FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2008

SMALL DEVELOPER, BIG PROJECTS 
Dallas-based Harvest Partners’ small size allows it to give 100 percent to every project.
Lindsey Walker

Park Lane in Dallas currently has 243,000 square feet of existing office space and another 96,000 square feet is under construction.

Coming up on 6 years ago, Tod Ruble, Eliot Barnett and Blaine Lee formed Harvest Partners as a specialized commercial real estate development firm with offices in Los Angeles and Dallas. In 2005, Bob Baker joined the company as the partner lead for leasing and merchandising. With a focus on high-density, retail-based, mixed-use sites in urban areas, the four partners use their combined experience to develop unique, intricate projects that stand out from the more typical suburban shopping centers.

“As retail development executives, we’ve created somewhere between 10 million and 12 million square feet of retail space between us,” says Ruble, co-founder and partner of Harvest Partners. “We were building more programmatic space that didn’t have much creativity to it, and we all felt that it wasn’t taking advantage of the creative and detailed expertise of Harvest.”

The four partners come from very diverse backgrounds, bringing together expertise that covers all of the major disciplines — leasing, construction, architecture and financing — and provides the firm with an edge up on its competition.

Ruble, for example, has a 22-year background in real estate that includes real estate investment banking, acquisition and development of commercial, retail and multifamily projects. Barnett has 33 years of experience under his belt, with a career that has spanned 12 different states and has included involvement in build-to-suit opportunities for national credit tenants, large-scale retail power centers and smaller grocery-anchored centers. Lee, a licensed architect, came to Harvest with more than 36 years of planning, construction and development experience. Baker is a 25-year real estate industry veteran with a background in almost every type of retail project, from regional malls to urban renewals to Main Street redevelopments.

“The disciplines from each of us really intertwine extremely well, to the extent that there’s a little bit of overlap,” Ruble says. “It helps provide different perspectives, and the core competencies of each one of the partners allow us to execute our projects really well.”

The firm hasn’t grown too much since its inception, at least in terms of the number of people it employs. Having just reached 22 employees, Harvest Partners has never planned to be a big firm. Says Baker, “We never wanted to be a big development company from a standpoint of infrastructure and overhead.”

Harvest also keeps the number of projects it does to around two big projects a year. By limiting the developments the company takes on, the partners are able to devote all of their time and effort to the projects they are working on without losing focus.

“Most of our third-party service providers are amazed that we’re doing projects of this size based on the size of our company,” Baker says. “They’ll walk into a big development company with 50 people in the room working on their project, but there are probably only five people that are focused on it 100 percent. That’s what we give on each project — complete focus.”

And, with just more than $1 billion in current development, Harvest’s projects are anything but small.

Park Lane is a 33-acre mixed-use project that Harvest Partners is developing right across the street from NorthPark Center in Dallas. The nearly $750 million venture will comprise 700,000 square feet of retail, anchored by the U.S. flagship store for Whole Foods.           

“[Whole Foods] will be more than 100,000 square feet, generating volumes that are more than double a lot of departments stores,” Baker says. “That is great for the project.”

The store is set to open in January 2009, and the balance of the retail will open in February.

In addition to the retail component, Park Lane currently has 243,000 square feet of existing office space and another 96,000 square feet is under construction. Half of the newest phase already has been leased to one tenant, “which is good because it establishes it as a great corporate office location,” Ruble adds. An additional Class AA office tower is being planned.

The development also will feature a 252-room Valencia Hotel, which is a Mobil 4 diamond hotel; 325 residential units in three different formats (lofts, apartments and condominiums) above the retail; and The Sports Club/LA-Dallas, an upscale fitness and spa facility. The nearly 3 million-square-foot Park Lane project is scheduled to be complete before the end of 2010.

“This embodies just about every relevant issue in today’s mixed-use developments,” Ruble says. “It’s a public/private partnership with the city. It’s transit-oriented. And, probably one of the most important aspects, it’s a true, very dense, vertically oriented mixed-use. At the end of the day, we’ll have all of the major asset classes represented with significant amounts of square footage.”

Good Fulton Farrell is Park Lane’s lead architect, and Harvest Partners also is working with BOKA Powell on a portion of the project. A formal joint venture between Rogers-O’Brien Construction and Beck Construction — called RO/Beck — is the general contractor. United Commercial Realty is handling retail leasing.

In Garland, Texas, Harvest Partners recently has completed Harbor Point, a Bass Pro Outdoor World-anchored development on Lake Ray Hubbard and Interstate 30. It is Bass Pro’s first store located on a major body of water.

“There are courtesy docks for people to use, and there are five waterfront restaurants,” Ruble says. “It’s one of the few if not the only waterfront, entertainment-type facilities located in the Dallas Metroplex.”

The 120,000-square-foot Bass Pro store has been open for a year, and the restaurants have been opening at intervals over the past year. Four of the five restaurants, which include Texas Land & Cattle Co., Primo’s, The County Line BBQ, Islamorada Fish Company and Cold Stone Creamery, currently are open.

A third project that Harvest Partners currently is involved with is The Landing in Renton, Washington. The 46-acre retail/residential development is located on the former Boeing 757 site, just off the 405 Freeway at the intersection of Park and Logan. Upon completion in October 2008, it will feature 616,000 square feet of retail and 860 residential units.

Looking ahead, the partners don’t plan to attempt to tackle much more than the two or three big projects a year mostly in primary markets.

“I think given the size of our company and the success that we’ve had on these larger projects, we’re opportunity-driven around the country now,” Baker says. “Because of the history of the four partners having around 120 years of experience combined, we have the relationships in different major cities in the U.S. where we can make sure we can do the development from afar.”

As for any advice that the principals would give other small companies looking to take on big developments, says Baker: “It’s a labor of love. Be prepared for a lot of long days.”

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