What Happens in Vegas… Benefits Grapevine?

Every year, tens of thousands of Commercial Real Estate professionals travel to Nevada for ICSC Las Vegas. The trade show, billed as “the world’s largest meet event” in the industry, has birthed countless development deals, lease agreements, and public-private partnerships. Kubota’s North American headquarters landed in Grapevine as a direct result of a years-long recruitment effort that started in the Las Vegas Convention Center, carried across years of conversation on and off the trade show floor, and eventually blossomed into a potent partnership.

That deal is emblematic of most major investments, and a prime example of what Grapevine Economic Development sets out to do when they take a team to the event each Summer. It’s rare to bring a final deal home, but common for a good meeting in Vegas to become a great deal later on. But that isn’t the only reason for a community to attend. ICSC provides plenty of opportunities for training, learning, and recognition alongside networking and deal-making.

In fact, this year, Grapevine won top honors at the Excellence in Community Advancement awards.

Hardware for Grapevine Main

It’s been half a decade since Grapevine Main was officially completed, and even longer since the planning process around it began. That may seem like a long time in relative terms, but in terms of real estate development, the combination train station, hotel, and food hall is in its infancy. But with the announcement of Coury Hospitality’s upcoming expansion at Hotel Vin and several years of hard data at their disposal, the Grapevine Economic Development team successfully lobbied for the public-private partnership to be recognized by ICSC.

Officially, the organization’s annual Excellence in Community Advancement Awards recognize “outstanding Public-Private Partnerships between municipalities and developers that have successfully delivered transformative retail and mixed-use projects.” Projects can be submitted to several categories divided by population size, and with just over 50,000 residents, Grapevine Main qualified under the Urban/Suburban New Development category. The Shops at Redbird took home Redevelopment honors, securing a North Texas sweep of the Urban/Suburban division.

“It’s a proud moment to know that this project was a little bit of a catalyst to development in Grapevine,” said Hotel Vin General Manager Richard Wales, who attended the show in his capacity as Board Chair for the Grapevine Chamber. “But it’s also great to see other towns and Cities that want to mirror that project. I don’t often get to step away from the hotel side of my job and talk about Grapevine as a City that people either know a little bit about or have never heard about. And, until you truly understand that there is a strategy – and there has been a strategy for the City of Grapevine for many, many years, with the last of the puzzle pieces still out there – [it’s hard to appreciate] how our Economic Development team really pitches that to close the loop on everything Grapevine could be.”

The team received the award on the first night of the show, and had plenty to talk about when visitors stopped by the City of Grapevine booth in the days the followed.

A Total Team Effort

Thanks to a few well-placed photos of the development and the presence of its current operator alongside the team, nearly everyone who met with the City left knowing just how special our last major public-private partnership was; an invaluable point of reference for brands and brokers weighing options for their next investment. Between the full three-person Economic Development staff, Councilman Sean Shope, and a pair of representatives from the Chamber of Commerce, Team Grapevine had capacity for hundreds of conversations in a relatively short time frame.

“We may talk to 200-250 people while we’re here,” said Chamber CEO RaDonna Hessel. “If we can take one or two or three of those – even if it’s years later – and be able to say we met them at the show, they came to Grapevine, and they set up in Grapevine? That’s a win… it’s just like anything, it takes time and you have to be patient.”

 “One of the things I have seen over the seventeen-ish years that I’ve been coming to this show is that we’ve met people – and we may meet them one year, two years, three years, four years – and then, all of the sudden, they show up in Grapevine. They’re interested in bringing their business to Grapevine. And we’ve had some really great projects. We don’t bring one of those home every year, but it takes time and it works. And it’s worth it. The Chamber loves to support our City!”

Like any networking event, some conversations prove more fruitful than others. But the only way to find the best available options for a growing market like Grapevine is to evaluate as many prospective partners as possible. Without help from elected officials and local stakeholders, Economic Development would struggle to cast a wide enough net. As it stands, though, the team walked away from ICSC Las Vegas with a strong list of project leads and budding relationships.

What’s New and What’s Next

Due to the long-term nature of Commercial Real Estate and the professional courtesy of confidentiality, we can’t share much about who met with the City or what was said. But the Economic Development team came into the event with a clear plan of action, spearheaded by Director Garin Giacomarro and Commercial Outreach Manager Dallas Snow.

 “I always joke that we don’t know how the show went until afterward. It takes six months to really understand how the show went,” Giacomarro said. “Now, I will say the logistics of the show have been great. Dallas Snow oversees that as a core part of her responsibilities, and she did great on that front. But we’re planting seeds. In about six months, we’ll know how many of those seeds have sprouted and which ones we need to try again next year.”

Even though she’s been part of the team for less than a year, Snow took up the challenge of scheduling meetings and approving display material almost as soon as she came onboard. She even compiled data for the Excellence in Community Advancement Award application while juggling booth design, outreach, and itinerary management. While prior reporting from the department made that task more manageable, preparing for the half-week trip still dominated her first six months in the role. 

“For about the last fifteen years [on the Architecture and Design side of private Development], my main goals have been business development. Making sure we’ve identified new concepts and developments, getting in front of the right brokers and national brands from the Development perspective. So, now, I get to do the same role with the exact same kind of toolkit, just from a different perspective: what’s going to be best for the City of Grapevine?” said Snow, a licensed Interior Designer and veteran project manager who served multiple architecture firms before joining Economic Development.

 “We knew we wanted to make some changes to our booth, we knew we wanted to make some updates. I took a strategic look at all of our trade shows to see where we were successful and where we could make improvements, so I started in October; working with our partners on booth design and what elements we could add, then really looking for who was going to be the best fit at ICSC and aligning those conversations.”

It may be a few months before we know which of those conversations are ready to transform into new partnerships… but the seeds of Grapevine’s next award-winning venture may well have been planted in May of 2026.

For more stories about the people and partnerships that define this City, be sure to subscribe to the ‘Growing Grapevine’ podcast and eNewsletter. Want to start a conversation before ICSC Las Vegas in 2027? Let’s talk about your place in the Grapevine market.