Wait....what?!
Dallas l Dallas Smart District l ? Feet | 78 Floors l Proposed
Bold skyscraper campus would boast tallest building in Dallas
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Developers who built Plano's $3 billion Legacy West project are eyeing a vacant corner of downtown Dallas for a major mixed-use project.
Builder KDC has teamed up with landowner Hoque Global to plan the more than 20-acre skyscraper campus on the south side of downtown.
Located between Dallas City Hall and Interstate 30, the eight-block urban project would include office towers, retail and hotel space. It's one of the largest developments ever proposed for downtown.
Award-winning international architect Pelli Clarke Pelli designed the dramatic campus.
The centerpiece of the project is an office skyscraper that would be the tallest building in Dallas.
"It's a Legacy West type of project with the potential of 8 million square feet," said KDC chief executive Steve Van Amburgh. "We've been working on this for almost a year now.
"There are a lot of big companies that are circling Dallas-Fort Worth," he said. "Dallas needs to have a site that is large enough to accommodate a large employer."
Called Dallas Smart District, the planned urban development would stretch along Canton Street from the Farmers Market to the convention center.
The first phase would include 600,000 to 1 million square feet of office space, an urban grocery store, a food hall, a boutique hotel and green space.
Dallas businessman Mike Hoque has spent the last 36 months buying up and optioning blocks of parking lots and old buildings in that area of the central business district. He hired the architects to come up with a land plan.
"This is right downtown within walking distance of the center of the city," Hoque said. "We learned from Victory Park and everybody else about what should be built here."
Hoque said he chose Pelli Clarke Pelli because of its recent work on Uptown's new McKinney & Olive tower and its international reputation for top design work. Architect Gregg Jones, who did the McKinney & Olive tower, did the concepts for Dallas Smart District.
"The Dallas Smart District represents a special and unique opportunity for Dallas and greater Texas," Jones said in a prepared statement. "It is rare for a first-tier American metropolitan area to have this amount of contiguous developable land and building rights, all located in the heart of the city adjacent from the City Hall and convention center."
Pelli Clarke Pelli's designs show more than a half dozen high-rise buildings connected by green space and pedestrian walkways.
A parking lot behind City Hall would be repurposed as a central park.
78 floors
The tallest building envisioned for Dallas Smart District would be 78 floors, or about 200 feet higher than Bank of America Plaza, currently downtown's tallest building.
"It has fantastic access and close to all the amenities downtown," said KDC executive vice president Walt Mountford. "We are 18 miles from one of the busiest airports in the world."
KDC officials say they included the Dallas Smart District site in potential locations offered for digital retailer Amazon's new $5 billion second corporate headquarters complex.
It's one of more than three dozen properties being offered to the Seattle-based retailer for its campus, which could ultimately house 50,000 workers.
Hoque and his Dallas-based firm own a number of popular Dallas restaurants, and he is redeveloping the historic Adolphus Tower on Main Street.
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This is a proposal for Amazon HQ2. I don't see a full sized version of this happening if the city isn't chosen.
This is just one of the Dallas proposals.
Wonder when everyone else presents there's...
Wonder when everyone else presents there's...
Dallas Smart District Project Plans Massive Development Downtown
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Dallas Smart District Project Plans Massive Development Downtown
NOVEMBER 3, 2017 BY ADOLFO PESQUERA LEAVE A COMMENT
The Dallas Smart District as viewed looking east from Canton and Ervay and a curved “jewel box” structure situated cater-corner from the south lawn of City Hall. Illustration by Pelli Clarke Pelli.
Downtowners are used to ambitious real estate projects — witness Hillwood Urban’s Victory Park proposal for an Amazon Urban Village headquarters — but nothing in recent memory compares in scale or grandiosity to the plans laid out last month by developers Hoque Global and KDC.
News of an eight- to nine-block redevelopment plan trickled out over the summer, leading to the official reveal on October 18 of the Dallas Smart District. The project hits all the bullet points city planners have come to expect from a major urban master-planned development:
Class A office space
Luxury residential
Retail and hospitality
Pedestrian-friendly open spaces
Hoque and KDC also intend to build a 78-story tower that, if realized, would become the city’s tallest skyscraper.
Mike Hoque, the entrepreneur and downtown restaurateur behind Hoque Global, got this project rolling three years ago when he began buying up — or getting under contract — the land between the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and the Dallas Farmers Market.
The neighborhood Hoque and KDC have trained their sights on include three contiguous blocks of parking lots, a school the Dallas Independent School District already plans to close, a historic church building, and numerous old commercial buildings that aren’t worth nearly as much as the land they occupy, given the gentrification that has encircled the area.
