment demand was strong in the third quarter, but the market is facing lots of challenges to translate that growth into filled apartment units.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw demand increase to 3,680 units, according to figures released Thursday from M/PF YieldStar.
 

Arthouse, the mixed-use development where tenants have living space upstairs and a studio below, opened in November and has progressed despite the economy.

The apartments are 59 percent occupied, and 49 percent of Arthouse’s retail space has been leased, said Jim Cheney, a spokesman for Southern Land Co., Arthouse’s developer.