CRC Group Consolidates DFW Offices at North Dallas Building

An Alabama-based insurance brokerage is betting on North Dallas office space, rolling four local offices into a single hub at a prominent building near Central Expressway.

CRC Group signed a 49,000-square-foot lease at Lakeside Square, the 18-story office building at 12377 Merit Drive. The Dallas Business Journal reported that the deal brings occupancy at the 409,544-square-foot building to about 85 percent and adds more than 200 employees to the property by March 2026, with some staff already in place.

The move consolidates CRC’s Dallas-Fort Worth presence into one site. CRC Insurance Services, the operating arm of the group, is an independent brokerage focused on specialty insurance underwriting across the U.S. and Canada. The firm was founded in 1982 in Birmingham, Alabama, and was previously known as TIH Insurance Holdings.

Lakeside Square sits at the crossroads of U.S. 75 and I-635, near Medical City Dallas, a Costco and a growing cluster of apartments — a site that’s long appealed to back office and financial services users. Built in 1985, the blue-glass building has its own Dallas lore: It originally served as headquarters for Ross Perot’s Perot Systems and even included a helipad. Perot later decamped to Plano, where his former Electronic Data Systems campus is now being redeveloped as AT&T’s global headquarters.

New York-based Acram Group has owned Lakeside Square since late 2018 and has poured more than $10 million into upgrades, including revamped landscaping, a renovated lobby, a fitness center and a tenant lounge. The building also features a boutique cafe and coffee bar, amenities landlords are increasingly leaning on to lure tenants back to the office.

CRC joins a roster that includes Aethon Energy Management, Audacy and personal injury firm Sweet James. Audacy and Sweet James were among several tenants that signed deals at the building in late 2024, helping reposition the offices.

JLL’s Gini Rounsaville and Trevor Franke represented Acram in the CRC lease, while Lincoln Property Co.’s Kyle Stanich and JLL’s Conor McCarthy and Taylor Dickerson handled the lease for CRC. Rounsaville said the move reflects sustained demand for high-quality office space in North Dallas.

That demand is showing up in the data. A recent JLL report found the North Dallas submarket has logged roughly 2.9 million square feet of financial services leasing since 2020, outpacing Uptown and Las Colinas.

— Eric Weilbacher