A popular player in the sit-down dining space, 54th Street Restaurant & Drafthouse, has ground-leased a freeway-fronting pad site in NewQuest Properties' Stone Hill Town Center in north Austin.
The Kansas City, Mo.-based restaurateur will develop an 8,723-sf restaurant on a 1.83-acre pad site at the northern end of Stone Hill Town Center, a one-million-sf, class A retail development planted at the TX 45-130 junction in Pflugerville, roughly 20 miles north of downtown Austin. The 54th Street Restaurant & Drafthouse tentatively is slated to open in late 2021.
"Stone Hill has made a name for itself in the Austin area with its creative mix of dining choices from full-course to desserts-only. 54th Street Restaurant & Drafthouse will be the largest sit-down restaurant in our center," says Josh Friedlander, vice president of Houston-based NewQuest Properties. He and colleague Kevin Sims, an associate, are the project's leasing agents.
Stone Hill Town Center presently features 20 eateries of all sizes and categories. Work will start in early 2021 on the 54th Street Restaurant & Drafthouse, which is rapidly expanding in Texas. It has nine locations open in Greater San Antonio and six in Dallas/Fort Worth, with future ones planned in south Austin and the DFW suburbs of McKinney and Mansfield.
The restaurateur has tailored the design of its outdoor space for Texas to include climate-controlled patios, couch-style seating and fire pits. Some locations will feature a waterfall.
"54th Street will liven up that part of the center," Friedlander says. "It's bound to catch the eyes of motorists on the freeway and hopefully draw them into our center to check it out as it will for our neighbors."
A 54th Street restaurant features up to 54 draft beers, scratch-made food and signature dishes, including steaks, pasta and seafood. Michael Walters of Falcon Realty Advisors represented the chain's parent company, KRM Inc., in the ground lease with NewQuest.
"There is a craving in the marketplace for a full-service sit-down restaurant, like 54th Street," Friedlander says. "Stone Hill was the most likely choice in north Austin. Our tenants regularly post strong sales volumes." The NewQuest development is adjacent to more than 750 apartments and townhomes and the $21 million Typhoon Texas Waterpark.
With the new ground lease, NewQuest has three pad sites remaining in Stone Hill Town Center – one fronting TX 45 and two interior spots. Stone Hill is one of the five largest retail developments in Greater Austin, serving a trade area with a population that's nearly doubled in the past decade to 229,000.
NewQuest Properties, founded in 2001, is a privately owned, full-service commercial real estate firm specializing in development, land brokerage, leasing, tenant representation, investment sales and property management services. Headquartered in Houston, NewQuest owns a portfolio encompassing more than 60 retail and mixed-use projects valued at $2.2 billion and provides leasing services for more than 12 million square feet of commercial space in Texas, Louisiana and throughout the U.S.
