Michael Dardick

Michael Dardick has shown a penchant for working both ends of the market on his way to growing Granite Properties into one of the most influential office developers in Dallas-Fort Worth. 

He learned the bottom while heading up the foreclosed real estate division for Interfirst Bank. Interfirst had deep Dallas roots before it merged with Republic Bank, which decades later hit its own troubles as First Republic Bank and was seized by federal regulators and sold off to JPMorgan Chase in 2023. Dardick had moved on long before the meltdown, co-founding Granite Properties in 1991 with the Schusterman family, known for its oil and gas fortune.

Granite acquired 2.7 million square feet across 22 office buildings, primarily in Dallas, between 1991 and 1994, according to the firm, and owned 24 million square feet of office properties by 2016. And while distress has taken a toll in some swaths of the DFW office segment, Granite has more recently aimed toward the top of the market, with seven office developments at Granite Park in Plano. The latest opened in 2023. It also has swung back to Dallas proper, with the conversion of an historic warehouse into loft offices called Factory Six03, at 603 Munger Street in the West End district of downtown. 

Dardick, who’s been known to author chatty opinion pieces for local media, has also gotten credit for a “well-choreographed succession” since stepping away from the CEO’s duties and into the executive chairman’s role.