In The News

ERIE —  Southern Land Co. this month broke ground on the first single-family homes at its Westerly community in Erie.

The community, located on 400 acres at Erie Parkway and Weld County Road 5, is the developer’s first in the region.

“As we look to grow SLC Homes’ footprint, Westerly will serve as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how our team creates extraordinary communities that are representative of their surrounding localities,” SLC national homebuilding president David Bracht said in a prepared statement. “We have tapped into a pool of talented trade partners, consultants, and associates that will ensure the homes at Westerly are an attractive addition to the greater Erie community and will enhance the lives of our future residents.”

After opening an upscale rental complex in Las Vegas’ Symphony Park last year, a Nashville developer is pushing ahead with plans for more apartment construction in the downtown area.

Southern Land Co. expects to begin site work this fall on its next apartment project in Symphony Park, company spokeswoman Jenna Lefever told the Review-Journal last week.

Plans call for more than 500 units spread among a five-story building and a 22-story tower, according to Tracy Reich, the city’s redevelopment manager. Lefever indicated that the smaller building would start first and that site work for the high-rise would begin in about a year.

Construction crews and lane closures have become a common sight in and around downtown Fort Worth, and with several projects slated for completion in the next two years, they’ll be around a while longer.

The larger projects are developments offering housing alongside retail, restaurants or hotels — in some cases all three.

Here are six projects expected to be complete within the next two years.

A local developer has announced plans for a 735-home master planned community in Nolensville.

Over the next decade, Southern Land Company, headquartered in Nashville, will turn 373 acres of open land at the intersection of McFarlin and Fly roads into a mix of housing ranging from townhomes to estate homes built on half-acre lots. The planned community is as yet unnamed.

“We are excited and proud to expand in our proverbial backyard,” Tim Downey, founder and CEO of Southern Land said in a news release. “The Town of Nolensville is an exceptional community, and we are committed to establishing a beautiful, walkable neighborhood that will be welcoming and complementary to Nolensville. From a design standpoint, it will be different from any other work we’ve done elsewhere. We are passionate about ensuring our developments are unique to and reflective of the greater communities in which they are located.”

With the shroud of the pandemic lifting, downtown Fort Worth is regaining vibrancy with new construction projects, workers returning to offices and activities and events ramping up.

“There are a lot of really good things happening in downtown Fort Worth,” said Andy Taft, president of Downtown Fort Worth Inc.

One of the most noticeable changes is the amount of construction underway on projects that have been in the pipeline for a while but were slowed or stalled during the pandemic.

New renderings have been published for Lot X, a proposed mixed-use development with a residential skyscraper component at 201 N Street in downtown Sacramento. If built, the 32-story structure would be the tallest residential skyscraper in the State Capitol. Beyond housing, Lot X would create an open plaza overlooked by townhomes, a five-story office building, and a seven-story garage. Southern Land Company is responsible for the application.

Las Vegas is built for vehicles. Our airport is inside our tourist corridor. Our streets are wide, and our sidewalks narrow— in some places, dangerously so. And a freight train right-of-way runs directly through the center of town, cutting the Valley in two. Yet those train tracks are the reason Las Vegas is building a new urban center from the ground up.

Symphony Park, the upstart neighborhood that surrounds the Smith Center, is built on 61 acres of land that formerly belonged to the Union Pacific Railroad Company, which used it for a maintenance and fueling yard. The City of Las Vegas purchased the land in 2000—after a remediation process that removed the oil, metals and chemicals from the soil—and promptly began imagining new uses for the land.

DRIPPING SPRINGS — A high-end, luxury home community will soon be coming to Dripping Springs.

Southern Land Company (SLC) announced it closed on its land acquisition in Dripping Springs on Jan. 31, marking SLC’s first project in the region.

The community will be located near Treaty Creek Distilling at the end of Silver Creek Road and will include ten 1.5-acre lots and 17 two-acre lots. 19 of the lots will back up to Barton Creek and offer bluff, river and Hill Country views. The community will also feature a gathering center with river access. The starting price for these single-family homes will likely be around $1.5 million.

Real estate developer Southern Land Co. announced the sale of mixed-use development Morada Plano on Feb. 3 to investment firm The Jacobson Co.

The five-story development, which includes 183 multifamily units and 12,700 square feet of restaurant and retail space, is located at 1009 14th St., Plano. Morada Plano began leasing its studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments in September 2019.

Nashville-based Southern Land Company LLC has bought its first Hill Country property near Austin, Texas, with plans to build a luxury community in housing-hungry Dripping Springs.

The roughly 70-acre community will comprise 28 homes, according to company officials. Each house will sit on a fair amount of land, either 1.5 or 2 acres. Nineteen of the homes will abut Barton Creek.

The Nashville company sold Morada Plano to a real estate investment firm.

Southern Land Company (SLC), a national real estate developer of award-winning mixed-use developments and master-planned communities, has announced it has closed on its first land acquisition in Dripping Springs, Texas, where the company’s homebuilding group will build a high-end, luxury home community.

The community will be located near Treaty Creek Distilling at the end of Silver Creek Road in a scenic, secluded location. It will include 10 1.5-acre lots and 17 2-acre lots. Nineteen of the lots will back up to Barton Creek and offer expansive bluff, river, and Hill Country views. Homebuyers will enjoy distinct, luxury, single-family homes reflecting SLC’s hallmarks of strict design principles and quality craftsmanship. Additionally, the community will feature a gathering center with river access, carefully working with the beauty of the land and its natural Hill Country trees and open spaces.

The Westhaven Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit organization run by residents at Southern Land Company’s Westhaven community in Franklin, presented Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt a check for $38,371. The donation came from proceeds raised at the foundation’s 15^th Concert 4 The Cure, which was held in September 2021.

Concert 4 The Cure is The Westhaven Foundation’s annual fundraising initiative to support pediatric cancer research at Children’s Hospital. Westhaven resident Doug Stacey and his family started the Concert 4 The Cure event in honor of their mother who passed away from cancer. The Westhaven Foundation and Westhaven resident volunteers joined forces with the Stacey family to more substantially fund childhood cancer research as a community.

The Westhaven Foundation presented a check Jan. 12 for $38,471 to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt from the proceeds of the foundation’s 15th Annual Concert 4 The Cure, an event supporting the pediatric hospital’s cancer research.

The Westhaven Foundation is the philanthropic organization run by residents of the Southern Land Company’s Westhaven community in Franklin.

Photo of the Day: In the spirit of the season, 160 Westhaven families donated funds to host a holiday party and present gift cards to thank 30 of Southern Land Company’s horticulture team for their hard work landscaping and maintaining the many green spaces found throughout the expansive Westhaven community. In addition to enjoying a celebratory lunch, each Southern Land Company horticulture team member received $225 from the group of residents to show their appreciation.

At Symphony Park, a lot has happened here in eight months.

When we were here in April, construction was continuing.

Now, here in December, the work is done on two major tenants: two residential complexes that house hundreds of people.

Briana White is one of them. She moved into Auric, from Phoenix, about a week ago. She chose downtown Las Vegas as her home.

The Fort Worth housing market continues to set records even as home sales slowdown. So the question is, what is driving this increase?

We talked to a North Texas realtor for some insight.

As of right now, the median home price in Fort Worth is at $310,000. That’s according to The Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtor’s, October report. That’s an increase of nearly 2-percent since September.

Clear skies and a cool bite in the air created an almost perfect wintry, Christmas ambiance Monday for Westhaven’s second annual Christmas tree lighting in Franklin.

Since last year’s tree lighting was tempered by bad weather and the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s event seemed like a first to many.