More development on its way after 9 years of little progress for Entrada at Westlake
Entrada at Westlake is supposed to be an oasis.
Developers, designing the neighborhood after a Spanish village, envisioned 300 homes, shops, restaurants, a hotel and an amphitheater nestled among canals in the heart of one of the United States’ most affluent communities.
But nine years after its zoning approval, there are three clusters of homes, an empty strip of buildings, an unopened parking deck, a CVS Pharmacy and a Starbucks. The rest of the land at Davis Boulevard and Texas 114 sits empty, with winding roads and a spattering of beginning builds.
That could change in 2022.
This year is supposed to be big for the unfinished neighborhood, said Ron Ruthven, the town’s director of planning and development. Restaurant row should begin filling with tenants by late summer or early fall following the opening of a parking deck in the next month. Construction is expected soon on a rooftop restaurant and outdoor event space.
The town expects construction to begin on 100 condos this summer. Thirty single-family homes are also planned to begin construction this year, Ruthven said.
Development hit a wall when the addition of service roads on Texas 114 changed the development’s design. Then a gas pad site was abandoned in 2017. That site, according to a town update, will become home to a building with office space, retail and an event area.
Then, of course, there’s the pandemic that’s affected development everywhere, Ruthven said.
Mayor Laura Wheat and Mehrdad Moayedi, president and CEO of developer Centurion American, acknowledged the project has been slow moving.
Moayedi pointed to the project’s intricacy. For example, each stone — including the pavers in the winding roadways — is hand made and needed to be approved by the town, he said. The canals alone took a year to complete.
“I don’t think anybody’s done a project like this, in anywhere in Dallas-Fort Worth,” Moayedi said. “If you look, show me one that matches this project as far as the detail level.”
Plans have changed, too, he said. A hotel is on hold after cheaper ones popped up elsewhere and the pandemic caused havoc on the industry.
The strict — and expensive — design and building guidelines contractually agreed upon by the developer and town have caused frustration. When the developer would ask for accommodations, the answer was usually no, Wheat said.
“We tried to work where we could, but we bargained for something that was authentic,” Wheat said. “We didn’t bargain for what’s a replica or false.”
Just because the development has been slow doesn’t mean there hasn’t been progress, Wheat said. Its slow-moving nature hasn’t cost the town anything, Wheat said, and will eventually add $300 million to the town’s assessed tax valuation. Westlake is a community full of gated neighborhoods, and Wheat is excited to have something that could serve as a gathering point.
“There’s a lot to do and there’s a lot of opportunity there, but it’s not fair to say nothing’s happened,” Wheat said.
The booming growth prevalent in the northern part of Tarrant County makes progress on the project all the more essential, said PentaVia Custom Homes’ Director of Operations Nate Werner. PentaVia is one of three home builders involved in the project, according to the town’s website.
Werner said his company is still waiting on word from Farmers Branch-based Centurion American to move forward.
“It’s more frustrating for the folks that invested in that area and bought properties, yet they don’t have any amenities other than a Starbucks in there, and the CVS, to rely on,” Werner said. “Everything else has to be sought in Trophy Club or Southlake.”
Residents in Entrada, though, don’t have many complaints.
Keith Biggers’ and Theresa Botone’s families both sought solace in the neighborhood after their homes were destroyed in the 2021 winter storm.
Biggers, who has a home he rents on Cardona Drive, said despite the lack of resources directly in the neighborhood’s vicinity, it isn’t too far away from places like Trophy Club and Argyle, so he can get what he needs. He and his family are originally from Southlake, so they head over there most of the time anyway.
After living in their house on Comillas Drive for a year, Botone’s family is now in the process of trying to find a new place to live. Renovations on their home in Keller still aren’t finished a year after the storm.
It’d quiet at Entrada despite the construction, Botone said. With her two children under 10, though, she wished there were a yard and access to a neighborhood pool. What the family does instead is take walks around the moat.
Brooks Remaley lives in a 2,600-square-foot, four-story townhouse at the neighborhood’s entrance on Cortes Drive. He and his family moved into their home in November 2020 and he said he wasn’t sure how he would like living in a townhouse, but the layout makes the home seem bigger. He’s taken a liking to not having yard maintenance.
Remaley said what’s holding development back is the completion of the parking garage, which would allow the restaurants to open. He also said there needs to be an access point from the highway.
Builders are vying for spots within Entrada due to the desirability of Westlake as a whole, he said. Despite the lack of progress on development in the area, Remaley isn’t too concerned.
“The way I look at it is it’s just going to get more congested,” he said.
