Travis County Commissioners Court
February 27, 2007
Item 4
>> now, number 4. 4. Receive presentation on the domain I project. Good morning.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, my name is david armbrist, I would like to introduce kathy shield, the vice-president of simon property. Kathy would like to make the presentation and give you an update on the status of the domain. I’m here just to hold the boards.
>> does that picture represent the domain today or -- as we envision it?
>> well, the vision is going to become a reality effective March 9th, 2007. We certainly hope that all of you are going to be here. I just wanted to give all of you a brief preview of what simon property group will be opening at the grand opening on March 9th. 3 and a half years ago the Commissioners court approved the 381 agreement that pledged $5 million in tax increment financing to this project based on a promise of a project that would leverage approximately 130 million-dollar investment in Travis County. What we are going to be delivering on, Friday March 9th, is a project that represents a $250 million investment. The a project that is of a quality that it is absolutely going to attract national attention for -- for, you know, mixed use excellence and it's a project that the county, the city and simon property group should all be very, very proud of. And I want to thank the Commissioners court for agreeing to support it. And in making this project possible. Briefly, what you see in front of you, what you see in green is what will be open or is physically constructed as of the grand opening date on March 9th. Now, there are some individual tenants in that mix that will still be working on the buildout of the interiors of their spaces, but by and large that represents phase 1 of the domain project, neiman-marcus and macy's will obviously be opening. We will be opening 220,000 square feet of small shops, borders will be opening. We will also be opening at this point in time 392 multi-family residential units that people will be moving into over a three to four month time frame and there's a 90,000 square foot office component. Briefly I’m just going to point on the plan so that you can picture where these things are. This is a vehicular street that runs through the project. These are all parking decks on this back side. This is domain drive that runs out to mopac. Then it continues out this way through another simon project that will be built in the future and connects out to braker lane. The project at the northernmost point is neiman-marcus. Where you see this cross hatching over the green is what represents where the residential units are located. We have single loaded residential over this, two levels over this building. Over these two buildings we have a combination of three and four story residential buildings, so as you walk through it has a very urban feel to it. Each building is different, different varying heights. Very nice experience. This building which is not cross hatched, it's striped, is the location of the office building. There's three levels of office over this building. One of those levels is actually already leased, the second one is very closed to being leased. That represents 90,000 square feet of office. Heading down this street, this is a row of townhouses that edge the -- the edge of the parking deck and these are both purely residential buildings that have come I don't line and there are amenities, health clubs, pools, back in here. Very nice sort of news for the residential, this is all rail. All of this -- retail. All of this in green physically opened, physically constructed you can touch and feel it next Friday, March 9th. When you see in the rust color, that is a phase 2 building, actually where you will see our v.i.p. Tents for all of the grand opening activities. That's a building that we held off. We are going to build currently and design will build that building and open it about a year from now. That will be retail on the ground floor, but we are going to add some additional residential, probably an additional 40 units will be on top of that building. A third phase of this project we are moving forward with a full service hotel in this quadrant that will interplay nicely with what both what simon is doing and what endeavor reese is doing on the balance of their property down here. That's a restaurant pad that will go forward in that time frame. That's roughly a spring 2009 time frame. What you see in purple, there's the potential for some pads out there, not quite sure there on the timing. But just we wanted to give you kind of a simple feel for what buildings exist and what we envision happening in the future. And then again there is an additional 34 acres that extends from here out to braker, which is owned by simon, we do plan to develop it and it will be a continuation of a mixed use project. It was not the subject of the original 381 agreement. Just so everybody is clear on what's what. There's a lot of development out there. This is really the first piece of a lot of things. I did want to raise with the Commissioners court, the issue of affordable housing, there was -- there was the original requirement that there be 300 units or 300 proposal units built with 10% of those set aside for eligible applicants who met 65% of median income or less. We applied the 10% to the full 392 that we have built, so there are -- there are 39 units that will be set aside for actively working on that promise. They are leasing building by building as those buildings come online. There will be in each of those areas where I showed you there is residential. There will be 13 to 14 units in each of those buildings so it's not like one area was slated. There's a menu of options and there's -- there's three of the floor plans that seem to lend themselves best to that purpose. The one bedroom floor plans and the floor plan that shows a one bedroom and a study which would work well for a parent and a small child. The first building started leasing, the first movements were yesterday, I think there were 20. In that building, at least five, possibly six as of today of the units that meet that criteria have been leased. So we fully expect that by late spring, early summer, that requirement will be fully met. We are moving forward with that.
>> they would lease for how much?
>> the typical rates range from 940 to 2200, depending on size of unit and number of bedrooms. The packages that I have seen, the approved deals I believe are in the -- in the 600 to 700 range per month. I can give you actually the -- the signoff sheets that they have gone through.
>> 65% of income --
>> 65% --
>> excuse me?
>> income not rental rate.
>> yes.
>> so yeah. It would help to know that.
>> yes.
>> the other very significant issue that I wanted to talk on briefly, job creation. There it's a requirement that the project within 12 months of completion of the last phase generate a minimum of 1100 full-time equivalent jobs and that's based on a 40 hour work week. We have met with -- with all of the store managers at this point and we know the estimates for each and every one of the leased facilities. We expect based on that survey that we are going to -- to approach at least 2,000 full-time equivalent jobs. What we will do as soon as the stores are open, we will go back through and do a certification process asking each of those store managers to fill out the forms, which we will then submit and work with the county and the city to certify that process. But this is -- it's a very high level -- high level center, the let me of service in these stores really, you know, require that's there be a heavy staffing presence. There are 10 sit-down restaurants as part of this project which of course generates a lot of jobs. So we fully expect that that will be met and probably as part of the first phase as we add up the numbers, we will verify that once we get this open. But I would expect actually in the first phase we will be able to easily meet the 1100 full-time equivalent jobs. So again this was just a brief overview to give you a chance, to answer questions, we can work through all of, you know, demonstrating compliance and working through all of this as we move forward. We just wanted to give you a heads up and perhaps most importantly thank you for your support of this project because it's -- it's really a first class project.
