Lakeside DFW broke ground Wednesday on its first phase of development after 40 years in the making.
The project will be an urban mixed-use development and include residential, mixed-use buildings, restaurants and acres of public open space including parks, trails, an amphitheater and an observation tower.
The Stewart family began purchasing property for the development in 1973. Through the years Flower Mound and the Stewart family have struggled to find a development for the lake view property that fit Flower Mound.
In the mid 1990s, a project similar to Seaside, Florida was proposed and met stiff opposition from residents.
In the late 1990s, Flower Mound became determined to see the property used for a least one corporate campus. In hopes of enticing a corporate user, Flower Mound and the land owner entered a joint agreement to install some of the major infrastructure.
In 2006, after the landowners and Flower Mound had failed to secure a corporate tenant, a resident committee charged with updating Flower Mound’s Master Plan recommended the property be used for a mixed-use development. The 2008 Mixed-Use ordinance was developed using the Lakeside DFW property as its model.
In 2011, Lakeside DFW began a resident-driven design process that included over 25 resident meetings and 13 meetings with the Planning and Zoning Commission and Town Council.
Flower Mound invested many hours of hard work into making sure Lakeside DFW’s design sets the stage for the project’s success, meets the requirements of the Mixed-Use Ordinance and is a place everyone can enjoy.
Along with our dedicated town staff, experts in Mixed-Use design were hired to review the designs put forward by Lakeside DFW. Many changes to the proposed plan were made based on the recommendations of these experts and our staff.
To ensure residential uses were not the only portion of the project completed, the amount of residential building is limited by the total requirements for all mixed-use buildings, trails, parks and amenities including the amphitheater.
In November of 2012 Lakeside DFW was granted its zoning requests.
Flower Mound and its residents will receive many benefits from this premiere development including:
• Lake Access – Under the prior zoning, the land owner had no requirement to provide public access to Lake Grapevine.
• Dedicated Public Open Space – As with the lake access, there was no requirement that the land owner have any public open space.
• Tree preservation – under the previous zoning, there was no requirement for tree preservation and mitigation. Lakeside DFW has started a tree farm to preserve trees that would otherwise be destroyed and is now required to replace other trees that need to be removed.
• Amphitheater and Observation Tower on Lake Grapevine – Neither of these would have been required to be built under the prior zoning,
• No 40-story office towers – The prior zoning allowed office towers up to the FAA height limit (40 stories) to be built directly adjacent to existing residential neighborhoods,
• Tax revenue – Lakeside DFW will have an estimated assessed property value at build out of $4.2 million per acre. Under the previous zoning, the property value per acre was estimated to be $1 million per acre. This translates into over $16 million dollars of additional property taxes annually for Flower Mound, LISD and Denton County.
• Commercial Space – 45,000 square feet of commercial space will be built in the first phase. Future phases will bring a additional commercial space including lakeside restaurants and additional office and retail.
• Housing options – Lakeside DFW will bring housing options that fit the needs of young professionals as well as empty nesters.
The groundbreaking brought an end to the struggle to design the right use for Lakeside DFW and started Flower Mound and Lakeside DFW down the path to building a place Flower Mound and the Metroplex will love.
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