In late April, a public-private partnership with the city of Rowlett, Texas, officially broke ground on Bayside, a $1 billion, 262-acre mixed-use development anchored by an eight-acre blue lagoon that would be the first of its kind in this state.
Rowlett is 15 miles east of downtown Dallas, “and it’s not often that you find yourself on a peninsula on a lake outside a major metro area,” Kent Donahue, a local developer and managing partner of Bayside Land Partners, told the Dallas Business Journal.
Humphreys & Partners Architects is the firm behind Bayside’s master design.
Donahue has been working for three years on this project, located along the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard. The property was once called Elgin B. Robinson Park and had been owned by the City of Dallas Parks Department. Donahue purchased the land for $31.8 million.
Donahue is working with TxDOT and the North Central Texas Council of Governments to put in a new overpass on Interstate-30 to connect the two pieces of Bayside real estate.
Western Rim of Coppell, Texas, will soon begin Phase I construction on 845 luxury apartments, 600 townhouses and single-family homes, and 400,000 sf of retail and office space. Roadways on the north side of Bayside should be ready by September, and the first part of the project will start receiving residents and tenants in the fall of 2017.
The second phase, according to the Journal, would include a 500-room resort, a marina with 1,000 boat slips, 650 luxury apartments, 450 high-rise condos, 300,000 sf of entertainment space, 800,000 sf of office and retail space, and the blue lagoon.
The $1.1 million lagoon—essentially a giant swimming pool with 10 football fields worth of water—is fashioned after water attractions at other resorts, such as Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Its 150-nozzle, 280-foot show fountain “can shoot water 200 feet in the air with LED lights,” the Journal reports. Miami-based Crystal Lagoons developed the lagoon’s filtration system. This would be Crystal Lagoons’ first lagoon in Texas, and its 12th in the U.S.
An open-air trolley system that would run around the lagoon’s periphery is also planned. Bayside also calls for walking and biking trails, dog parks, and a launch point for kite surfers.
“We are excited about what it means not only to Rowlett but the entire D-FW region and the state of Texas,” Jim Grabenhorst, Rowlett’s economic development director, told the Dallas Morning News. “It has the potential to be the front door to Rowlett.”
The latter phase should be ready by fall of 2018.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter projects get LEED Gold
MGM Mirage and Infinity World Development have received LEED Gold certification for the first three CityCenter projects: the ARIA Resort hotel tower, ARIA Resort convention center and theater, and the Vdara Hotel (above). The CityCenter developers anticipate Gold or Silver LEED certification for the project's remaining developments, which include a Mandarin Oriental hotel, a 500,000-sf retail a...
| Aug 11, 2010
RMJM unveils design details for $1B green development in Turkey
RMJM has unveiled the design for the $1 billion Varyap Meridian development it is master planning in Istanbul, Turkey's Atasehir district, a new residential and business district. Set on a highly visible site that features panoramic views stretching from the Bosporus Strait in the west to the Sea of Marmara to the south, the 372,000-square-meter development includes a 60-story tower, 1,500 resi...
| Aug 11, 2010
'Feebate' program to reward green buildings in Portland, Ore.
Officials in Portland, Ore., have proposed a green building incentive program that would be the first of its kind in the U.S. Under the program, new commercial buildings, 20,000 sf or larger, that meet Oregon's state building code would be assessed a fee by the city of up to $3.46/sf. The fee would be waived for buildings that achieve LEED Silver certification from the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Five-star resort breaks ground on the Black Sea
Construction work has commenced on a five-star resort and leisure destination along the Black Sea coast in Batumi, Georgia. The RTKL-designed resort consists of two towers rising 86 and 58 meters over a two-story podium. The larger tower contains 250 guestrooms and suites while the smaller tower offers 78 residential apartments.
| Aug 11, 2010
Outdated office tower becomes Nashville's newest boutique hotel
A 1960s office tower in Nashville, Tenn., has been converted into a 248-room, four-star boutique hotel. Designed by Earl Swensson Associates, with PowerStrip Studio as interior designer, the newly converted Hutton Hotel features 54 suites, two penthouse apartments, 13,600 sf of meeting space, and seven "cardio" rooms.
| Aug 11, 2010
Aloft hotel opens at Washington National Harbor
A partnership of five developers, including the John Hardy Group and Peterson Companies, have completed a 190-room aloft hotel at Washington National Harbor, a mixed-use retail/entertainment development in Oxon Hill, Md., near Washington, D.C. Designed in conjunction with David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group, the aloft prototype offers atmospheric public spaces designed to draw guests from the...
| Aug 11, 2010
Manhattan's latest boutique hotel will be LEED Silver certified
New York-based developer Tribeca Associates has commissioned Brennan Beer Gorman Architects to design its latest mixed-use office and boutique hotel at 330 Hudson Street. Located in the downtown Hudson Square area of Manhattan, the LEED-Silver development will involve the redevelopment of a historic, eight-story warehouse building into 292,000 sf of office space, 15,000 sf of retail space, and ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Luxury Hotel required faceted design
Goettsch Partners, Chicago, designed a new five-star, 214-room hotel for the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The design-build project, with Saudi Oger Ltd. as contractor and Rayadah Investment Co. as developer, has a three-story podium supporting a 17-story glass tower with a nine-story opening that allows light to penetrate the mass of the building.
| Aug 11, 2010
Westin Hotel
Mid-twentieth-century projects are in a state of limbo. In many cities, safeguards against quick demolition don't even cover “new” buildings built after 1939, yet many such buildings may be obsolete by current standards. The Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank, located in downtown Minneapolis, was one such building, a rare example of architecture from a time when American design was ...