>> would you repeat those
>> [indiscernible] the project itself.
>> the boundaries --
>> missed it and didn't really know what it was bordered by this street, this street.
>> for the benefit of the public, this would be mopac running along what would be the sort of northeastern boundary. This would be an entrance off of the mopac frontage road.
>> uh-huh.
>> coming along through here, there is another 117 some odd acres that's being developed by endeavor. It fills in here, then on the back side of that the western boundary there project would be burnet road. All of these run out to what would be the southern boundary, would be braker lane. We are basically sort of the first 57 acres of what is ultimately a 234-acre campus that -- between simon, endeavor and reese that's being redeveloped. This is sort of the first fully redeveloped section to come online and as you know this is going to be a -- an entire project that gets built out over 10 to 15 years.
>> thanks.
>> your welcome.
>> you will see this project in national magazines. This is really state-of-the-art in terms of mixed use, the way the whole things works.
>> it looks like these rendering. The those trees are the actual size. We saved a lot. We moved 21 of them. Hoisted them out, moved them back. You will see that the main street literally meanders. The first main street that we have literally designed around trees. That's why it rean deres.
>> I’m Monday invested $250 million in this community and it would not have happened without the county's participation.
>> you do need public support for these kind of projects to give them that special magic. So we are very proud of it and we can't wait to show it to you.
>> where is the main entrance? To the project?
>> main entrance would probably be several, but if you are looking at this, I would say this is the main entrance off of mopac, if you were -- if -- you would either get directly off of mopac and land about right here, you would come in that entrance, if you were southbound on mopac you would get off and have to loop under on the frontage road that. As significant entrance. The other is quite frankly off of braker. If you get off on opening day you will see a major sign but you will literally be traversing from a nice landscaped construction zone where we will have construction fencing, but ultimately braker is a major entrance. But you will be traversing through the 34-acre construction zone, chilled water plant is there. You will see the transmission lines you will be entering the domain. You will also be able to get in from burnet. There will be a road that goes through the endeavor property that will be open grand opening day. It's being expanded into a brand new boulevard. That will be complete in a may time frame. I think over time it will be a fairly balanced entry. I would say initially that you are going to see a lot. The end of that purple is where you are going to see a lot of activity, that represents an area that's truly finished where you are not travelling through construction. But the roads from all of those other points will be done and perfectly serviceable.
>> so at the grand opening, all of those buildings in green will be open for business?
>> all of those buildings will physically exist. There are some tenants who -- who are not their interior buildout. For instance some of these restaurants, restaurants just take longer to build out. You will see their skins, you will see their -- their signs, they will be sampling food. But between now and -- and, you know, mid summer every time you come out there, there will be, you know, a new store, a new restaurant opening. I would say about -- about 80% of what you see in green will actually be open on March 9th and the rest is sort of a staggered. But you will see their buildings, you will see the beginnings. All leased, 95% leased for this space which is the good news.
>> thank you, any other questions or comments.
>> let me ask, kathy would you say that the average employee in that center on the domain, would you say maybe the $10 an hour average for the average -- I know if you are management of a store, I mean, would you say most of what makes up that area is probably no more than a $10 an hour job?
>> I would say that -- I don't -- I can get you more accurate, perhaps a little higher because you are dealing with some very high level retail, very nice restaurants and again the number of managers that would be involved in a project like this I would think would run higher than a typical retail center. But I would certainly -- I know the people that I could go to who could give you a much better feel for that answer.
>> I think that's real important for us because if you -- I mean if you make $10 an hour at a job, that's about, you know, $400 a week if you work for 40 hours, about 19, 20 -- under $20,000 a year job and even if you do live in one of the $650 unit, that's 40% of your -- of your yearly income, I mean, which 40% of your income if you are paying for your housing that is, you know, pay beyond the affordable part. So I think that it's something that we need to make sure that, you know, when we do these projects -- because one of the big hooks on this is job creation and, you know, when you get the job creation maybe by the time you average management in there, then you really take care of that. But I would imagine that whatever -- whenever you all go to places and get these 381's that that is a number that you probably do have that you can give us. That's an important number for all of us to --
>> we can get it. We do have to canvas because very few of these people are actually hired by someone. They are actually hired by employees, we can canvas retailers, get a feel for what department stores are doing, higher end, as we said it's a very high caliber of retail, restaurants, so they are going to be looking for a fairly high caliber employees. So I would imagine they are paying something that can attract the type of people that they will need. But we can --
>> I think that would be interesting to know.
>> we will work on that for you. Send you a memo.
>> excluding congratulate do you tee -- gratuity.
>> that's right, there's no gratuity in the retail.
>> thank you very much. See you on opening day.
>> good job, david, you didn't have much to say but the renderings were -- available for us to review.
>> we can leave those if --
>> van in a armbrust there.
>> is there any reason, would you like to keep them? You can if you wish?
>> it wouldn't hurt to have one I guess.
>> that's fine.
>> if you can part with it. That's my favorite. Do you want it.
>> if you remind us in two weeks we will return it.
>> we are on an anti-cluster campaign down here.
>> I would volunteer to take them away. Thank you.
>> thank you all. Thank you.
>> gale? Did I add 11 to consent?
>> no.
>> I have got a note here on that. There's a proposed reorganization that danny hobby and the medical examiner are in agreement on and I meant to ask the court if there were any questions or anything.
>> I think that was pretty straightforward.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> with the understanding, too, if it doesn't work out we can always go back to the
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 8:20 AM