Southern Land Company, along with the McKinney Performing Arts Center, is kicking off a cultural initiative that will offer live music and related arts to the general public free of charge. Arts on the Lawn, a series of outdoor concerts, art shows and family-friendly activities begins on August 31 with a live performance at Tucker Hill – Southern Land Company’s mixed-use community on Highway 380 west of U.S. 75.

The featured artist will be Lantana, a local country music trio that has become widely popular among music fans of all ages.

Four new businesses have signed leases to enter Westhaven Town Center, the growing commercial village of Southern Land Co.'s Westhaven community.

Artistry Salon & Day Spa, Jimmy's Custom Cleaners & Alterations, Town Center Chiropractic and Healthclick will open in the town center. Each of these businesses is owned and operated by a Westhaven residents who say they were lured to the community because of the town center.

First up was Jim Cheney, vice president of corporate development for the Southern Land Company. In their plan, the fairgrounds would be reinvented as Legion Park, site of 1100 new apartments, condos and cottages, priced to suit the surrounding neighborhood.

Legion Park, he said, would center on an outdoor amphitheater, perfect for outdoor performances and concerts — using the old racetrack stands for seating. It would be a commercial development geared toward "small businesses that want a cool, fun place to work, but can't afford the rent in some other parts of town."

North McKinney has a 60.3-month supply of lots, with 1,060 lots, and an annual start rate of about 211.

In the Tucker Hill masterplanned community, there will be more than 2,000 homes on 800 acres in McKinney, said Brian Sewell, executive vice president of community development for Franklin, Tenn.-based Southern Land Co., the developer of the new subdivision. Currently there are about 20 finished houses and 25 under construction, he said. Ten have been sold. The entire development is expected to be completed in 2015 or 2016, a projection that has shifted in response to recent downturns in housing.

Across Dallas' many post-World War II neighborhoods, the ranch and tract home dominate. With houses set back from the street and garages the likely entryway, the question is: Where are the people?

That's what Massachusetts Institute of Technology classmates Bill Gietema and John Hodge asked when the two presidents of Arcadia Realty Corp. originally pitched the idea for front-porch projects.

The site of the historic Imperial Sugar Company in Sugar Land, Texas, will be transformed from an abandoned mill into one of the country's best examples of sustainable redevelopment.

The Imperial Sugar project will be a 650-acre mixed-use community that blends commercial, retail and single-family homes into a walkable, livable, green community. The project is being designed and managed by Nashville-based developer Southern Land Company with the help of Graphisoft ArchiCAD.

Windstone will be hosting an Open House Tour on Sunday, July 27, from 1:00pm-5:00pm. There will be Townhomes, Village Homes a Manor Home and a Boulevard Home on the tour. These homes range from 3,700 sq. ft. to 10,289 sq. ft. This event is free and open to the public.

Doug Wright will have something on his résumé that most of his college-age peers most likely can't match.

The 20-year-old civil engineering student designed the 13th hole at Westhaven Golf Club, which is under construction in the Franklin mixed-use development. He did so after winning an amateur golf-design contest presented by Links magazine.

Cherokee Investment Partners LLC, a Raleigh, N.C.-based private equity firm specializing in brownfield cleanup and sustainable redevelopment, highlights redevelopment of the former Imperial Sugar refinery property in its annual Sustainability Report (www.cherokeefund.com).

The main activity now is environmental remediation — primarily asbestos removal — which will likely last through the remainder of the year, according to Tom Darden, CEO of Cherokee.

“Sustainability is our business,” he says. “For more than two decades, Cherokee has used private equity, coupled with creativity and expertise, to purchase, clean up and reuse property.”

ArtHouse, the mixed-use development in Keller Town Center, is adding nine tenants.

The tenant mix is a collection of boutique shops that are not national chains. They include art shops, salons, a home decorating business and gift shops.