News Article | 5/16/2006

Belk to open four more North Texas stores

Belk Inc. will join a growing slate of anchor tenants for the 300-acre Alliance Town Center in North Fort Worth.

The Belk department store will be the first in Tarrant County and is one of four under construction in North Texas.

The company already has stores open in McKinney and Waxahachie. It also has stores under construction in Flower Mound, Rockwall and Mansfield, the company said.

The planned 96,000-square-foot Fort Worth Belk store will be the company’s 10th in Texas.

“We will offer focused assortments of the leading brands of apparel, cosmetics, accessories and home merchandise for the whole family,” said Tim Belk, the North Carolina-based company’s chairman and CEO, in a news release.

A Cheddar’s restaurant, also a first for Fort Worth, will open later this fall at the Alliance shopping center. Both Belk and Cheddar’s will join an expanded JCPenney stand-alone prototype store, and Sam Moon’s first location in Tarrant County.

Penney’s also is scheduled to open this fall, and Belk and Sam Moon will open next year.

Dallas-based Cheddar’s CEO Greg Good said he expects the Alliance Cheddar’s location to have one of the highest customer counts of any of its restaurants in the Metroplex.

The expanded JCPenney store will occupy 103,000 square feet, giving the store the ability to add several name brand product lines, including Sephora.

The first phase of Alliance Town Center includes 600,000 square feet of retail space. Hillwood, developer of the shopping center, said brokers are in active negotiations with additional major anchors and several junior anchors that will occupy an additional 240,000 square feet, as well as restaurants and small retailers.

The shopping center, located at the intersection of Heritage Trace Parkway and North Tarrant Parkway — south of the Alliance industrial development — also includes plans for development of a 73-acre HCA medical campus.