Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

First look: Uptown Dallas tower project would include office and residential


https://www.dallasnews.com/business/rea ... sidential/

Wow! Now that’s what I call great architecture. This is what I have been waiting for a long time. Hope it comes to fruition.

DFW wrote:Wow! Now that’s what I call great architecture. This is what I have been waiting for a long time. Hope it comes to fruition.

Agreed!

EDIT: And isn't this pretty "edgy" for a Lincoln project?

Wow, these are terrific towers, plus I love the architecture.

Quite a few towers going up in the area. I posted this on Reddit a month or so ago. I added 2500 Cedar Springs as the pink dot just to give a visual of where the towers (U/C or planned) are going.



Projects

Red dot - 2401 McKinney / 29 stories / 406 ft

Blue dot - 23Springs/ 26 stories / 399 ft

Yellow dot - Harwood No. 14 / 27 stories / 388 ft

Orange dot - 2811 Maple / 30 stories / 372 ft

Black dot - Maple Terrace / 21 stories / 240 ft

Lime Green dot - The Quad / 12 stories / 240 ft

White dot - McKinney + Boll / 19 stories / 240 ft

Pink Dot - 2500 Cedar Springs/ 3 tower project/ N/A height

Looks great! I really think this could help take Routh St to the next level and make it a pleasant pedestrian corridor.

rono3849 wrote:LPC.Uptown.Towers.jpg

Wow, these are terrific towers, plus I love the architecture.

The suburban corporate campus look seems to be all the rage in Uptown.

Notice the residential towers look more interesting architecturally, but the office tower is just the basic box. Office tenants in this market just don't seem to be interested in showy groundbreaking architecture, while residential sometimes gets more unique treatment to appeal to certain renters.

Love these new renderings. I'm glad they shifted their focus here. The public space looks very nice and will connect nicely to the area around the Quad.

I'm just happy to see the increase in size. Two ~35 story residential towers here on Cedar Springs? Yes, please.

R1070 wrote:Love these new renderings. I'm glad they shifted their focus here. The public space looks very nice and will connect nicely to the area around the Quad.

The frontage on the site really wants to be retail. I am glad they have decided the capture that energy.

The Quad retail has always suffered from the lack of a good connection to Cedar Springs. This layout may bridge that gap to the benefit of both developments.

This is great news and I love the architecture. So maybe we're not 'fading to black' just yet, after all, lol.

Love these towers, and love SOM towers in general. Excited to see these come to fruition!

Those are good-looking renderings. Has anyone seen any proposed or suggested timeline on this? I noticed in the Oak Lawn presentation, that they are apparently considering a hotel on the lower levels of one of the resi buildings.

^I saw the hotel option as well on those documents, and they have made a lot of publicity about this project but have not appeared to be the same level of excitement about starting dates mind you Oak Lawn committee approval first, then city staff has to decide if they disagree for any reason, city planning commission and city council? Or does this fit in line with the work the previous developer already did with the city? Sometimes the developers buy land actually zoned for what they want to build and actually just have to request construction permits.

I love so much of what SOM produces and these towers are no different. Beautiful. I wish the project was oriented more along Cedar Springs though. I find it odd that these towers as well as 23 Springs are positioned away from the street the way they are.

eburress wrote:I love so much of what SOM produces and these towers are no different. Beautiful. I wish the project was oriented more along Cedar Springs though. I find it odd that these towers as well as 23 Springs are positioned away from the street the way they are.

How would this project face the street more? I mean, they have restaurant patios stair-stepped towards Cedar Springs covering the entire ground floor in addition to an internal park area with additional space bridging the gap between public and more private park space. There appear to be very limited internal streets instead a few consolidated valet/uber drop off areas and residential and office lobbys face both external and internal areas? What are you seeing that could be better. I get that some would love a solid wall of buildings on all sides maybe even a bigger tower so Dallas can play the look our tower is bigger game but that's an entirely different debate.

Has the project broken ground?

rickbansal wrote:Has the project broken ground?

No, we don't seem to even have a suggested timeline yet.

cowboyeagle05 wrote:

eburress wrote:I love so much of what SOM produces and these towers are no different. Beautiful. I wish the project was oriented more along Cedar Springs though. I find it odd that these towers as well as 23 Springs are positioned away from the street the way they are.

How would this project face the street more? I mean, they have restaurant patios stair-stepped towards Cedar Springs covering the entire ground floor in addition to an internal park area with additional space bridging the gap between public and more private park space. There appear to be very limited internal streets instead a few consolidated valet/uber drop off areas and residential and office lobbys face both external and internal areas? What are you seeing that could be better. I get that some would love a solid wall of buildings on all sides maybe even a bigger tower so Dallas can play the look our tower is bigger game but that's an entirely different debate.

