After breaking ground on its latest office building, Bright Realty has plenty still in store for its developments in Lewisville.
The company recently got underway on Crown Centre II, a four-story, 147,000-square-foot office building located off of the Sam Rayburn Tollway. The forthcoming project will total $50 million and adds to the 130-acre Crown Centre at Castle Hills development.
Bright Realty evolved out of a family office, when the Bright family decided to turn its property north of Dallas into a sweeping master-planned community. In 1998, the firm put its first single-family lots in the ground, and today there are more than 4,000 homes in the Castle Hills community.
Located west of the Dallas North Tollway and Park Boulevard, Castle Hills spans 2,900 acres. The firm’s vision was always to build out a residential community and then create commercial product surrounding it, said Lucas Patterson, executive vice president of Commercial Operations for Bright Realty.
“Once they created the density, value and quality, they thought the commercial would come,” he said.
Among these commercial developments is The Realm at Castle Hills. The development includes 675 apartment units, 130,000 square feet of retail and 235,000 square feet of office space.
Crown Centre at Castle Hills, upon full build-out, has the capacity for 3 million square feet of office space, 2,000 multifamily units and up to 500,000 square feet of retail and hospitality. The company sees that development as a business park with mixed-use components. The development will likely take around 20 years to get to full density.
Patterson spoke with the Dallas Business Journal about what’s next for Bright Realty and the firm’s developments in Lewisville.
Tell me about the annexation of Castle Hills into Lewisville.
We’re really excited about the annexation into Lewisville. It’s been a great partnership with the city, working together to plan quality, value-producing projects. That’s probably been 20 years in the making. We had always agreed to, at some point, be annexed into Lewisville once it made sense for them tax-wise and when we felt like we had good enough commercial development in place.
Given recent turbulence within the office market, what would you attribute to the success of your firm’s developments?
As people are looking for their new office location, there’s a move toward quality and newer buildings. We are highly committed to amenities that make tenants and their employees feel comfortable, such as on-site, 24/7 security at The Realm and great outdoor areas where you can go take a break, have a sandwich.
Tenants are moving to quality and we’re providing that quality in a special way.
What’s coming next for the Realm at Castle Hills?
It’s still flexible. We can do unlimited multifamily over commercial uses. We’ll probably do – easily – another 500,000 square feet of office, another 500 to 750 multifamily units, 100 to 150-key hospitality and another 60,000 to 80,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
