2500 Ross Avenue

[Hannibal Lecter]

Atlanta developer plans downtown Dallas towers

The Dallas Gateway project will include 700 apartments, a 400,000-square-foot office building and 45,000 square feet of retail space, Portman Residential says in its plans.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/rea ... as-towers/

[Tnexster]

Not bad, I have always wanted to see much more high rise residential on Ross, plus it takes out a ton of surface parking lots. That is if they actually build it.

[tamtagon]

Is this land part of the properties Spire consolidated?

Duh I read the DMN post after I read the thread. Hahaha

[eburress]

Very cool! I hope this one happens.

[cowboyeagle05]

After Spire lost their HQ Bryan Tower I guess they realized it was time to give up the goat and sell off some of that land.

[Tnexster]

Not the most inspiring towers but better than what is there now.

[zaphod]

I hope this materializes. Especially the residential.

The office isn't exciting and would contribute to the glut of empty space

[willyk]

Uptown comes to Downtown. It’s about time.

[cowboyeagle05]

Its interesting Chase Tower is emptying out with its name tenant plus the Petroleum Club but a new developer swings into town proposing brand new Class A space next door will probably be a success. 1980's old buildings are gonna continue to be hard to re-lease no matter if they are icons on the skyline. Chase Tower has even had extensive renovations but Chase still wanted to consolidate into Hunt Tower on Klyde Warren and brought the Petroleum Club with them.

I hope this does get off the drawing boards cause I have no doubt if they build it the office space will lease. Its Chase Tower that will struggle until demand in Downtown is stronger. Demand is fine for brand new space especially if you are near Klyde Warren. If you are a older building on the large scale of Chase Tower you need a new parking garage and a bunch of attractive ground floor retail and maybe a hotel to keep the building in the black it seems.

[zaphod]

What it is about 1980s towers that make them less desirable, while a basic box next door is better?

[Pinhi]

I'm glad you asked that question. I've always wondered the same thing.

[Tnexster]

What it is about 1980s towers that make them less desirable, while a basic box next door is better?

I believe a lot of it has to do with how they build office space today versus how it was done in the 80's and decades before that. New is always more desirable but it also offers features not available decades earlier. Personally I would hope to see more older towers converted to residential as newer office product goes up.

[zaphod]

Interesting

I'd think modern office needs would be more flexible than offices 15 years ago just due to how tech has changed. Wifi is good enough to be everywhere. There don't have to be as many server rooms and data closets. No more digital phones and 110 blocks. Conference rooms don't need a rack of special AV gear when Teams and Zoom exists. People don't have big honking CRT monitors, full sized desktop PC towers, or big phone handsets with sidecars on their desks anymore. You don't need a room to store VHS tapes and CD's in jewel cases. You don't have 20 copy machines on every floor with their own closet for the toner and the paper and the waste toner cartridges and extra drums or whatever.

But that's just my opinion as an IT guy who spends time around offices (I work for an MSP so while I'm mostly remote I get to go onsite occasionally to meet clients who often located in various skyscrapers around the DFW area). I don't know what architects, commercial real estate people, or the customers think about this.

[mhainli]

Big floor plate sizes seem more important now.

[willyk]

From their website:
350 market rate apartments.
350 “micro unit” apartments.
https://portmanresidential.com/

I wonder what are micro unit apartments and why they will have a whole tower of those—lower rents? The workforce market?

And the render is of the south facing side, which appears to be San Jacinto St., rather Ross Ave. San Jacinto is a dead zone. This seems odd. The canopy seems to extend over San Jacinto into what may be more of the acquired property or maybe land still owned by Spire. Perhaps that will be the next phase?

Still it seems odd not to focus on Ross where there are opportunities to interact with the pedestrian activity. Putting the retail on Ross could pull people from the Arts District, the JW Marriott, Hall Arts, the offices, etc. Maybe there will be a gateway on Ross to pull people down the center of the project toward San Jacinto. Still, even with that, the retail on San Jacinto will look out onto a quarter mile of surface lots, unless this phase includes something on the south side of Ross too. The render seems to suggest that.

These are smart guys. I wonder what is the plan.

[cowboyeagle05]

^Its one rendering that DMN released before the developer even officially made announcements. I bet the Ross Avenue side is just as interactive with the street as this semi internal courtyard side. Often developers before they are ready to release everything will bread crumb things out. Once the project is officially public announced they will have street level renderings showing rendered people with Neiman Marcus bags and Teslas picking up grandmas with Bergdorf's Hoodies i'm sure just like every developer does. DMN was able to get the developer to share this much we are lucky to know this early.