Jonas Woods’ Pacific Elm Faces Foreclosure on Dallas Tower

Just a year after losing the Comerica Bank Tower, Jonas Woods’ Pacific Elm Properties stands to lose another downtown fixture.

One Dallas Center, at 350 North St. Paul Street, is facing foreclosure, according to Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service. Pacific Elm Properties owns the bottom half of the building, which Todd Interests converted into renovated office and luxury apartments in 2014.

The Dallas-based firm appears to have defaulted on a $34.5 million mortgage. It assumed the securitized note when it bought the property in 2015.

The property is scheduled to be auctioned at Dallas County Courthouse on Sept. 2 at 10 a.m., but the lender and borrower could reach an agreement before then that would avoid the sale.

One Dallas Center was developed by Carrozza Investments in 1979. Todd Interests bought the 30-story, 615,000-square-foot office tower in 2012 and converted it into a mixed-use building, turning the top 15 floors into luxury apartments.

The property could be the second downtown tower lost by Pacific Elm Properties in as many years.

The firm was part-owner of Comerica Bank Tower, a 60-story building at 1717 Main Street, alongside TriGate Capital. Lender Slate Asset Management took control of the property in May 2024. At the time, at least 36 percent of the building was vacant.

Downtown Dallas was hit hard when remote-work norms caused office vacancy to skyrocket, as it’s home to a swath of outdated office buildings. The flight-to-quality trend has pushed companies out of these properties in favor of flashy new buildings in Uptown. As a result, the vacancy in Dallas’ CBD was 34.7 percent at the end of the second quarter, while the market overall had a vacancy rate of 25.3 percent, according to Partners Real Estate.

Converting old office buildings into residential properties was thought to be the golden ticket to tackle office vacancy, but making those projects work has proven to be a logistical and financial challenge.

Todd Interests and Pacific Elm were at the forefront of the office-to-resi movement in Dallas. In addition to One Dallas Center. Todd Interests is the firm behind the conversion of the National, a 52-story building that’s now home to luxury apartments, restaurants, retail and office. Pacific Elm converted part of the 50-story Santander Tower into 291 apartments.