News
Driving Business
December 6, 2010
| The owners of newly-opened Frank Kent Honda in Fort Worth are in closing stages on five acres off Bryant Irvin Road for a new Cadillac dealership, they told us exclusively Friday. | |
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| Fourth-generation owners (and twins) Will Churchill and Corrie Watson at the VIP opening party, complete with Dripping Springs vodka flowing down a Honda logo ice sculpture (trust us, the plum martinis were out of this world.) Will tells us the next thing on his to-do list is the Cadillac store. Corrie says it should open in the next 18 months, although it's still in the planning stages near several other luxury-car dealerships on the heavily trafficked Bryan Irvin Road. | |
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| We snapped the dealer showroom as the festivities wound down Friday. The new $18M, 90k SF Honda dealership is on 12 acres at Twin Creeks, at 3400 W. Loop 820 South just west of the dealer’s former location at 3535 W Loop 820 South in Fort Worth. Funded by Plains Capital Bank, the facility features an outdoor green space with a creek, picnic area, and dog park. The two-story dealership was designed by Fort Worth architect Jim Stephenson and has a luxury client lounge, business center, children’s play area, café (we're still talking about a car dealership), and a color-changing, outdoor-lighting system, to cast colors on the building’s exterior corresponding with seasons and events (perhaps purple for TCU’s Rose Bowl game). Fort Worth-based Fort Construction built the dealership. | |
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| We clicked W. Martin & Co.’s Will Martin and wife Blair during the fireworks display (just so you know why everyone's looking up). Will negotiated the dealership’s real estate transaction for the Honda store and is working on the Cadillac site now. He says the Honda location took several years to assemble the total 45 acres from four owners and is being developed as Twin Creeks with blocks of land available. Recently, seven acres south of the dealership were sold to Stacy Furniture, which is in the planning stages for a new location, he tells us. | |
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| We caught Will C. (mid-sushi bite) with Welch Engineering prez (and North Richland Hills city councilman) Timothy Welch, whose firm did the engineering for the Honda dealership. He tells us The City of North Richland Hills breaks ground this week for an 86k SF city rec center. Will C. says the new dealership doubles the size of the previous Honda store with 52 service bays and is the first LEED-certified Honda facility in the state. They added a car wash that reclaims used water and cleans it for future use; parking lights that are individually controlled via a wireless system for maximum efficiency; native landscaping supports minimal water use; and bathroom faucets that use water flow to recharge hands-free use. All this green talk reminds us, Bisnow is hosting a Dallas Sustainability Summit on Dec. 15. Don’t lose your spot. Register now. | |
