Toyota Coming to Plano

Toyota confirmed plans to locate its North American HQ in Plano. (If you live in Plano and drive a Honda, put a cover on it.) Word on the street has it landing at Legacy West with KDC as the yet-to-be-named developer.

Within the next three years, Toyota’s North American HQ for manufacturing, financing, sales and marketing, and corporate operations will relocate to a single campus in Plano, according to Toyota’s website. While no site has been officially designated, multiple DFW brokers tell us it will be in Legacy West on a tract adjacent to J.C. Penney’s corporate HQ near the southwest corner of the Dallas North Tollway and SH 121. 

Sources close to the deal say KDC is in negotiations to develop a 1M to 1.5M SF build-to-suit project on 50 acres that Toyota is reportedly buying. We’ve heard JLL is on the deal, but JLL declined to comment. About 4,000 employees could be coming to Plano starting with small groups this summer in temporary space. Most won’t move until the new HQ is ready in late 2016 or early 2017. (4,000 new people means the competition is gonna be a lot stiffer at various chili cookoffs.) Toyota says construction should start this fall. Toyota’s 10 manufacturing plants in the US (including one in San Antonio) will not be impacted by these changes.  

Transwestern principal Robert Deptula tells us that unlike many relocations to Dallas, Toyota should have a large ripple effect on our real estate market, as its global suppliers open offices in the area to support the Toyota divisions relocating to Texas. (They bring their friends with them like Hollywood celebrity.) When Exxon moved to Irving more than 20 years ago, we were never able to identify a single business that came to DFW solely to be near to Exxon’s HQ, he tells us. 

TIG SVP/director of brokerage services Kevin Mackey agrees. Look for vacancy rates to continue to decrease in the next two years and discussions of new spec office and industrial north of President George Bush Tollway to accommodate these businesses. Cushman & Wakefield’s Bill McClung tells us the relocation demonstrates the strength of the market and he anticipates residential and retail will see a jump in demand.