Dunham Pointe, a 1,327-acre master-planned community under development in Cypress, will be getting a mixed-use development — though not for another few years.
Fort Worth-based Trademark Property Co. has entered into an agreement to acquire 37 acres on the southwest corner of Highway 290 and Mason Road from the community’s developer, Archie Dunham.
The plan is to close on the land purchase and start construction in the second quarter of 2025 and open the development in late 2026 or early 2027, said JeffJohnson, managing director of development at Trademark.
“Next year, we’re really going to be focused on planning, design, place-making and merchandising of the project,” he said.
Trademark is already in talks with potential tenants, including grocers, for the walkable district, which will have between 225,000 and 250,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, Johnson said. The first phase will also include an apartment complex with about 350 units averaging about 900 square feet as well as 36 townhomes. Office space and hotels could follow later.
It will be the third ground-up development in Greater Houston for Trademark, which developed Market Street in The Woodlands Town Center in 2005 and the H-E-B-anchored Royal Oaks Village shopping center in west Houston in 2001.
In 2014, the company partnered with Rice Management Co. to improve the Rice Village shopping district’s street and landscape, storefronts and facades, and to oversee asset and property management, leasing and repositioning of the fashion-focused retail center formerly known as Village Arcade. Houston-based REIS Associates LLC replaced Trademark in 2019.
Dunham’s team spent four to five months interviewing several mixed-use development companies and finally decided on Trademark about six weeks ago, Dunham said.
“We’re really extremely happy to welcome Trademark into Dunham Pointe,” Dunham said. “We were very impressed with the projects that they’ve done around the country in the last several years, really high-end products like the one they did at Market Street in The Woodlands, and we think Cypress needs something exactly like that.”
Development of Dunham Pointe progresses
Dunham Pointe broke ground in early 2021 on the last major parcel in the Highway 290 corridor east of the Grand Parkway. Construction crews extended Mason Road from 290 into Dunham Pointe — to serve as the community’s primary entrance — and Mueschke Road up to the community’s education village. That 146-acre site will house a new Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District elementary school, middle school and high school plus several sports facilities and a fire station operated by Harris County Emergency Services District No. 9.
Dunham hopes the elementary school will be built in 2025 or 2026, depending on the number of children living in the community at that time.
After its construction was initially delayed by weather and supply and labor shortages, a new $6 million amenity center with a clubhouse, family pool with cabanas, an adult lap pool, splash pad and fitness center has been completed and is just awaiting a certificate of occupancy.
So far, about 700 home sites — from 50- to over 80-foot lots — have been developed and most of them sold to the community’s builders, Coventry Homes, David Weekley Homes, Toll Brothers, Tri Pointe Homes and Newmark Homes. Of those, about 500 homes are either occupied or in the final stages of being completed, Dunham said.
The developer expects to deliver another 300 lots in the next two to three years for the development’s first phase.
“We may expand that upwards to perhaps 1,600 lots depending on the residential market remaining strong but also depending on how much land we need to convert to retail commercial opportunities,” Dunham said. “We’re just looking at all those markets at the same time, and we will develop to meet the needs of each of those markets.”
Homes are currently priced from the $500,000’s to about $1.5 million. More than 300 acres are set aside for multifamily, restaurants, retail, office and medical development facing U.S. 290.
After Dunham Pointe’s development was originally expected to start in 2016, the project was delayed for nearly five years by litigation over two railroad crossings the community wanted to add.
Dunham’s first master-planned community, Stone Creek Ranch, opened in 2016 about 5 miles up the road from Dunham Pointe in Hockley and features 1,225 single-family homes, a clubhouse pool and lakes.
Before going into real estate, Dunham spent most of his career as an energy executive, including as chairman of Houston-based ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) and of OklahomaCity-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK). He has been Chesapeake’s chairman emeritus since October 2015.
Continue Reading