Neither project's buildings are oriented to/along Cedar Springs. The 2500 Cedar Springs buildings are positioned along Routh, Howell, and Fairmont and are angular to Cedar Springs and the 23 Springs tower is also angular to (and pulled back from) Cedar Springs.

eburress wrote:

cowboyeagle05 wrote:

eburress wrote:I love so much of what SOM produces and these towers are no different. Beautiful. I wish the project was oriented more along Cedar Springs though. I find it odd that these towers as well as 23 Springs are positioned away from the street the way they are.

How would this project face the street more? I mean, they have restaurant patios stair-stepped towards Cedar Springs covering the entire ground floor in addition to an internal park area with additional space bridging the gap between public and more private park space. There appear to be very limited internal streets instead a few consolidated valet/uber drop off areas and residential and office lobbys face both external and internal areas? What are you seeing that could be better. I get that some would love a solid wall of buildings on all sides maybe even a bigger tower so Dallas can play the look our tower is bigger game but that's an entirely different debate.

Neither project's buildings are oriented to/along Cedar Springs. The 2500 Cedar Springs buildings are positioned along Routh, Howell, and Fairmont and are angular to Cedar Springs and the 23 Springs tower is also angular to (and pulled back from) Cedar Springs.

Counterpoint (not saying I believe it necessarily): If the goal is to create a more walkable neighborhood in 2022 Dallas, forcing Dallas pedestrians into a small funnel right next to all the traffic is not going to make them want to walk through that space.

Adding indentations from the street, plazas, pocket parks, patios, public and semi-public pedestrian-only passages would give Dallas pedestrians places they actually want to walk *to*. The current plans seem to do this.

The land across the street (on Cedar Springs) from this site was just bought by a local investor.

https://therealdeal.com/texas/2022/07/2 ... las-block/

I45Tex wrote:The land across the street (on Cedar Springs) from this site was just bought by a local investor.

https://therealdeal.com/texas/2022/07/2 ... las-block/

Yeah they're buying up the entire block, but I don't think they own the connecting property next door to the corner lot. It'd be interesting to see what the do with it. 2501 Cedar Springs across the street built in the early 80's is adding patio and restaurant space right now.

Comparing DT to UT it's clear that streetscapes have more doorways when the block is built out under multiple ownerships. I think it's the most essential step towards "facing the streets" per above comments.

There is a default short-term temptation to save money and have to lease and supervise fewer active entrances when one architect "efficiently" designs a larger parcel, let alone a large parcel with no inconvenient neighbors, such as a full block.

It leads longer term (for the whole life of the block) to there being little to see there, and less to do, which encourages more people to drive instead of walk, and also encourages faster driving when the blocks are underpopulated and bland. People will put up with narrow sidewalks if it's a nice place to be, but it can't be a nice neighborhood with a scarcity of active doorways on almost every city block.

^astute observation

We need more stoops

eburress wrote:

cowboyeagle05 wrote:

eburress wrote:I love so much of what SOM produces and these towers are no different. Beautiful. I wish the project was oriented more along Cedar Springs though. I find it odd that these towers as well as 23 Springs are positioned away from the street the way they are.

How would this project face the street more? I mean, they have restaurant patios stair-stepped towards Cedar Springs covering the entire ground floor in addition to an internal park area with additional space bridging the gap between public and more private park space. There appear to be very limited internal streets instead a few consolidated valet/uber drop off areas and residential and office lobbys face both external and internal areas? What are you seeing that could be better. I get that some would love a solid wall of buildings on all sides maybe even a bigger tower so Dallas can play the look our tower is bigger game but that's an entirely different debate.

Neither project's buildings are oriented to/along Cedar Springs. The 2500 Cedar Springs buildings are positioned along Routh, Howell, and Fairmont and are angular to Cedar Springs and the 23 Springs tower is also angular to (and pulled back from) Cedar Springs.

Sounds like we are splitting hairs here cause what I am more interested in is how the retail and open space interacts with the building's placement. The current layout as seen in the renderings above as well have retail/resturants pushing towards Cedar Springs with a wide open space between the buildings creating a mall towards the Turtle Creek/Uptown view. The buildings have lobbies and doors on both sides, a park in the middle, and public streets where no doubt Uber and Valet will pick and drop off the well healed residents and office workers. Pushing the buildings to the far corners except allowing Cedar Springs to breathe seems like the best plan here cause Cedar Springs is a busier street with larger setbacks historically because it is a major thoroughfare, but this also means the buildings properly frame the side streets. Also, the retail spacing facing Cedar Springs appears to be two-story in some places making it more impactful. Since they didn't make any of the streets as backs of the buildings really it seems like the best way to interact with the public sidewalks while also creating a private/public space within the internal part of the larger project.