KDC is the developer backing Epic, a mixed-use project coming to Deep Ellum that’s positioned to become the gateway into the district east of the CBD. KDC is also behind the Legacy West—JPMorgan Chase, million-square-foot campus in Plano. In 2016, Hoque joined forces with KDC and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects to fill in the details and produce a marketable master plan.
“Both KDC and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects are doing remarkable work with Hoque Global to launch the transformative Dallas Smart District,” Hoque said in a prepared statement.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings praised the development team for their vision and their decision to do a project within the “GrowSouth” boundary, “making it part of the downtown gateway to southern Dallas.”
The Dallas Smart District project gets its name from the team’s commitment to the use of sustainable, high-tech designs for energy and water systems, communications, security, parking, lighting, waste management and recycling, according to the developers.
The Dallas Smart District as viewed looking east from Canton and Ervay and a curved “jewel box” structure situated cater-corner from the south lawn of City Hall. Illustration by Pelli Clarke Pelli.
Note: This article was updated Nov. 6 to include additional responses from Hoque Global.
Downtowners are used to ambitious real estate projects — witness Hillwood Urban’s Victory Park proposal for an Amazon Urban Village headquarters — but nothing in recent memory compares in scale or grandiosity to the plans laid out last month by developers Hoque Global and KDC.
News of an eight- to nine-block redevelopment plan trickled out over the summer, leading to the official reveal on October 18 of the Dallas Smart District. The project hits all the bullet points city planners have come to expect from a major urban master-planned development:
Class A office space
Luxury residential
Retail and hospitality
Pedestrian-friendly open spaces
Hoque and KDC also intend to build a 78-story tower that, if realized, would become the city’s tallest skyscraper.
A bird’s eye view of the Dallas Smart District, looking east-northeast. KDC and Hoque Global propose building the city’s tallest office building, 78 stories, next to the Convention Center. Image courtesy of Hoque Global.
Mike Hoque, the entrepreneur and downtown restaurateur behind Hoque Global, got this project rolling three years ago when he began buying up — or getting under contract — the land between the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and the Dallas Farmers Market.
The neighborhood Hoque and KDC have trained their sights on include three contiguous blocks of parking lots, a school the Dallas Independent School District already plans to close, a historic church building, and numerous old commercial buildings that aren’t worth nearly as much as the land they occupy, given the gentrification that has encircled the area.
KDC is the developer backing Epic, a mixed-use project coming to Deep Ellum that’s positioned to become the gateway into the district east of the CBD. KDC is also behind the Legacy West—JPMorgan Chase, million-square-foot campus in Plano. In 2016, Hoque joined forces with KDC and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects to fill in the details and produce a marketable master plan.
“Both KDC and Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects are doing remarkable work with Hoque Global to launch the transformative Dallas Smart District,” Hoque said in a prepared statement.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings praised the development team for their vision and their decision to do a project within the “GrowSouth” boundary, “making it part of the downtown gateway to southern Dallas.”
The Dallas Smart District project gets its name from the team’s commitment to the use of sustainable, high-tech designs for energy and water systems, communications, security, parking, lighting, waste management and recycling, according to the developers.
The Dallas Smart District helps fulfill the city’s GrowSouth objective by bringing development to the south sector of the Central Business District. Image courtesy of Hoque Global.
Gregg Jones, a principal at Pelli Clarke Pelli, described the project as “creating the greatest collection of state-of-the-art international Class A office space in the United States.”
The project will proceed in phases, with Phase One to include:
600,000 to 1 million square feet of international Class A office space
An urban grocery store to serve the 20,000 Downtown Dallas residents
A food hall with a culinary incubator, upscale casual dining and innovative culinary concept experiences
A boutique hotel with residences
Park and green space with ample recreation areas, pet friendly environments with parks and bike paths
In its totality, the master plan calls for more than eight million square feet of office space. The buildings are being massed and arranged to create three distinctive, yet interconnected sections with a central node, referred to as the “jewel box,” that will act as the hub. The jewel box, a conical glass and steel structure, will be at the southeast corner of Canton and South Ervay Streets.
The conceptual site plan utilizes the east-west parallel streets of Canton and Cadiz Streets as the principal avenues for vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Illustrations also show an off-road pedestrian promenade in the block south of City Hall and the closure of Browder Street between Canton and Cadiz Streets to make room for the promenade and green spaces.
At the opposite end beside the Farmers Market, the two triangular blocks divided by Marilla Street show a tower of about 34 stories on the south block, along with an open plaza suitable for outdoor events on the north block.
