Hotel, apartments planned for historic Arlington site

Investors from West Texas and Houston who partnered to buy the former Eastern Star Home site south of AT&T Stadium in June plan a mixed-used project of apartments, a hotel and office and retail space.

Bryan Hoffman, from Andrews north of Odessa, and Michael Johnson from Houston, paid $5.8 million for the 28.5-acre site at auction. Both are in the construction services business serving the oil and gas industry. They have also been friends for more than 20 years, Hoffman said Monday.

Hoffman owns KV Power, an electrical construction and maintenance services firm. Johnson, he said, serves the right-of-way and pipeline construction industries.

Hoffman said a real estate broker friend alerted him about the auction.

“I saw an opportunity,” Hoffman said. “It’s crazy something hasn’t happened with this land. I’m pleased with the amount of interest that has reached out to us and put proposals in front of us.”

Some of that interest is coming from as far away as Calgary, Canada, he said.

Until now, Hoffman said he only has been involved in economic developments efforts in the Andrews area.

The men, who bought the land near Division and Collins streets from a Missouri-based bank under the entity 1st HJ Holdings L.P., have met with city officials twice about their potential plans, Hoffman said.

An avid Dallas Cowboys fan, Hoffman said he owns a suite at the nearby AT&T Stadium. He and his family attended Saturday’s preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings and watched the throngs of people walking across the former Eastern Star site to get to the stadium.

The investors want to be aggressive with the development and hope to have site infrastructure work underway by year’s end, Hoffman said.

Providence Bank of Columbia, Mo., sold the property, at 1111 E. Division St., which was once the site of the 89-year-old Eastern Star Home, one of Arlington’s most historic properties. The two-story structure, built in 1924, was torn down nearly two years ago. The former retirement home, built by the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic-related fraternal organization, had been vacant since 2001 and fallen into disrepair.

Providence Bank took ownership of the land in early 2012 as part of the bankruptcy of its former owner. Carrollton-based South of the Stadium Llc. had also planned to develop the site with residences, shops and restaurants.

This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 5:47 PM with the headline "Hotel, apartments planned for historic Arlington site."