In Las Colinas, one behemoth wanted

Capital Commercial Investments CEO Doug Agarwal calls the office campus at 5959 Las Colinas Boulevard “a 1,000 year asset.” And the search for that asset’s tenant has begun.

Tenant, as in singular, according to the JLL Dallas team hired to market the property, which has housed the headquarters of ExxonMobil since 1996. Their goal is to find one corporate behemoth to take over and possibly reimagine the entire 300-acre site.

“It’s a significant corporate campus on a significant piece of land,” said T.D. Briggs of JLL. “There’s a bunch of land, so I kind of characterize it as a blank canvas. What Capital Commercial intends to do is really make it the best mixed-use property and really add all those components to it.”

The plan is easier said than done. The idea is to find a golden ticket, one corporate tenant that will fuel a windfall of development across the property and attract accessory tenants down the line. Restaurants, parks, retail, residential — the possibilities are endless on what is one of the last notable pieces of undeveloped land in Irving. 

Exxon is still in the process of moving into its new HQ in Houston. Briggs, Blake Shipley, Ashley Curry, and Chris Wright are leading the leasing effort of the  property.

Capital Commercial and Agarwal swooped in last year to purchase the site after it had spent nearly a year on the market. The firm will look to redevelop the campus into a luxury master-planned community to attract another Fortune 500 company to DFW, Robb Buchanan of  Capital Commercial told the Dallas Morning News.

JLL will conduct a national marketing search to attract the best tenant to the Las Colinas site but didn’t rule out the possibility of a Dallas-based company, Briggs said.

“We’ll be looking East Coast-to-West Coast. A high probability would be either a consolidation here in town or a relocation,” Briggs said. “We’ll be working closely with tenant reps and economic development types. We know the drill; we’re hunting.”

The team sees its competition as Austin and Houston, not New York or San Francisco, Briggs said. The firm is working with the Irving Economic Development Corporation and Texas Economic Development to provide as many corporate incentives as possible for prospective tenants, he said.

“We have got to create the perfect environment for the next corporate campus. You just don’t see an infill site that has this kind of infrastructure and size and scope,” Briggs said. “Also they’ll have a chance to start at a really good place with a beautiful existing building that, frankly, you’d just never build again today.”

Capital Commercial has collected a top-notch roster of campuses across the Lone Star State, including American Airlines’ former headquarters south of DFW International Airport as well as JCPenney’s headquarters in Plano.

North Texas is home to over 20 Fortune 500 companies, including Texas Instruments and AT&T. In Irving, the Chamber of Commerce refers to the city as the “headquarters of headquarters.” Irving is home to more than 1,000 corporate headquarters — more per capita than any U.S. city, according to the chamber’s website.

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