Jul. 28--Shopping at the intersection of Stacy Road and U.S. Highway 75 -- with corners in both Allen and Fairview -- is evolving again.

The retail hub started in 2000 with Allen Premium Outlets on the northwest corner. The Village at Allen opened last year with big box discount anchors including Best Buy, PetSmart, Toys R Us and SuperTarget.

Now come the department stores.

On Friday, J.C. Penney will open a 115,000-square-foot store with a 10,000-square-foot furniture department on the northeast corner in the Village at Fairview. Macy's will open in the same shopping center next week. Dillard's is under construction and scheduled to open in March.

It could be the last department store-anchored shopping center to be built in Dallas-Fort Worth for some time.

And its proximity to a 100-store outlet mall where department store brands including Coach, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Kenneth Cole are selling at discounts also makes it unusual.

"We carry some of the same vendors that have stores in the outlet mall, but the Macy's customer is looking for newness that wouldn't be in those vendor stores," said Betsy Zeino, regional director of Macy's Inc.

"I think we'll fare well in that environment," said Macy's CEO, Terry Lundgren. Many vendors make products specifically for their outlet stores, he said. "I want shoppers to compare and see the value of Macy's in-season merchandise compared with what you can get in an outlet."

The outlet mall is also a traffic draw, Zeino said.

It's true that retailers like to cluster.

Penney's new store is the Plano-based company's first that is expected to obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, high-performance green-building certification. The store, with its reflective white roof and energy-efficient lighting, is built to use 21 percent less power and 40 percent less water than a traditional building of similar size.

The Village at Allen and the Village at Fairview were both developed by Dallas-based MGHerring Group and are part of a 3 million-square-foot mixed-use project that includes apartments, a hotel and government offices. It's opening in phases. So far, more than 50 smaller specialty stores and restaurants have opened or are scheduled to open by spring.

Also in Allen, on U.S. 75 south of the power corner, is Watters Creek, a mixed-use development that opened last year with Borders and specialty stores such as Vera Bradley, Ann Taylor Loft and Chico's.

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