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Langham Hotel and Resorts Dallas no longer listed as a future location. The project as a whole is in limbo.

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What Frisco's floundering $2 billion Wade Park development says about the D-FW economy

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Observers of North Texas real estate may have noticed something unusual about Frisco’s $2 billion Wade Park development.

Namely, that it is still a very large hole in the ground and not the 175 acres of apartments, offices and high-end retail space promised by Atlanta-based Thomas Land & Development back in 2014.

The project has been in a kind of suspended animation since site excavation stopped about a year ago, and lenders started threatening to foreclose on the property.

But in the nation’s fastest-growing city — whose growth has been propelled by an influx of exactly the kind of wealthy new residents you’d expect to make a giant project like Wade Park successful — how is it that a showpiece development is floundering?

Work started at the site, but it stalled about a year ago, leaving a football field-sized hole and partially built buildings.

Thomas Land defaulted on more than $130 million in debts and contractors who did work on the site — concrete makers, construction companies and plumbers — started seeking millions in unpaid bills.

In February, the two lenders declared the project in default and said they planned to foreclose on the property. But instead of doing so, the lenders have posted the property for foreclosure for five months in a row without going through with the sale.

Experts say that while they can’t speculate on the lenders’ exact reasons for holding off on foreclosing, a foreclosure wouldn’t be a win for anyone involved.

“Nobody wants this to fail,” said Joseph Cahoon, director of Southern Methodist University’s Folsom Institute for Real Estate. “It hurts Frisco, it hurts North Texas, it hurts other groups.”

Instead, the lenders and developers are likely working to renegotiate loan terms.

Officials with Thomas Land have said they are trying to get new funding for the project.

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