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I was taking a lap around downtown Monday afternoon when I ran into a friend of a friend who knows more about the Central Business District\u2019s real estate situation than any of the dozen developers, dreamers, cheerleaders and city employees with whom I spoke for this piece. He didn\u2019t want to be quoted for this story. But he wanted to talk. <\/p>\n
Because \u201cI\u2019m worried,\u201d he said \u2014 and that\u2019s all he\u2019d let me repeat here. Because, yeah. Me, too, along with everyone else who works, lives, eats, drinks, drives through or invests in downtown. But as I\u2019ve been reminded a lot of late, the Central Business District of old is just that \u2013 old.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening with Klyde Warren Park, the Arts District, Uptown is remarkable,\u201d former Mayor Mike Rawlings told me last week. \u201cWhat has happened is that \u2018downtown\u2019 has moved half a mile, a mile to the left. You\u2019re talking about old downtown. And it isn\u2019t a business district anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was recounting this conversation with my pal\u2019s pal on Monday as we stood in the shadow of the Comerica building whose namesake tenant was, according to several sources, already looking to move Uptown long before its recent merger. Law firm K&L Gates, another resident of the Philip Johnson-designed high-rise, is already planning a move to the Harwood District<\/a>. During Tuesday\u2019s discussions about the state and fate of City Hall<\/a>, Assistant City Manager Robin Bentley told a City Council committee there were several skyscrapers that might serve as viable replacements, Comerica\u2019s tower among them.<\/p>\n Pour one out for the Mercantile?<\/p>\n My new friend motioned toward the green awnings a few feet away, at the foot of 1700 Pacific, which was a company-owned Starbucks until its closing a few weeks ago. One block over, tubes spilled out of the Mercantile Building\u2019s windows, the result of a catastrophic water leak that recently transformed the historic landmark<\/a> into a foul-smelling tower shedding residents as quick as its owners can terminate their leases.<\/p>\n Opinion<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Servpro has been onsite at the Mercantile for weeks following a leak that is forcing the termination of leases and the evacuation of residents. This historic landmark was the birth of the Downtown Connection TIF District, when its Cleveland-based owners asked the city for nearly $70 million in incentives and tax abatements — 20 long years ago.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n The Merc was one of the first downtown buildings rehabbed during that bleak period \u2014 20 whole years ago \u2014 when it looked like downtown might go all the way down. City Hall created the Downtown Connection Tax Increment Financing District in 2005, to rescue the Mercantile, when its owners, Cleveland-based Forest City, now Brookfield Asset Management, asked for and got $63.5 million in tax abatements and incentives. <\/p>\n Then-Mayor Laura Miller insisted that \u201cwithout turning the Merc block around, we would have no development from Neiman Marcus to Deep Ellum.\u201d <\/p>\n Oh, right \u2014 Neiman Marcus, the biggest will-they-or-won\u2019t-they since Sam and Diane on Cheers. By all accounts, it will remain open after the holiday season after all \u2014 though with a much smaller retail footprint.<\/p>\n My new friend and I spent about half an hour wringing our hands over downtown before shaking hands and parting ways \u2014 he toward his office, me toward Starship Bagels, which is packed every early morning with workers from AT&T. <\/p>\n Maybe you\u2019ve heard: That\u2019s another anchor also eyeing a downtown exodus<\/a>. And so I\u2019ve been told, over and over, as goes AT&T, so goes downtown, where vacancy rates already push 30%.<\/p>\n Just losing AT&T to a neighboring city would be a huge gut punch, bad for morale and worse for business. Its departure has been feared forever given its potential impact on downtown: an estimated 30% decrease in property values, according to Boston Consulting Group in May, costing downtown an estimated $2.7 billion in overall value.<\/p>\n The communications company won\u2019t communicate its plans, refusing to address what it\u2019s calling rumors and speculation. But there\u2019s no escaping the cold truth that AT&T is looking toward the northern climes \u2014 Plano, so we\u2019ve reported, possibly taking with them your Dallas Stars<\/a>. <\/p>\n the AT&T logo looms over Commerce Street and downtown Dallas. But for how much longer?<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n Packing up for Plano, possibly<\/p>\n \u201cSports entertainment is becoming a real estate business,\u201d the hockey team\u2019s president and CEO, Brad Alberts, told The News recently. And the Stars, who always planned on leaving Victory Park, don\u2019t control the real estate outside the American Airlines Center. <\/p>\n Mark Cuban warned us in 2017 this was going to happen <\/a>when he said the Mavs would move to his land across Stemmons Freeway in the Design District. The team\u2019s current owners now own enough land in Irving for, well, a Texas Stadium-sized development. <\/p>\n Once you start adding up all of these potential losses in downtown, it starts to feel overwhelming, dispiriting. The city\u2019s center, it seems, may not hold for much longer \u2014 not even City Hall, the building then-Mayor J. Erik Jonsson commissioned to remake Dallas following the assassination of President John Kennedy, now threatened by decades\u2019 worth of willfully deferred maintenance and at least some council members seemingly eager to plant a new arena alongside a new convention center whose final footprint and price tag we don\u2019t even know yet.