ARLINGTON -- Dust is flying fast and furious at the huge $2 billion Viridian project in north Arlington, as developers prepare residential lots as quickly as they can.
"Builders sold seven houses last week and that kind of pace is great," said Phillip Huffines, president and co-owner of Huffines Communities. "I hope we're able to keep up with them."About three dozen houses are under construction at the 2,300-acre development, just north of Green Oaks Boulevard off Collins Street. Most have committed buyers.Road building and work to install utilities for the first phase of lots began about 16 months ago. In July, the first 180 lots were ready for five home builders to start work. In November, the first residents are expected to begin moving in."Sales are better than we and the builders had expected," Huffines said.He said his company is almost ready to start on the second phase of lots, just north of the current construction. That phase will bring 250 more lots to the builders and will be ready in January and February, he said. The entire project could take 15 years to complete.Reagan Choate, marketing manager with Drees Homes, who is overseeing its work in Viridian, said his company has three houses under construction and is bullish about the development."It's tons of customers," Choate said. "I've seen a year's worth of traffic in the first month and a half."Likewise, Dustin Nelson, Dallas-Fort Worth president for David Weekley Homes, said its sales have had a great start, selling four of eight 35-foot lots and some 50-foot lots for larger executive homes. Some buyers are single professionals and people moving to the area.Nelson said David Weekley has been waiting more than a year to get started in Viridian."We're pretty excited," Nelson said. "We expect Viridian to be very good. We've done really well in the master-planned communities with the new urbanism design."Viridian stretches from the Riverside Golf Club along Texas 360 on the east to Collins Street on the west, and between Green Oaks Boulevard and the Trinity Railway Express line on the north. The construction comes 20 years after a first group of investors bought the land from Resolution Trust Corp. in 1992 with plans for homes and an amusement center. The land, once known as the Lakes of Arlington, traded hands a few times in the past two decades, but each owner wanted to build homes. The Dallas Cowboys once considered the site for a stadium.Huffines is catching the rebound of the housing downturn that began in 2007. Ted Wilson, a partner in Dallas consulting firm Residential Strategies, said Viridian is coming to market at a good time.Although the housing market is not fully recovered, home buyers are taking advantage of low mortgage rates, and home sales are up. Moreover, North Texas builders are starting construction on more homes than they have in quite some time, with housing starts up 19 percent in the second quarter from a year ago."They have a really good start," Wilson said. "From a marketing standpoint, they're drawing [buyers] from all over Dallas-Fort Worth. A lot of [developers] looked at that site and didn't see the vision that Huffines did. They've always done a nice job with their communities."So far, many Viridian home buyers are empty nesters and families with young children, who Huffines said are "exactly what we were shooting for."The houses under construction are selling for $240,000 to $475,000. Prices will be higher for lots on a planned lake.Huffines bought the land in 2006 and broke ground there last year. In all, Viridian will have 3,500 single-family homes and 1,500 condos, town houses and apartments. A town center will have 400,000 square feet for offices and medical space, and 400,000 square feet for shops and restaurants.Huffines said his company is waiting for the retail market to improve a little before moving forward on the office and retail space. That could be about a year from now, he said.Land for an elementary school should be sold to the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district this year. And construction will start soon on an amenities center that will have several swimming pools, tennis courts and covered basketball courts, a clubhouse with meeting/game rooms and a banquet hall for 250.A 170-acre lake, the first of three planned, will be ready in December, Huffines said. The lake will be about 12 feet at its deepest. The final lake, which won't be dug until 2014, will have a private island featuring at least 75 large custom multimillion-dollar homes.Before Huffines bought the land, another developer planned a project called Lakes of Bird's Fort. A peace treaty was signed on the land in 1843, and 95-million-year-old dinosaur fossils were found there.Sandra Baker, 817-390-7727Twitter: @SandraBakerFWSTHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
