A lawsuit has spawned from a 20-year-old economic development contract between the city of San Antonio and Toyota Motor Manufacturing.

Fermin Rajunov, a San Antonio landowner, has sued the city and Toyota, challenging aspects of the contract, known as the Starbright Agreement, that made way for the Toyota Motor Manufacturing facility on the city’s South Side, the San Antonio Business Journal reported. 

The lawsuit centers on the allegation of “contract zoning,” contending that the city unlawfully relinquished zoning functions within a 3-mile radius of Toyota’s manufacturing facility.

The plaintiff seeks to invalidate sections of the agreement that granted Toyota control over zoning. Rajunov’s attempt to rezone his property for residential use within Toyota’s zoning jurisdiction faced resistance from the city, causing his affordable multifamily project to fall through. 

The city prioritized Toyota’s interests, leading to the rejection of Rajunov’s rezoning request, the lawsuit claims.

“Aside from Mr. Rajunov, there are more than 2,000 landowners in the 3-mile buffer zone that are being denied due process of the law,” David Prichard, Rajunov’s attorney, told the outlet. “Last I checked, this was still a democracy, not a dictatorship whereby land development rights that should be afforded by [the city of San Antonio] are passed off to the highest bidder.”

Rajunov’s attorneys argue that legal action is the only recourse left, emphasizing the broader implications beyond their client’s property. The Starbright Agreement allows adjustments to clauses deemed illegal without nullifying the entire contract, the outlet said. 

Prichard expressed a willingness to pursue an amicable resolution but asserted his confidence in winning the case. The city approving Rajunov’s rezoning request could be an acceptable resolution, he said.

—Quinn Donoghue

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Stream Realty Partners’ vision to snazzy up Austin’s Sixth Street with an array of development is starting to take shape. 

Dallas-based Stream, in partnership with architecture firm Clayton Korte, is embarking on a project that will make more than 30 spaces available for lease on historic Sixth Street, according to a news release. 

Stream aims to breathe life into the spaces with shops, restaurants and live music. In addition to attracting tenants, the firm wants to kickstart various community events in the area, including an outdoor concert series and a weekend farmers market. 

Stream and Clayton Korte will begin restoring building facades in January, and leasing will start around the same time. 

The project is part of Stream’s plan to make Sixth Street, also known as “Dirty Sixth,” an all-day destination that attracts a wide range of demographics. Sixth Street is packed with bars and basically only comes to life at night. 

“Sixth Street is central to Austin and essential to preserving the city’s vitality, and we want to bring this beloved street back to what it once was,” said Paul Bodenman of Stream. “By restoring Sixth, we honor the history and significance of this iconic Austin neighborhood.” 

Clayton Korte principal Paul Clayton emphasized the potential for Sixth Street to become a “booming daytime hub.”

Stream bought dozens of properties on East Sixth Street during the pandemic, when the downtown bar scene was practically lifeless. The firm then sought zoning changes to modify existing structures along the corridor. 

Stream’s planned projects for the area include an office building and a hotel. The Sixth Street revitalization is expected to cost between $500 million and $750, according to previous reports.

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SAN ANTONIO – The group in charge of the former Brooks Air Force Base is teaming up with Cleveland-based NRP Group on a mixed-use development, including a market-rate apartment project known as “Project Yeager.”

The apartments and commercial buildings are slated to rise on the northwest side of Loop 410 and I-37 interchange.

The total project is expected to cost about $78.2 million and add approximately 350 apartments to the area.

The Brooks Development Authority plans to purchase a nearly 24-acre property, then lease 13.93 acres to the developer for the apartments in a 75-year deal. The developer will pay $75,000 in rent the first year, with a 3 percent yearly increase.

Brooks will oversee leasing the commercial and retail center.​

​KERRVILLE – The city has been negotiating terms with Miami-based Lennar for an agreement governing incentives for a development called “Windridge,” which will deliver about 500 new homes in the area.​​​

The Kerrville City Council has voted to annex over 200 acres for the development and form a tax-increment reinvestment zone in a 100-acre area where the homes will be built.

Minimum lot sizes will likely be set at 35 ft, and the current maximum cap on home prices is $275,000. The deal will also likely include nearly $33 million in infrastructure costs to be paid by Lennar.

