Capstone Commercial real estate executive Larry Robbins has created his own specialty: Reimagining new uses for aging real estate, while seeing value in vacated or neglected properties.
The longtime property broker has spent decades cultivating a career that brings clients to him with what some would consider to be problematic real estate. His background in helping his family's small textile business buy its own real estate in the 1980s led him to form a knack for reimagining the fabric of a property.
"One person's ugly building is another person's treasure," Robbins told CoStar News. "When a landlord has something they can't move in traditional ways, typically I get a call," he added.
"One person's ugly building is another person's treasure."
The family business closed in 2006 and Robbins went on to join Capstone, where he's spent two decades at the Dallas-based real estate services firm and now serves as vice president.
His latest project is a bit of a doozy, with his client having purchased a 160,000-square-foot industrial facility, once a Freed's Furniture showroom, in Farmers Branch, Texas, near the Dallas North Tollway. Freed's Furniture was once a prominent North Texas retailer that liquidated in 2018.
The ownership group behind Interskate Roller Rink bought the vacant property at 4355 Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway for an undisclosed sum in 2021 with plans for a skating rink to take up roughly half of it. Robbins was tasked to find a tenant capable of generating stable revenue for the new landlord for the other half of the property, last valued on the tax rolls at nearly $6.5 million.
"This used to be a furniture district, and the property was zoned industrial," Robbins told CoStar News. "Now, we needed to reimagine it as an entertainment district. For a long time, there weren't many places to really take your kids and the way the economy is going, it's hard to justify an expensive family vacation."
That line of thinking brought him to 11 Max Indoor Fun Park, an all-weather kid's activity center with climbing walls, zip lines, ninja courses, tall slides, a mechanical bull and various play areas for children of all ages. The concept paired well with an old-school skating rink, giving Texas residents an air-conditioned option during the sweltering summer heat and inclement weather. The businesses also fit the recent parental desire to try to get kids off screens for a day.
To make the lease happen, Robbins created an overlay with the help of the city of Farmers Branch for an entertainment district beyond was once a stuffy furniture store. It took time, but there were no "significant delays" and the lease was executed after the zoning change was made — giving the city a new kind of district to hang its hat on.
All in, the landlord and indoor fun park have invested about $5 million in upgrades.
Recently, the indoor fun park opened its doors with construction underway at Interskate Roller Rink, scheduled to open to the public in August with a reclaimed maple wood floor from a defunct roller rink. The fun park has the capacity to fit up to 2,000 people — something that has been reached on the weekends and during spring break, staffers told CoStar News.
The proximity of the North Dallas-area building to the recently opened Netflix House — a permanent 100,000-square-foot venue with interactive activities, shopping and dining for families and thrill-seeking adults in the Dallas Galleria — made the endeavor timely, Robbins said. The two properties are a mile-and-a-half from each other.
"We were three months behind Netflix House, but it comes down to the whole 'if you build it, they will come' mentality, the party rooms are booked solid," Robbins said.
As it turns out, the old furniture store space ended up as "a perfect location for a venue like what the area is becoming," he added.