It took a bit longer than expected, but San Francisco-based Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) has completed a land deal expected to make way for a massive operations center on a corporate campus planned within Circle T Ranch in Westlake.
The financial services company recently closed on roughly 74 acres of land on Circle T Ranch near Fidelity Investment's regional campus in Westlake to make way for the new development, according to a handful of real estate sources.
The land deal makes way for Charles Schwab to expand beyond an office the firm leased in November totaling 130,000 square feet at 2050 Roanoke Road in Westlake, which, at the time, had the ability to accommodate 500 employees.
At the time of the lease, Charles Schwab spokeswoman Sarah Bulgatz told the Dallas Business Journal, "We're very interested in the Dallas area for future growth." Last November, she declined to comment concerning future real estate deals and did not respond to requests for an interview Thursday.
In all, Charles Schwab could build a five- to six-building campus totaling nearly 1.2 million square feet of space in a multi-phase development on the site, according to numerous real estate sources. Hillwood declined to comment Thursday.
The financial giant has been circling North Texas for years as Charles Schwab targeted the Lone Star state as a prime spot for relocating a significant number of employees. Charles Schwab is in the midst of a major operations expansion in Austin and adding a new operations center to El Paso.
Charles Schwab has been focused on the Austin expansion, which includes getting underway with a second office building. The firm purchased a building development site from IBM Corp. in 2014 for a $56.2 million building called "Aus 2" at 2309 Gracy Farms and had planned to get underway with the project this month.
The second Charles Schwab building in Austin is slated for completion in early 2018, according to the Austin Business Journal, a sister publication of the Dallas Business Journal. The Texas Governor's Office could not immediately confirm if the financial services firm was up for any state economic incentives.
The 2,500-acre mixed-use, master-planned development on Circle T Ranch — which is being created in partnership with Fort Worth-based Hillwood Properties and Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp. (NYSE: HHC) — could have attracted the financial services firm to Westlake with its proposed amenities. Howard Hughes Corp. also declined comment.
Westlake has been courting a massive project — known as Project Blizzard — through Hillwood for some time. Real estate sources say Project Blizzard is Charles Schwab, with the project including an initial phase of a 225,000-square-foot office building with a number of subsequent development phases.The remainder of the Circle T Ranch mixed-use development will include urban living with some retail and other amenities meant to attract employees to the Westlake site.
