Gabriel Barbier-Mueller’s Harwood Faces Foreclosure at Condo

There’s not much left of Harwood District that still belongs to Harwood International; after March’s foreclosure sale, there may be even less.

Gabriel Barbier-Mueller’s beleaguered Uptown development firm risks losing a block of condo units at Bleu Ciel, at 3130 North Harwood Street. It marks the first foreclosure of the year for the firm which gave up ownership of seven office properties in 2025 in a spate of foreclosures and sales.

The company’s latest predicament involves an alleged default on a loan from TexasBank, according to a foreclosure notice. Loan documents show TexasBank provided a $30 million loan in December 2024 backed by 26 units at Bleu Ciel. Since the loan was provided, at least six units were sold, causing Harwood to be relieved of parts of its debt burden.

However, the fact that Harwood still owns any condos at the property appears to indicate that about 10 percent of the property’s 158 units never originally sold — eight years after Bleu Ciel opened in 2018. The property’s website says it’s 85 percent sold and advertises 16 units, including four penthouses.

This is the first time Harwood’s distress has bled from its office portfolio into another asset class.

It comes a week after San Francisco-based private equity fund TPG announced it would be Harwood’s recapitalization partner. Harwood quietly sold off five office properties, totalling 1.2 million square feet, to TPG starting in the fall:

Harwood No. 2, at 2728 North Harwood Street;
Harwood No. 3, at 2727 North Harwood Street;
Harwood No. 6 (also known as Saint Ann Court), at 2501 North Harwood Street;
Harwood No. 7 (also known as Frost Tower), at 2950 North Harwood Street; and
Harwood No. 10, at 2850 North Harwood Street.

TPG has plans to renovate the properties. According to the announcement, Harwood retains a minority stake.

The firm also lost two properties to foreclosure in 2025.

It handed back the keys to Harwood No. 4 in April and lost Harwood No. 1 in November. San Francisco-based Spear Street Capital took back Harwood No. 4, at 2828 North Harwood Street, in a $73 million credit bid. First United Bank seized Harwood’s first development, at 2651 North Harwood Street, with a $27 million credit bid. Bill Cawley’s Cawley Partners bought the property on Dec. 30.

The foreclosures started with Harwood No. 6, which Harwood saved from a January 2025 auction with a last-minute recapitalization deal.

Another blow came for the company when Jones Day, which was supposed to anchor the upcoming Harwood No. 15, pulled out of the project late last year.

The firm’s distress is glaringly out of sync with Uptown’s otherwise robust office market. The submarket has been a reliable outlier in a region that continues to struggle with high vacancy rates.

The coveted submarket has become synonymous with Y’all Street, with banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America selecting Uptown for expensive built-to-suit projects. Uptown also boasts the highest rents of any submarket in Dallas-Fort Worth, with an overall average gross rent of $62.21 per square foot, according to a recent report from Partners Real Estate.