GRAND PRAIRIE, TX— A one-time-only development deal just south of Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport is giving the newly carved InterContinental Hotel Group its first U.S. resort destination property, which will be part of the $200 million master-planned Wildflower Resort. “We did this a little differently than most deals are done,” Raymond Goad, president/CEO of the Wildflower Resort Co., a Delaware corporation, told HOTEL BUSINESS®, noting his company made the investment into the site and overall project before deciding on a flag for the hotel. Developed were a 500-room, luxury, four-star hotel sized for 75,000 square feet of meeting and conference space; a 25,000-square-foot freestanding spa; a 35,000-square-foot standalone golf club; and two 18-hole golf courses. Also factored in were 600 fractional ownership “villa” sites that will eventually be built out around the property according to demand. “We deferred selecting a hotel company until just recently on purpose. We felt we had a superb design team that had extensive experience and we wanted to design the property from the inside out for this particular site, not according to some hotel flags check list but according to the market-driven program that we had developed,” said Goad. “We wanted the opportunity to build what we thought ought to be there.” InterContinental ultimately was felt to be the best match for a number of reasons, he added. “They have been able to retain their quality standards and identity, and have some control over their destiny and what theyre trying to accomplish and what theyre trying to do.” He counted the recent demerger action by Six Continents that formed InterContinental Hotel Group in April as “a plus.” “It gives InterContinental a single focus now on the hospitality business as opposed to being shared between that and the brewing and the pubs and so forth,” said Goad. “We think InterContinental is the last, great hotel company that is purely a hotel company thats managed in the way that the grand hotels have been managed in the past.” In essence, the Wildflower project got its “start” 15 years ago when the Army Corps of Engineers created a lake here as part of the overall water supply system for the region. “The typography was such that in the middle of the lake theres a 1,000-acre peninsula that was designated for recreational purposes after the completion of the lake,” said Goad. Responsibility for the land went to the states Trinity River Authority, which manages water from Dallas to Houston. The TRA later put out several sets of requests for proposals, ultimately won by a local group that later turned to Goad for advise. Goad, formerly vp/general counsel for Westin Hotel Co. when it was headquartered in Seattle, WA, was involved in numerous similar projects for that brand. Acting as a consultant, he brought together some former Westin colleagues and formed the one-shot development company, recommending highest and best use for the site as a group meetings and golf destination. “That was driven by the fact that this 1,000 acres is literally 20 minutes door-to-door from the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport,” said Goad, noting while there were such destinations in Austin, Houston and San Antonio, “there was nothing of this nature in the northern part of the state.” However, said Goad, “It became apparent to us that at the very outset that while this was a very attractive location, 4.5 miles of lakefront shoreline, strategically located in this major metropolitan area so close to the airport, it still would not be economically viable without some public support. So we approached the city of Grand Prairie with the concept of a public/private partnership, much like you do in a downtown urban area, where you build a hotel adjacent to a convention center.” The city created a tax incentive financing (TIF) district and put out a proposal to the public to increase the hotel/motel tax and allocate 8% of the 9% of the hotel/motel tax thats collec
The 500-room InterContinental Wildflower