Dallas is looking to turn empty parking lots into gold — or at least its real-estate equivalent.
The city wants to create a mixed-use, tech-friendly downtown district in the empty lots behind its City Hall, PaperCity reported. Called Newpark Dallas District, the proposed 20-acre development has a price tag of $3.5 billion. The plan is for the “smart district” to attract more tech firms to Dallas.
The redevelopment just got the city’s thumbs-up as a subdistrict of Dallas’ Downtown Connection Tax Increment Financing District — qualifying it for public subsidies that allow the start of construction on its first phase, a 38-story tower called One Newpark.
With an estimated cost of $400 million, One Newpark will have 225,000 square feet of Class A office space, 268 mixed-income apartments and 245 hotel rooms. Dallas’ Hoque Global and Omaha-based Lanoha Real Estate are developing the building. Merriman Anderson Architects and Studio Outside Landscape Architecture, both based in Dallas, are also part of the development team. Florida’s Moss Construction is the contractor
Newpark Dallas District is being planned with the goal of revitalizing a downtown neighborhood as well as drawing more tech companies to the city. The site plan for the district includes streetscapes and wide, landscaped sidewalks for pedestrians. One Newpark’s design includes terraces and gardens, and its lower floors will have retail stores, separate lobby entrances and parking.
The area planned for Newpark Dallas District is a strip between the southern edge of downtown and I-30 near the Dallas Convention Center. Hoque said he hopes it will help connect downtown development to recent projects in southern Dallas. Lanai said its location near the convention center and the highway will encourage multimodal transportation.
Part of the smart district will also be adjacent to Dallas’ once-controversial, postmodern CIty Hall, designed by I.M. Pei and completed in 1977. Somewhat fittingly for a tech-centric district, the building was a filming location for the 1987 movie Robocop.
[PaperCity] — Cindy Widner
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