I think this project will kill it from a financial perspective should it get built. It's really just a bigger version of the Union. I wouldn't expect much pedestrian "urban activation" for the neighborhood around it. That being said, I think the retail and restaurants will do very well inside the complex (which is a massive upgrade to the area in itself). I think Lincoln will quickly re-sell this for potentially a very large profit within 1-2 years after completion.

I found the presentation from the Oak Lawn Committee. It looks like the tallest tower will be 415 ft.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-G8I5 ... authuser=0

Thanks dallaz!

dallaz wrote:I found the presentation from the Oak Lawn Committee. It looks like the tallest tower will be 415 ft.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-G8I5 ... authuser=0

Thanks for providing this!

I do hate that they removed greenspace to add in a valet drive through.

The slide showing this along with other future developments and their heights is pretty cool.

R1070 wrote:

dallaz wrote:I found the presentation from the Oak Lawn Committee. It looks like the tallest tower will be 415 ft.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-G8I5 ... authuser=0

Thanks for providing this!

I do hate that they removed greenspace to add in a valet drive through.

The slide showing this along with other future developments and their heights is pretty cool.

Same. Can’t say I’m too surprised tho.

Notice how the North End site is labeled any legal height. It seems like we’ll have to wait a little longer to see what they really got planned. So, there’s still hope y’all. I know ppl have been let down a little bit by this development so far.

R1070 wrote:I do hate that they removed greenspace to add in a valet drive through.

Ugh, what the hell. I was really hoping this development plus The Quad development could help turn Routh into a very pedestrian friendly street.

Overall a huge improvement over what is currently there, I just wish they had at least put the valet on Howell instead so that this could better integrate with The Quad.

I'm sure OLC suggested it. They aren't the most forward thinking group from what I can collect.

Developments should move valet operations to their parking garages.

That valet area is fine. It's not like this is an actual public park space here. This will be a heavily secured private lawn. They will end up partnering with Mercedes and park a luxury car on these lawns as a promotional campaign anyways. This is not Main Street Gardens or Kylde Warren this is a private property project that is doing a decent job of not turning the whole site into driveways for valet.

Still... the city needs to work with developers on reducing curb cutouts, not adding more. The amount of curb cutouts on that one block is way too much. It affects the pedestrian infrastructure.

If this rendering from the presentation to OLC comes to fruition, that valet area will be a mini woonerf.

Any updates? Really would like for this to get going…

I get this bad feeling that this project gets shelved for the next cycle (one year from now at the earliest). I hope I'm wrong though.

dzh wrote:I get this bad feeling that this project gets shelved for the next cycle (one year from now at the earliest). I hope I'm wrong though.

I wonder about a lot of these announced towers with the new economic reality of interest rates going up for their financing. I'm sure large companies like LPC get favorable financing, but it must be sending a chill through the industry. This is a substantial development.

I think I saw something saying Buff City Soap was going into one of the retail spots.

Well, isn't LPC the same developer who just tore down the condos to build that highly controversial apartment project on the Katy Trail aka the land they cleared and is sitting still since? I mean maybe they are waiting on the utility work being done or the holiday to start building.

Found this. Not sure if this means anything…it’s says “Available
Mar 01, 2026”

https://www.showcase.com/2500-cedar-spr ... /27340168/

dallaz wrote:Found this. Not sure if this means anything…it’s says “Available
Mar 01, 2026”

https://www.showcase.com/2500-cedar-spr ... /27340168/

6F3D2E16-88E9-4053-A396-895D88124870.jpeg

This is encouraging!

Dallas_Uptown wrote:

dallaz wrote:Found this. Not sure if this means anything…it’s says “Available
Mar 01, 2026”

https://www.showcase.com/2500-cedar-spr ... /27340168/

6F3D2E16-88E9-4053-A396-895D88124870.jpeg

This is encouraging!

If you lease emough space, they can have it ready for you in 3 years!

That CS corridor will look pretty sharp if these get built!

R1070 wrote:That CS corridor will look pretty sharp if these get built!

Since there are already towers coming out of the ground in the general vicinity, I'd say they'll be hard pressed to get financing for this kind of development in the current banking environment. They are great looking towers.

On the agenda for 08/17 CPC meeting:

https://cityofdallas.legistar.com/Legis ... 65A4E94E97

Any recommendations from 8/17 CPC?

Presentation starts at 1:43; comments begin at 2:03. No comments on the project itself - just utter confusion on CPC’s side as to how overlays work.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOWOMh3vvV8

LPG wrote:Presentation starts at 1:43; comments begin at 2:03. No comments on the project itself - just utter confusion on CPC’s side as to how overlays work.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOWOMh3vvV8

Thanks for this.