la Frontera In the News

Austin American Statesman

November 3, 2005

Yet another new neighbor for La Frontera

High-end retail project will nearly complete Round Rock's mini-city of development.

by Kate Miller Morton, American-Statesman Staff

A high-end retail center is headed for La Frontera, the sprawling mixed-use project on 330 acres in Round Rock — land where cattle roamed just six years ago.

Cousins Properties, which owns the Frost Bank Tower in downtown Austin, has purchased 45 acres and is marketing the land as the future site of one of its upscale, open-air shopping centers.

The purchase leaves just one large tract left at La Frontera, which has turned former ranchland at the intersection of Interstate 35 and the new Texas 45 into a mini-city of commercial development.

The Cousins project would join 930,000 square feet of stores already at La Frontera, including Kohl's and Lowe's, as well as a raft of restaurants, two upscale apartment complexes and a Marriott hotel.

The Cousins project would include stores and possibly a movie theater.

Cousins representatives didn't return phone calls. But in Georgia, Florida and other states, the company is developing upscale centers it calls the Avenue, with such businesses as Regal Cinema, Williams-Sonoma, Restoration Hardware and Talbot's.

Bill Smalling, a partner in La Frontera, said Cousins could expand its plans to include office and other uses. Aside from the land under contract, the company has an option for 15 more acres.

"They look at the overall location and access, and they think there are opportunities to do more than just retail," Smalling said.

The Cousins purchase leaves just one large tract unclaimed at La Frontera, which Smalling and partners Don Martin of Austin and Ed Bass of Fort Worth bought in 1999.

By then, Round Rock was well into its transformation from small town to booming suburb and home of Dell Inc.

But the owners of the land, Tom Kouri and the Deutsch Neumann family, had resisted numerous offers to sell.

"Round Rock developed well beyond that intersection, and it was almost the hole in the doughnut for quite some time," said Charles Heimsath, president of Capitol Market Research.

Such an unusually large hole in what was quickly becoming an urban landscape proved irresistible to retail, office and apartment developers. So did the location: just west of I-35, across the interstate from Dell headquarters, with one part of the site abutting FM 1325, and all of it in the path of the extension of Texas 45.

"It's only one of three locations in the Austin region where three major highways converge at the same node or point," Heimsath said. "The other two are the Arboretum and Sunset Valley."

Development at La Frontera has been relatively steady since the beginning, and Round Rock has reaped the benefits.

"It's a very significant development . . . sales-tax wise, job-base wise and tax-base wise," said Bob Bennett, city manager from 1979 to 2004.

Retailers in La Frontera generate $3.5 million in annual sales tax for the city, according to Chief Financial Officer David Kautz.

Businesses providing office jobs began opening there in 2001, just as Dell, Round Rock's largest employer, began laying off thousands in the tech bust.

La Frontera also has Williamson County's only full-service hotel, a Marriott.

Heimsath said the road access, as well as the office and residential developments already in place, will allow Cousins to take its project in "a number of different directions."

"I think from a longer-term perspective, you could see an office component, particularly on the north end of the property close to the State Highway 45 access road," Heimsath said. "When you look at that property, certainly you have to consider it as being quite suitable for retail development, but it also has potential to be a lot of other things as well."

The Cousins site is the only part of La Frontera that is in Austin's annexation zone and is not currently zoned.

Not much land is left to be developed in La Frontera. The largest unclaimed tract, 43 acres on the project's north side, is zoned for up to 2 million square feet of office, residential and retail development.

Another 9 acres in the center of La Frontera also awaits a developer; a mixed-use, town center has been envisioned.

In the neighborhood

Major employers nearby: Dell Inc., Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Farmers Insurance, State Farm

Population: By 2007, 182,000 people will live within 5 miles, up 33 percent since 2000.

Income: Median household income in the area was $78,000 in 2002, higher than the region's average.