Developer plans new view on Tankersley

MT. PLEASANT, Texas – A mother with two children in the military and a high school senior in a 700-horse Mustang, Tanya Anderson lives with husband Jon in an apartment built into the corner of the old VFW, a one-time bar and dance hall big enough to house a current collection of 17 cars indoors.

It’s a temporary address.

Earlier this year, crews began hacking into the jungle slowly closing in on what’s now the next Anderson family home on Lake Tankersley, once the town’s water supply lake. It’s a fixer upper, an aging stone and redwood A-frame abandoned long enough to show the effects of gravity and vandals.

On a morning they’ll be taking the 1962 Cadillac limo said to have ferried diplomats to the U.N. in its early life, she’s wearing heels in her role as Jon’s ‘Girl Friday,’ her description of the days filling “whatever role he needs,” she said.

In this moment, that’s another set of eyes and ears plus married minds meeting with a potential investor with another proposal for Presidential Land, their McKinney realtor’s office. Most of the Presidential Land energy is presently pouring into Westbrook, their newest Collin County bedroom development. It’s changed a rural landscape to streets and 94 home sites.

“Jon Anderson’s never going to stop,” said Dennis Cameron. “The last deal’s always a building block for the next deal. I’ve known him since he was trading so many cars he bought a wrecker to keep up with himself.”

The next deal is Anderson Towne Crossing, where Dennis Cameron Construction moved some 70,000 yards of dirt in 45 days this summer after a sporting and farm-store chain bought 7 acres for store shipping and customer parking around a new 60,000 square foot location in Mt. Pleasant. That’s opening in November.

That location’s carved off the north end of a 54-acre tract north of I-30 on U.S. 271 Bypass that was going to be Pointe North three years ago when then Mt. Pleasant Realtor Stacy Burnside and her husband were partners in the opening vision.

Since then, the Burnsides have followed business into McKinney, moved on, opened a new office and sold their interest in Mt. Pleasant back to Jon Anderson.

The Andersons’ Presidential Land office, she says, is a “beehive.”

“There’s so much going on,” she said, “that the crazy part is they’re always a jump ahead.”

So Pointe North became Anderson Towne Crossing, the first of several changes including the addition of another 60 acre tract with interstate access to I-30.

Then there are conceptual changes.

The amphitheater envisioned as a public centerpiece in the original project has been replaced with a marina on the shore of Lake Tankersley.

You can see it from across the lake, from the cantilevered Frank Lloyd Wright angles and porches and balconies of the fixer-upper A-frame the opposite shore, the Anderson family home in the making.

The marina in his mind is part of a lake shore with walking trails and a dog park, “a place with a state park feel,” he said.

Beyond the shoreline ribbon of the lake’s flood plain are streets wending through a residential mix of sites for patio homes blending with condos and a lake-view apartment complex, all wrapped around a 250,000 square foot retail center, a 5-year buildout, he speculates, with an estimated $180 million finished value and as many as 25 retail storefronts.

He’s talking with vendors already, first up being an entrepreneur to operate the marina’s seasonal rental of kayaks and paddleboards.

This isn’t your grandpa’s shopping center. The recreational aspect of the lake shore will make it a destination, a weekend draw for a retail base with a regional reach.

He believes he’s just the developer to pull it off, sold on the commercial side of the proposal in part by the same “gap analysis” data he’ll use when he puts the property back on the market.

“A gap analysis is the difference between the consumer spending available in a given trade area and what’s really spent,” he said. Counting populations in Titus and adjacent counties in the most recent analysis of sales tax-based gap analysis studies contracted by the Mt. Pleasant Economic Development Corporation, “88,000 people spent $1.6 billion but only $500 million of that was in Mt. Pleasant,” Mr. Anderson said.

So the gap analysis conclusion leaves another billion in play as incentive for new retail locating in Mt. Pleasant.

“The shopping center anchored by Brookshire’s is the most recently completed of the three shopping centers in Mt. Pleasant,” he said. “It was finished in 1984.”

Depending on the pace of talks at city hall, he’s hoping to begin building streets by spring.

Anderson Towne Crossing is in the lawyering phase, where talks between the developer and city staff are centered on zoning, building codes and financing for infrastructure including new city streets, water and sewer connections.

The developer’s proposal has been welcomed; it’s also being studied and considered in measured steps.

First-term councilman Galen Adams is enthusiastic about “a 1992 Mt. Pleasant graduate who’s done well and wants to invest at home.

“There’s a clear quality of life aspect in his thinking,” Mr. Adams said. “I like that. Whether it’s a new family, a new business or a new industry looking at our town, it’s a development that adds value to Mt. Pleasant.”

It’s a proposition the council will understand “inside and out,” before moving, said Tim Dale, the longest-tenured member of the town council, who says Jon Anderson’s plan’s on the table at the right time.

This isn’t a rubber stamp council, he said, an opinion having everything to do with the changes in administration since Mayor Tracey Craig has taken office with first-term councilman making a majority that’s given the mayor unflinching backing for his promise of transparent government and open discussion.

“If it takes a workshop to understand it, we schedule a workshop,” Mr. Dale said. “If it takes a three hour meeting to come to agreement, we have a three hour meeting. It’s great.”

“From the council’s perspective, we’re doing our due diligence,” said City Manager Ed Thatcher, who finds himself in the liaison’s role between city hall and Jon Anderson. Home-grown or not, the proposal for Anderson Towne Crossing is a different kind of animal.

What’s new on the table – in Mt. Pleasant – is consideration of the creation of a Public Improvement District (PID) with the authority to sell bonds to finance construction of city streets, water and sewer projects.

The agreement would be a combo municipal government, private sector deal. It gives the city the right to create design restrictions that are specific to the development.

“It’s the same way The Harbor at Rockwall was put together,” said Robert LaCroix, the city planner in Rockwall at the time, and now the acting city planner in Mt. Pleasant.

The Harbor at Rockwall is the groomed development south of I-30 and visible from the east end of the bridge over Lake Ray Hubbard.

Here’s the clincher on the financing end. A PID creates a taxing district limited to the development site to underwrite the bonds. In turn for benefitting from the city’s bond rate – one lower than private-sector borrowing – the developer and then the new property owners assume the bond debt for construction of streets and utilities.

Cruising in for a city hall meeting behind the wheel of a 1950 hot-rod Mercury, Jon Anderson’s laid back and smiling. This thing’s got an after-market high performance engine, custom air suspension, after-market air and a dashboard full of blended instrumentation, digital readout alongside vintage gauges.

He’s smiling because rather than an impediment, it’s his nature to spin PID restrictions ratcheted up specifically for Anderson Towne Crossing into a plus for selling potential new businesses on Mt. Pleasant.

There’s a hometown feel to the reception he describes getting from a new mix of city hall players.

“It’s different because in the city mine would be just another of any number of jobs lined up at the door,” he said. “Here, it’s a team effort. I’m thankful to be working with a group of professionals who share our vision. I believe anyone who is passionate about their dream and who is willing to work hard to make it happen can reach their goal.”