A week after one of downtown Dallas' largest office tenants announced plans to exit, one of the area's top developers says the city's core needs a new generation of office space. .
Over the past decade, several businesses have moved from downtown to new buildings uptown. Bank of America plans to leave its longtime home on Main Street and build a 30-story tower just north of downtown.
“Downtown needs new office space,” says Lucy Burns, a partner at Dallas-based Billingsley, one of North Texas' most successful office builders. “Uptown is getting a lot of that.
“Downtown needs some help to continue to attract businesses, especially groups moving in from other parts of the country,” Barnes said at Thursday's meeting of the economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc.
Downtown has more than 7 million square feet of vacant office space, much of it in buildings that are decades old.
“A lot of the offices that are there now are old and increasingly worthless,” Burns said.
Only two large multi-tenant office projects have been built downtown in recent years: 300 S. Pearl in the East Quarter and Luminary in the West End. More than 2 million square feet of new office space is currently under construction in the Uptown area.
Several developers are working to repurpose older downtown buildings into new rental housing.
“There's a huge pipeline of residential construction planned for a lot of these older buildings downtown. The last number I saw was 4 million square feet,” Burns said. “That's big. It can make a big difference.”
Jennifer Scripps, president of Downtown Dallas, said the housing base is expanding as new housing is being built downtown and vacant office spaces are being filled in the central city.
“This was downtown's secret sauce,” Scripps said. “There is currently a major transformation taking place. And even more new apartments are also being built.”
Scripps also noted that the development of four new parks downtown will draw residents and workers to Dallas' core. She pointed to the new Harwood Her Park downtown, not far from the Farmers' Her Market. This park just opened last week.
“We are very fortunate to have added 20 acres of green space to the city center in just 10 years,” she said. “We truly are the envy of cities across the country.”
Downtown Dallas has added thousands of new rental units over the past 20 years, but most of the apartments are not designed as affordable units.
Developers also just announced plans to turn the landmark Cabana Hotel on the edge of downtown into an affordable rental community.
Peter Brodsky, president of the Dallas Housing Forward Group, said the city needs to secure more funding to provide affordable housing in the area.
“You can't have a city where people can't afford to live here,” Brodsky said. He is also redeveloping the former Redbird Mall in southwest Dallas. “With the housing inflation that has occurred in our region and in our cities over the past few years, we will continue to lose people who teach our children, protect our streets, put out fires, and hopefully provide care. ” We cannot provide them with affordable housing. ”
Brodsky said the city needs to continue investing in downtown revitalization.
“The region can't prosper unless its core region prospers,” he says. “And downtown is the heart of the city.”
