Developer Fehmi Karahan: Fields West project in Frisco will look a lot like Legacy West in Plano. Only bigger.
Fehmi Karahan, the master developer behind the hugely successful Legacy West mixed-use project in Plano, has turned his attention northward to Frisco.
There, Karahan will develop Fields West as part of the much larger 2,500-acre Fields development underway by Hunt Realty Investments.
Both developments lie just west of the Dallas North Tollway in their respective cities. Legacy West has an urban mixed-use village developed by Karahan at its core, and so will Fields West.
The Fields West project in Frisco will look a whole lot like Legacy West in Plano, Karahan said. Only bigger.
How much bigger? The Dallas Business Journal asked Karahan in a recent interview to compare the size and scope of Legacy West and Fields West.
This is what he said:
The answer is yes. Fields West is bigger than Legacy West. So what does that mean?
Legacy West covers, in general, 240 acres. That includes Toyota’s headquarters, the JP Morgan Chase regional campus, Liberty Mutual, the mixed-use, the hotel, the multiple residential components, Windrose condo tower and all of that.
Most people refer to Legacy West’s mixed-use component where you go to Del Frisco’s (steakhouse), the Food Hall, and all that. When you look at the Legacy West mixed-use village, with Renaissance Hotel and the Food Hall, that is a total of 34 acres.
The Fields West project – talking about specifically the mixed-use village just to make apple-to-apple comparisons – is 55 acres. And it encompasses two hotels instead of one of them. Legacy West has Renaissance (hotel), and Fields West has two hotels. So that’s the acreage comparison.
Now, if you look at the entire Fields development, we have 2,500 acres. So in summary, Fields West is 55 acres in the heart — in the center — of the entire 2,500-acre Fields project.
Based on the success that I had at Legacy West, the mixed-use project has become one of the best mixed-use projects in the country. It attracted all of those corporations that you see. So our goal for our partnership (with Hunt Realty) is to bring a Legacy West-style development to the Fields development. I use Fields West (for comparison’s sake) because it’s same situation. Legacy West is on the west side of the tollway and in the heart of Legacy business park. Fields West is in the heart of the Fields development.
The big idea is that Fields West will help Fields attract those kind of organizations that Legacy West has attracted. Those organizations will say. “Aha! We’ll go to this area, because it has incredible amenities.” Of course, Fields West has certain advantages, such as the PGA headquarters, Omni hotel, and the most recently announced Universal Studios kids’ theme park across the street, and other incredible activities taking place surrounding our property.
I know how successful Legacy West was. By building Fields West, I feel very confident that it will attract the corporations and those kinds of users for corporate campuses and offices and so on. And we have a very strong interest on the retail-restaurant side of it. I am extremely excited to develop another great project.
Karahan’s story was edited for for clarity and brevity.