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Billingsley’s Austin Ranch is bringing home the bacon. The dining hub called The Shacks Dining & Dog Park opens Saturday within the 1,700-acre development. The eight-acre tract on the southeast corner of Plano and Windhaven parkways will have seven restaurants, outdoor seating and a one-acre dog park named after Billingsley Chief Barketing Officer Bacon, a French bulldog.
“The Shacks are the heart of Austin Ranch,” Billingsley partner Lucy Billingsley said. She describes the retail hub as casual, welcoming and relaxing. OMG Tacos, The Tackle Box, Dirty Burger Bar and Ten Ramen have been announced as tenants in the shacks and Beachcomber Café will occupy a freestanding adjacent building. Two remaining shacks are in lease-up now.
Billingsley said a coffee shop and a wine bar are the types of tenants that bring all-day traffic. The Shacks already pulls a daytime population from nearby corporate offices such as Toyota.
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Though Plano, The Colony and Carrollton (the three cities Austin Ranch is within) have typically only been known as suburbs, The Shacks are appealing to more urban tenants like Ten and Beachcomber. Billingsley envisions the area as a hybrid of urban and rural.
The six restaurant spaces in the boardwalk area run 675 to 725 SF each, leaving little room for indoor seating and encouraging patrons to sit outside.
As the first tenant at the Shacks, Ten Ramen’s second location opened in April. Business has started out a little slow, but Ten Ramen anticipates more foot traffic and customers once neighboring tenants move in, executive chef Matthew Hoa said.
Beachcomber Café, sister concept to Deep Ellum’s Sand Bar, will be surrounded by sand volleyball courts, similar to its Deep Ellum location.
“When we first set out do to this, I was scared,” Billingsley said. “I thought it would be expensive — and what if I was wrong? But now I see people coming here. They relax and smile and let loose. People love it here.”
The 1,700-acre development is home to more than 5,000 residents and corporate tenants such as AmerisourceBergen, which will open its 300K SF corporate campus in 2019.
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