News Article | 7/31/2007

HILLWOOD BEGINS CONSTRUCTION ON 550,600 SQUARE-FOOT SPECULATIVE BUILDING AT CROSSROADS TRADE CENTER IN DESOTO, TEXAS

DESOTO, Texas — Hillwood is underway on the construction of a 550,600 square-foot speculative building at its 113-acre Crossroads Trade Center business park in DeSoto, Texas. Located on the west side of Interstate 35E just south of Interstate 20, the 113-acre development will house three buildings totaling 1.9 million square feet. Infrastructure construction and preparation for all three pad sites were completed late last year.

“Crossroads Trade Center is one of the best locations in south Dallas County,” said T. Preston Herold, vice president of Hillwood Investment Properties. “Its accesibility to major highways, the nearby UP Intermodal yard and pending general purpose FTZ status are the biggest factors that make this a great location, particularly for a distribution center.”

Crossroads Trade Center is included in the application to expand the Southport Foreign-Trade Zone site of FTZ #39 that is pending approval by the Foreign-Trade Zones Board in Washington, DC.

With its location at the “crossroads” of I-20 and I-35, Crossroads Trade Center has tremendous east-west, north-south freeway access. The property also features a 10-year real-property tax abatement from the city of DeSoto and Triple Freeport equivalency from the city of DeSoto, Dallas County and the Dallas Independent School District.

The Crossroads Trade Center I speculative building is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007. Tom Lynn and Craig Jones of the Robert Lynn Company are representing Hillwood at the property.

Including AllianceTexas and Victory, Hillwood has developed close to 30 million square feet of commercial space in North Texas since 1999. That includes more than 8 million square feet that have been developed in Dallas County.

Hillwood, (www.hillwood.com) a Perot company, is ranked as one of the top commercial real estate developers in the country and the top residential developer in Dallas-Fort Worth. The company’s developments currently house facilities for 85 companies listed on either the Fortune 500, Global 500 or Forbes List of Top Private Firms. In addition to Crossroads Trade Center, Hillwood is best known for its development of the 17,000-acre AllianceTexas development, located 15 miles northwest of DFW Airport; the $420-million American Airlines Center and Victory district near downtown Dallas; and AllianceCalifornia, the 2,000-acre logistics center near Los Angeles.

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