Henry S. Miller and Lincoln will start Pepper Square phase one in May 2027

Henry S. Miller and Lincoln Property Co. will begin construction on the first of three phases at Pepper Square in May 2027, bringing a 313-unit apartment building and more than two acres of public open space to the Dallas shopping center at Preston Road and Belt Line Road. The development team is named in full: WDG Architecture as architect, Kimley-Horn as civil engineer, Rampart Construction as general contractor. The money is not: there is no project cost, no split of the equity between the two sponsors and no land basis, and what has been described is phase one, and only phase one.

The wider redevelopment is planned for at least 1,050 apartment homes and roughly 65,000 square feet of new retail, plus improved pedestrian and open spaces; against the 270,000 square feet standing at the site, that retail is about a quarter of the center's current footprint, which suggests most of the 1970s building gives way to housing. Pepper Square was 70% leased in 2025, and the vacancy is presumably what the redevelopment is meant to solve.

The new retail is described only as retail, and pricing power in the sector has split, with grocery anchors and drive-through boxes setting the price while everything else reprices tenant by tenant. Which tenants sign leases in the new space is the number to watch. The May 2027 start lands first deliveries in 2028 or later, and the 2028-29 supply gap is what patient apartment capital is buying at today's cap rates.

Across the state, Lincoln has a different answer for the same kind of asset. PWD's records show it and New York Life agreed in September to spend $150 million to turn 80 acres of failed retail outside Houston into 1.2 million square feet of warehouse, a conversion with a two-year gap between teardown and first delivery. Pepper Square keeps retail in the plan and stacks housing over it, and whether a 1970s center that was 70% leased in 2025 can carry apartments above it is the wager phase one makes.

Construction starts roughly 20 months out. The announcement does not say when phases two and three begin, or whether the joint venture carries past the first phase; that leaves leasing at the existing center as the variable with the longest reach over the program.