Spreading the Wealth
Without Sprawling

Meanwhile, the DFW outskirts keep billowing. In Canton, 60 miles (96 km.) to the east, Texas-founded Homemade Gourmet, with the help of WorkplaceUSA, is building an 80,000-sq.-ft. (7,432-sq.-m.) production/distribution building and a 26,000-sq.-ft. (2,415-sq.-m.) office building on its new 22-acre (9-hectare) corporate campus, as it relocates from the north Dallas suburb of Frisco.
        At the CentrePort business park adjacent to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that it co-owns with General Motors Asset Management, Koll Development Co. has deployed a 150,000-sq.-ft. (13,935-sq.-m.) headquarters and printing facility for Motheral Printing Co., which is moving 230 employees there in September 2003 from its outgrown operation in Fort Worth.
        Koll has around 2 million sq. ft. (185,800 sq. m.) of projects in development. It recently broke ground on a 145,000-sq.-ft. (13,470-sq.-m.) headquarters for Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, Inc. (ANS), at the Legacy development in Plano, and on a 200,000-sq.-ft. (18,580-sq.-m.) headquarters facility for professional beauty supplies firm Sally Beauty Co. in Denton.
        Sally Beauty Co. has around three dozen corporate real estate staff on its retail development side ("a new store opened every five days" is part of the company's success), but only one on the corporate side. Mike Patterson, director of facilities construction, says Denton's college-town style and predominantly retail-oriented growth patterns are adjusting to the idea of international corporate headquarters. That makes permitting a bit of a challenge, but one that is easily overcome.
        "The city is much more willing to work with us because of the relationship we've built up with them over the years," he says of the company's $32-million investment. The company studied the project for almost two years, and Patterson says the leading criterion was "not to disrupt our work force, which we find to be such a strong part of our company."
        That left some sweeter real estate deals on the table, but they were no match for the high caliber of non-professional labor in the Denton area. The final project will involve about 93 percent office space and 7 percent warehouse space.
        "Inside the building we'll have two model stores," says Patterson, adding that the facility will also allow the company to consolidate some of the surplus infrastructure it's accumulated as the result of acquisitions.
        More than anything else, however, the new signature edifice will provide a necessary upgrade in environment for the company, which has occupied its existing Denton space since 1986, when it relocated there from New Orleans.