JLB replacing Richardson office building with $70M apartment project

Another residential project has spawned from office space that’s past its prime in Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Richardson City Council greenlit JLB Partners’ plan to replace the single-story office property at 2520 North Central Expressway with a $70 million, 390-unit apartment complex, the Dallas Morning News reported. That cost works out to less than $179,000 per unit.

The 24,000-square-foot office building has housed health care tenants since it was built 30 years ago. JLB Partners’ five-story apartment project is called the Glenville. 

“There is demand here for new housing,” JLB’s Jeff Patton told the council. “We believe we are the best developer to bring this forth because of our track record overall, and especially because of our track record here in the city of Richardson.”

The 4-acre site has access to over 14 miles of neighborhood pedestrian trails and is a 10-minute walk from the Galatyn Park Dart station. Richardson City Council unanimously approved the project, emphasizing the need for more housing in North Texas.

Dallas-based JLB Partners, founded in 2007, has built more than 60 apartment communities, including five in Richardson’s CityLine area. It developed a 300-unit apartment complex there in 2020, called the Register. In 2022, the firm set a record for the most-expensive apartment complex in Arizona, when it sold the 356-unit Roadrunner on McDowell, in Phoenix, for over $193 million, approaching $544,000 per unit.

Like most metros, DFW is grappling with record-high office vacancies, leading to redevelopment. Many old suburban buildings like this one are scrapped and replaced, often with multifamily or industrial.

In December, Foundry Commercial acquired a 287,000-square-foot office building in Irving, with plans to replace it with a 24-acre, 337,000-square-foot industrial complex. 

NexPoint Advisors aims to convert the former Electronic Data Systems headquarters in Plano into a $3 billion, 200-acre life sciences campus. 

Besides that, office-to-residential conversions are on track to yield 2,000 multifamily units in downtown Dallas, according to Downtown Dallas Inc. 

—Quinn Donoghue 

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