Piece of Land Under Dallas’ Harwood Center Offered for Sale

A unique downtown Dallas listing offers a chance to own a piece of the ground under the chronically distressed but nevertheless iconic Harwood Center.

Colliers is handling the sale of a 0.16-acre parcel at 1999 Bryan Street, on which there’s a ground lease set to expire in 2077. The listing is just a piece of the land that the building sits on.

According to the listing, the land takes in an annual rent payment of $65,232. Rents are backed by an appraisal conducted every decade with the next re-appraisal set to take place in 2028.

The property was bifurcated in 1978 when land owner Elise Kleuser leased the ground to Carrozza Investments.

The 36-story, 734,000-square-foot Harwood Center sits on the land. It’s a mixed-use tower that was built in 1982.

New York-based Fortis Property Group bought the tower in 2006 and started upgrading the property in 2011, to the tune of $10 million. The $90 million CMBS loan behind the property was transferred to special servicing in 2020 for “imminent monetary default.” Fortis lost the property to its lender in a 2021 foreclosure.

The building’s performance continued to tumble after the foreclosure, with its appraisal dropping 20 percent since 2024, according to Morningstar Credit.

It’s now valued at $51.2 million, a 21 percent haircut from its last appraisal in early 2024. The current valuation is just 41 percent of Harwood Center’s 2014 appraised value of $124 million, pegging the tower as worth less than $70 per square foot.

The property was 51 percent occupied in November, according to the loan’s special servicer. The federal government recently cancelled a 15,000-square-foot lease for the Federal Trade Commission at Harwood Center.

In the ground listing, Colliers said Harwood Center’s main tenants are Jacobs Engineering Group headquarters, Omnicom Group and Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

The flight-to-quality trend that’s dominated the office market left downtown Dallas with largely empty, older office buildings struggling to stay relevant. Many tenants have fled to Uptown in search of trophy assets with lots of amenities.