“Everything is bigger in Texas” isn’t a boast; it’s a fact.
The largest of the lower 48 states sits atop the Permian Basin, the world’s leading oil-producing region. Austin is the fastest-growing city in the U.S., and Dallas is swelling at a rate that will make it the country’s most populous city by 2050. And, with the NYSE Texas poised to open in less than a year, the Dallas neighborhood that’s being dubbed “Y’all Street” will soon be home to a critical mass of Fortune 500 companies.
However, investors and companies flooding the Lone Star State are discovering that Texans speak their own language. That’s why finding a development partner who can “speak Texan” is crucial for newcomers angling to get in on the booming Texas real estate market.
Texas’s Native Son
That’s what out of state investors call Ari Rastegar.
Dubbed, “embarrassingly” as he puts it, The Oracle of Austin by Forbes in 2021, Rastegar has an unparalleled track record in Texas and across the southeast, with over $1.5 billion in the development pipeline and nearly a billion dollars worth currently under construction.
His success stems from his intimate connection with Texas and an expertise cultivated over a lifetime of living and working in the state. The son of an Iranian immigrant, Rastegar’s Horatio Alger story began in Austin and took him to nearly every one of Texas’s major metro areas, including flipping burgers in Dallas, graduating number one in his class at Texas A&M, and building his first spec homes while attending Law School in San Antonio.
His unique background gave Rastegar a sixth sense for zoning law, an invaluable skill for a developer.
“There is nothing more localized in real estate than zoning,” he says. “You have to deal with all the local politicians, local owners, local business owners. Our joke is that we specialize in impossible zoning cases.”
Over the course of his career, Rastegar has literally changed the shape of Texas, developing entire microcommunities and winning zoning and entitlement cases across the residential, commercial and industrial verticals representing billions of dollars in future value.
Credit: Corgan
Rastegar even draws investment from his fellow Texans, such as public pension funds including “every single firefighter association” in the state. More than just speaking Texan, Rastegar lives and breathes the Lone Star State.
“All Roads Lead to Dallas”
While Rastegar’s journey began in Austin, his life’s work is going vertical further north on I-35.
“Wall Street is turning to Y’all Street because of the cost of living and zoning,” he says. “Other than New York, Dallas has more Fortune 500 companies than any city in the world.”
Rastegar’s experience growing up in Texas dovetailed with the Y’all Street boom in a very specific way. When leading financial firms, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, began opening headquarters in anticipation of the NYSE moving its Chicago stock exchange to Dallas, Rastegar was already in the process of developing a tower on a unique triangular lot at 1899 McKinney.
“When I was growing up, that lot used to be a nightclub,” recalls Rastegar, who once stood in the rain for hours waiting in line for admission to the club. “By the time I got to the door, my White Air Force 1s were covered in mud, and the bouncer didn’t let me in.”
Years later, after he had become a successful developer, the lot came up for sale with some strings attached.
“I got a phone call from a broker who said the owner wanted to sell it very quickly,” he says. “But the problem was that you would have to go through an extravagant rezoning case to build something there.”
The zoning hurdle was no joke. In fact, other major developers had already tried, and failed, to tackle the height variances in the area. Despite Y’all Street still waiting beyond the horizon, Rastegar saw the opportunity and snapped up the property.
“The first zoning case was the single largest zone-up in Uptown Dallas history,” says Rastegar. “I took over 100 meetings with local owners to get affidavit support, presented to the council, and we break ground on it this year.”
When the building is complete, those same Air Force 1s will have a prominent place on display in the lobby.
From Mexico to The Great Lakes, Straight Through The Heart of Texas
While Dallas is a key piece of the puzzle, Rastegar’s grand development vision rests on the I-35 corridor, which he views as not only the lifeblood of the state but as the key piece of infrastructure in all of North America.
“I literally grew up on I-35,” he says. “It’s the most trafficked highway in America for shipping. It’s the opening corridor from Mexico into the United States. And millions of people go up and down it every day.”
The highway, which bisects the country, will only become more crucial as development capital pours into Texas. Rastegar sees I-35 as the backbone that will support everything from the proliferation of data centers powered by the state’s plentiful energy resources to manufacturing like Tesla’s Gigafactory to population growth spurred by both job opportunities and relatively lower cost of living than previous hotspots like the northeast and California.
“Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio are three of the top 10 most populous cities in the United States, and they’re all located along I-35,” he explains. “There’s a golden opportunity to reinvent how the corridor operates.”
Investors and developers looking for the right partner in Texas need someone who can speak Texan, and Ari Rastegar has proved time and again that he’s not only fluent in the language; he’s helped write the dictionary.
“We do Texas with a Texan kind of mentality,” he says. “If you’re coming to Texas, you should call us, because we’re the guys you want to work with to create your entitlement, permitting, zoning, and give you the ability to build.”
To learn more about Rastegar, visit their website.