Lennar is also poised to secure $5 million in incentives from the city’s Economic Improvement Corporation to further help offset the cost of infrastructure to the development.

Kerrville has projected the community to bring in a total $17.9 million in tax revenue from 2026 and 2054.

ABILENE – An oil and gas company is partnering with the Development Corporation of Abeline on a $25 million expansion.

The project will allow Petrosmith to expand its production and operations and produce new products for upstream oil and gas companies. The expansion will add 250 skilled jobs to the existing 415.

The DCOA approved an almost $2.8 million incentive package for the expansion.

According to DevelopAbilene’s website, “This expansion taps into Abilene’s skilled labor force in the advanced manufacturing industry. With four universities, a technical college, a community college, and state-of-the-art training facilities for high school and college students, the community boasts the necessary education to support future needs.”​​

​FORT WORTH – Trademark Property Co., which is largely known for its work in the retail sector, is venturing into the multifamily market. Its first apartment project has been approved for $61 million in funding.

Located at West Vickery Blvd and Hemphill St., The Vickery apartment community will have 307 apartments, 14 townhomes, and a 5,300-sf restaurant and lounge, as well as public green space, dog parks, a pickleball court, coworking lounge, rooftop lounge, and resort-style pool. 

Construction starts in early 2024.

GFF is the designer. Financing is from First United Bank.

​DALLAS – The landmark Magnolia Building in Downtown will undergo $200 million in renovations.​

Located at 1401 Commerce St., the 29-story, 325-room hotel will get a new glass-entry canopy and upgrades to 270 rooms and the entire exterior. It will also get a three-level east wing with a street-level loading dock, kitchen, and meeting space, along with an adjacent restaurant. 

Work will take two years.

The building is owned by NewcrestImage. Exterior renovations were designed by Gensler. ​

A large shopping center is up for grabs in Big D, and it could be scooped up fast given the recent flurry of retail sales in North Texas. 

The Shops at Park Lane, at 8080 Park Lane in North Dallas, has hit the market, the Dallas Morning News reported. JLL is marketing the 665,000-square-foot shopping center, which Northwoo­d Retail has owned since 2010.

Located across North Central Expressway from NorthPark Center, JLL is playing up the property being in “top 6 percent of shopping centers in the U.S.” in its marketing materials.

The Shops at Park Lane was built in 2009 and is almost 90 percent leased. Tenants include Whole Foods, Nordstrom Rack, Bloomingdale’s Outlet, HomeGoods, Old Navy and Saks Off Fifth.

Just north of the property, StreetLights Residential is planning a 20-story, 616,700-square-foot apartment building at the 35-acre Park Lane complex. The project is expected to cost $134 million. 

Other large retail properties on the market in Dallas-Fort Worth include the 150-acre Village at Allen shopping center and the 185,000-square-foot Park Village shopping center in Southlake, the outlet reported.

While an asking price hasn’t been revealed for the Shops at Park Lane, investors could be willing to pay a pretty penny given the surging demand for retail assets in North Texas. Through the first nine months of 2023, investors poured more than $1.3 billion into DFW shopping centers, marking a bounce back year for a retail sector that struggled in the initial years of the pandemic due to a rise of e-commerce and reduced foot traffic.

Among notable transactions this year were CTO Realty Growth’s $61 million purchase of the 446,500-square-foot Plaza at Rockwall, and Precision Investments’ acquisition of the Shops at Eastside in Richardson.

—Quinn Donoghue 

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When Austin-based developer StoryBuilt collapsed this summer, it left many wondering how the fast-growing builder had fallen so fast. It looks like government agencies are wondering the same thing. 

In a report detailing its recent activity, the Stapleton Group, which is now in charge of StoryBuilt’s estate, said it has been cooperating with authorities from an alphabet soup of agencies.

Stapleton met with five regulators in or shortly after October: The FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Texas State Securities Board and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It is subject to multiple subpoenas and plans to cooperate with the authorities, anticipating “significant” costs to prepare. 

The receiver has alleged possible financial misdeeds by former StoryBuilt executives. The company may have misused investor funds, using money earmarked for specific developments on other expenses like corporate overhead or “extraneous initiatives,” according to the report.

After discovering the potential accounting errors, the receiver began a forensic analysis of StoryBuilt’s books. It has yet to complete that analysis or provide a price estimate for it — in fact, the receiver says the firm’s corporate structure was so confusing that it still doesn’t have an exact grip on StoryBuilt’s holdings. 