The triangular blocks are immediately north of an unrelated development that is in progress; San Antonio-based Lynd Company recently acquired about half of the 1900 block of Cadiz Street (At the southwest corner of Cadiz and Harwood Streets) for a multifamily project. Hoque said they have been in conversations with Lynd and other multifamily developers about residential projects in the Dallas Smart District.
“We are certainly staying aware of their work in Farmers Market, as our neighbor,” Hoque said.
KDC will be in charge of the office space development. Hoque Global will direct the residential, retail and hospitality elements; Hoque claimed there would be an announcement soon regarding a “first of its kind” major brand coming to the district.
“Our Dallas Smart District,” Hoque said, “will provide innovation and flexibility that will endure for generations, which is exactly what major brands are seeking in their regional hub and headquarters facilities.”
There’s been no mention of a timeline, but if the Victory Park turnaround is any indication, this project will be a work in progress for the better part of the next decade. To begin, the district will need significant infrastructure improvements, including streets and utilities.
The Hoque and KDC team plans to break ground in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Under the name of Canton Cadiz Phase 1 LLC, Hoque purchased the two contiguous blocks of parking bounded by Browder, Canton, South Saint Paul and Cadiz Streets, and three-quarters of the block at the southeast corner of Canton and South Akard Streets; the remainder of the block is home to Dallas Fire Station 4.
There won’t be much controversy over the demolition of most of the buildings under contract, but the Dallas Landmark Commission is on alert over Hoque’s intentions for 910 Browder Street. The Sara Ellen and Samuel Weisfeld Center, also known as the Eagle’s Nest Cathedral for the past five years, is 105 years old, designed in 1912 by two prominent architects to be a sanctuary for the First Church of Christ-Scientist.
Weisfeld holds the mortgage note, but the church pastor, W.V. Grant, put the property up for sale because of declining membership and building maintenance costs. Weisfeld has sworn he won’t agree to a transaction that involves its demolition, but the building is not a protected landmark and the Pelli Clarke Pelli renderings show a new structure with a green roof on that location.
The Hoque response to Dallas Towers was that, “Any and all properties with historical significant to Dallas will be treated with the uptmost respect and care in the Dallas Smart District development. We work closely with the Dallas County Historical Commission, Historic Preservation at City of Dallas and the National Trust for Historical Preservation on all of our properties.”
Hoque added that in situations where a building of historic significance was removed or substantially altered, the company has a record of utilizing refurbished and recycles materials.
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Looks like new Renderings.
A crown has been added looks taller.
https://www.aiadallas.org/v/columns-detail/Point-Counterpoint-Edge-City-Evolution/vb/
A crown has been added looks taller.
https://www.aiadallas.org/v/columns-detail/Point-Counterpoint-Edge-City-Evolution/vb/
This is awesome! Have any building permits been filed, or have there been any other signs of this breaking ground in the near future?Looks like new Renderings.
A crown has been added looks taller.
https://www.aiadallas.org/v/columns-detail/Point-Counterpoint-Edge-City-Evolution/vb/
Imo, this is a much better rendering and will certainly have a commanding presence on the city's skyline going forward! :applause:
I will be surprised and excited if this is built.
^^ If that's true then we are talking about the new tallest building in Texas.The tallest building envisioned for Dallas Smart District would be 78 floors, or about 200 feet higher than Bank of America Plaza, currently downtown's tallest building.
It would be the tallest building in the United States outside of New York and Chicago excluding the spire of Philly's Comcast Center.
That is awesome! I was looking at the list of Texas Top 30 tallest buildings and 18 are in Houston, only 10 in Dallas, 1 in each Austin and San Antonio.
The top 2 are in Houston and then Bank of America Plaza is number 3.
The top 2 are in Houston and then Bank of America Plaza is number 3.
Yep Houston is a monster only surpassed by Miami,NY,CHI.That is awesome! I was looking at the list of Texas Top 30 tallest buildings and 18 are in Houston, only 10 in Dallas, 1 in each Austin and San Antonio.
The top 2 are in Houston and then Bank of America Plaza is number 3.
Dallas is like it's younger sibling and not too shabby itself.
Buildings at least 150meters:
(Skyscrapercenter.com)
Houston: 38 (1 under construction)
Dallas: 20 (2 under construction( I threw in Atelier Tower cause it looks like it should hit the 150m mark))
Houston has 2 highrises coming up, the 47 story office building by Hines (Downtown) and the 48 story building by Transwestern (Texas Medical Center).
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