A highly publicized Crystal Lagoon planned for Rowlett’s $1 billion Bayside project has been nixed as part of a new developer’s vision, and city officials aren’t happy about the change.
City leaders learned during a project update Thursday that the design no longer contains the eight-acre lagoon proposed for Lake Ray Hubbard and other features that made national news when they were initially announced in 2016.
Owner Bayside District Partners’ new developer, Tom D’Alesandro, told the Dallas Business Journal in March that major changes would be in store for the project.
“As someone coming in that’s new, I need to come up with new estimates on everything,” D’Alesandro said at the time. “We are refreshing our models to come up with the new numbers. It could still be in the hundreds of millions or upwards of a billion, but who knows. A lot of this will be done in phases.”
D’Alesandro, who took over the project in February, reportedly told the Rowlett council that creating an artificial lagoon isn’t the best way to make the 262-acre Bayside alluring as an office and retail destination and fill 1.7 million square feet of space.
Central Commercial Group 