Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

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Zmitz
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Joined: 01 Jul 2019 17:55

Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

Postby Zmitz » 04 Jan 2023 23:27

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/rea ... ank-tower/

"...Dallas’ Woods Capital — already one of the largest owners downtown — is taking a large stake in the huge property alongside TriGate. Woods Capital affiliate Pacific Elm Properties will work with TriGate to renovate the building. The plan is to add residential and hotel rooms to the office tower.

Woods Capital and its partners already own several towers on Dallas’ skyline, including Santander Tower, Bryan Tower, One Dallas Center, 2100 Ross and One AT&T Plaza. The developer and investor is currently converting large sections of the Santander Tower and Bryan Tower from office to residential space.

By converting static office vacancy into luxury residential or hotel, we are able to add amenities and improve the quality and vibrancy within not only our properties but the entire neighborhood, which we believe will have a meaningful and lasting impact on office fundamentals in downtown Dallas,” Woods said."

Not the building I ever expected to go mixed use residential, but I'll gladly take it. Woods Capital seems so optimistic about the health of downtown.

When is 1700 Pacific going to turn the top floors to residential? I want a rooftop terrace in the heart of downtown...put a grocery store where the food court is as well!

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dallaz
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Re: Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

Postby dallaz » 04 Jan 2023 23:34

Cool! More downtown office buildings are planned to be converted to other uses.

I was thinking the same about 1700 Pacific. That building never seems busy.

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Cabrio330
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Re: Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

Postby Cabrio330 » 05 Jan 2023 08:49

Has anyone seen floor plans for any of these office-to-residential conversions? Curious to see how efficient they are, as it seems like they lose a lot of square footage due to the width of the floor plates and limited glass.

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Zmitz
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Re: Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

Postby Zmitz » 05 Jan 2023 09:22

No, I don't think floor plans or any new details are available for any of the conversions. While I'm no expert, I feel the width of the buildings could allow for storage units around the core, which could be useful if they ever wanted to convert to condos. As discussed many times here, high rise condos just don't seem to do well in Dallas. I assume we will end up with some weird floor plans with hallways/dead space in the units that renters end up paying for.

lakewoodhobo
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Re: Downtown Dallas: Comerica Bank Tower

Postby lakewoodhobo » 03 Feb 2023 08:41

Dallas’ landmark Comerica Bank Tower may soon see apartments, hotel, retail stores
A luxury hotel and residential units are expected to replace offices on 20 of the 60-story high-rise’s floors, bringing new life to an overlooked block of Main Street.

https://archive.ph/2023.02.03-135852/ht ... ank-tower/


I feel like whenever he's not just reprinting a developer's talking points, Steve Brown does a good job of adding historical context to news like this so it's part of a larger story. In this case, he does his usual thing of pointing to other office-to-residential conversions but he adds value by going back to the original plans for Comerica Tower and describing Philip Johnson's reaction to the finished product.

But he completely missed an opportunity to connect two big dots: he mentions that Comerica Tower was originally built for the failed MCorp holding company but flat-out skipped the fact that MCorp's subsidiary MBank was formerly known as Mercantile National Bank... the same company whose abandoned tower next door was the first downtown office high-rise (>20 stories) to be converted to residential use as Mercantile Place.