It “believes” that the estate holds an interest in 13 developments and 16 joint ventures. A majority of the projects have senior secured debt, Class A, B and C investors and revenue sharing agreement investors. As of Oct. 31, it had received 536 claim forms; in other words, there are a lot of creditors looking to be paid back.

From August to October, the receiver issued certificates promising repayment worth about $2.5 million. Some $1.58 million of those belong to the Cook family, which is associated with G.E.T. Marketing. G.E.T. is the firm that officially requested a receiver take over StoryBuilt’s assets earlier this year, and it is listed as the plaintiff in the receiver’s case in Travis County courts. But little is known about the firm, or why a marketing company came to own such a significant amount of StoryBuilt. 

For reference, as of Oct. 31, StoryBuilt had about $712,000 in its bank accounts. 

In October, the receiver hired Onyx Asset Advisors and A&G Realty Advisors to market all of Storybuilt’s assets. At the same time, Onyx lent the receivership $500,000 “on favorable terms” to support the business. So far, 1,095 parties have expressed interest in the portfolio, and 532 nondisclosure agreements have been returned to view more information about it. 

If the investment banking team can’t find one firm to buy everything, it will sell the portfolio off piece by piece.

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So far, the receivership has sold a handful of StoryBuilt properties. It sold a piece of its joint venture for a 123-unit project near 1907 Webberville Road in Austin. Lynd Development Group will join the project as the controlling member and developer, while StoryBuilt retains some membership interests. The receiver estimates the property will yield $102 million in sales.

It also sold Project Goose Run, at 9601 White Rock Trail in Dallas, returning about $3.8 million, according to the report. 

In October and November, the receiver struck 14 agreements with lenders to prevent foreclosures. 

StoryBuilt was developing 29 properties in four states when the receiver came on. It was dealing with hundreds of individual and small family office investors, as well as institutional sources of capital. The company had run out of funds to pay employees or keep up with debt service. Developments halted and foreclosures mounted. At the time the receiver took over, there were 25 foreclosures and lawsuits pending against the developer. 

“Creditors and investors in [StoryBuilt] were scrambling to raid any available asset,” the receiver wrote in the report.

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Tigerhawk Logistics has leased more than 13 percent of the recently completed Portside Logistics Center industrial complex, becoming its first tenant. 

The lease comprises 135,000 square feet and is expected to anchor the 1 million-square-foot facility at 4838 and 4908 Borusan Road in Baytown, developed by Stream Realty. 

Stream’s Tyler Maner and Jeremy Lumbreras helped broker the deal and are leading the leasing efforts for the development. 

Stream Realty completed the speculative two-building complex, in a joint venture with Missouri-based Principal Asset Management, in September. 

Portside Logistics Center includes a 760,000-square-foot cross-dock building and a 258,000-square-foot front-load building and boasts speculative office space and a white-boxed interior warehouse. 

Stream started construction on the 60-acre project last summer. It sits adjacent to the 15,000-acre TGS Cedar Port industrial complex. It is the country’s largest master-planned rail- and barge-served industrial complex and the fifth-largest in the world. 

Its location positions tenants for expedited access to Port Houston’s critical container terminals including Bayport, which recently completed a $95 million expansion. 

Port Houston and the southeast submarket helped elevate the metro’s industrial market in the second quarter. 

However, the industrial real estate market cooled in the third quarter, experiencing a 27 percent decrease in construction quarter-over-quarter, according to Partners Research. New industrial project starts have fallen 87 percent between 2023 and 2022, Avison Young estimates. This year is set to be one of Houston’s lowest years on record for industrial construction starts. 

Deflated construction comes on the heels of increased labor costs and interest rates causing a dip in new supply and easing demand. 

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Leasing demand in Houston’s industrial market had decreased 45 percent through the third quarter. About 55 percent of industrial deliveries this year have been fully leased, and occupancy increased to nearly seven percent in the third quarter, according to Partners Research. The market remains strong, but not as strong as it once was. 

Stream Realty is developing its largest Greater Houston industrial development, Empire West, which is set to span 300 acres on Empire Boulevard in Brookshire about 10 miles west of Katy. The development includes 10 distribution and warehouse locations The final phase is expected to complete construction in 2025.

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