<\/p>\n A mayor named Erik Jonsson birthed City Hall. A mayor named Eric Johnson could preside over its demise. If nothing else, you have to appreciate the symmetry.<\/p>\n So many plans, so little vision<\/p>\n Everything you\u2019ve read above and will find below should feel exhaustingly familiar. The city has been wrestling with its downtown for decades, as evidenced by the shelves of the Municipal Archives overspilling with hundreds of planning documents dating to the mid-1960s<\/a>. Among the offerings: Housing and the Future of Downtown Dallas (from 1975), Central Business District Housing Prospects (created in 1982 by the city\u2019s Department of Planning and Development) and, my favorite, 1966\u2019s A Preliminary Study of Geometric Design and Parking Capacity for a Major Development in the Central Business District of Dallas.<\/p>\n Somewhere in my collection of local ephemera I have Corgan Associates Architects\u2019 Downtown Dallas: 2010, Toward a Visual Master Plan to Guide Development, which, in 1989, lamented downtown\u2019s decline toward \u201cvisual chaos and unsightly signs, wires, and debris.\u201d That report also warned Dallas officials of the lure of the suburbs to the north, a blank canvas offering \u201cnew potential.\u201d Same as it ever was.<\/p>\n From left: the Mercantile Building, which is terminating all of its leases due to a leak and noxious odor; the Comerica tower, whose namesake tenants are eyeing an Uptown move; and 1700 Pacific, which is a shell of its former self.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n I\u2019m old enough, too, to remember the Downtown Dallas 360 plan<\/a>, introduced in 2011, adopted by the City Council and filled with \u201ctransformative strategies\u201d and quick wins meant to make over the core \u2014 everything from street corner vendors to parking reform to transit-oriented developments. When Downtown Dallas Inc.\u2019s then-president and CEO John Crawford unveiled the plan, I told him it would be cheaper to build a time machine to the neon-lit, streetcar-filled, office-worker-stuffed, Theater Row-lined downtown of the 1920s or 1940s than execute what the document proposed.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no vision for downtown in 2025, just a bunch of landowners concerned about their corners of the CBD and a city manager trying to stop the bleeding. Which is why we\u2019ve only slid backward since Downtown Dallas 360\u2019s creation. <\/p>\n In that document, DDI fretted that \u201chigh office vacancy, between 20 and 25%, is eviden[ce] of issues such as outdated building stock and a perceived lack of parking, but also of Downtown\u2019s desirability as a prime destination.\u201d Office vacancy is even higher now: \u201c26.8% vacancy with over 34 million square feet of office space,\u201d said DDI\u2019s current president and CEO Jennifer Scripps.<\/p>\n That includes the 36-story, 743,000-square-foot Harwood Center<\/a> in the heart of downtown, which is now on the auction block.<\/p>\n A former mayor: \u2018Lean into housing\u2019<\/p>\n But Scripps was quick \u2014 very quick \u2014 to point out that \u201cDenver<\/a> and Seattle<\/a> and Chicago <\/a>are slightly higher,\u201d with the latter at an all-time high. Scripps also pointed to the 15,000 residents in downtown, more than ever before, with a handful of sprawling apartment complexes scheduled to open on the east side of downtown in coming months.<\/p>\n A Dallas Historical Society photo by Lloyd Long is a dramatic night view of downtown Dallas that was taken about 1935. It shows an urban skyline dominated by the Magnolia Petroleum Building (the tallest west of the Mississippi) and its rooftop neon sign of Pegasus, “the flying red horse.” <\/p>\n \u201cI would lean into housing downtown in a big way,\u201d Rawlings told me last week. \u201cWe\u2019ve got 15,000 residents. I\u2019d get to 50,000, and if I had to spend city money, it may be cheaper than trying to attract corporations down there.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is exactly what architecture and planning firm Gensler advocated for in 2023: downtown as a \u201clifestyle district<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOne thing important for people to understand is there are all sorts of reasons why downtown matters,\u201d Scripps said. \u201cIt\u2019s the most important job market for residents south of I-30. It\u2019s the brand. Our transit system goes through downtown. We\u2019ve invested in greenspace. We have four A-rated DISD schools downtown. We have to turn all these things into assets. The body is not healthy if the heart is not healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n Depending on whom you talk to, and I\u2019ve talked to a lot of folks in recent days, it\u2019s not all doom and gloom. This is just \u201cdowntown at a crossroads,\u201d said Dallas Economic Development Corporation CEO Linda McMahon, formerly the head of the Real Estate Council. Or \u201cdowntown\u2019s tipping point,\u201d Scripps said. <\/p>\n Or it\u2019s \u201cdowntown\u2019s inflection point,\u201d said developer Mike Ablon, who\u2019s partnering with Hoque Global LLC namesake Mike Hoque to buy and redevelop downtown\u2019s tallest skyscraper, the Bank of America. Hoque and Ablon say their makeover will include a hotel, a new parking garage and restaurants \u2014 at the cost of $409 million. To defray those costs, this week the City Council approved more than $103 million in incentives from the Downtown Connection TIF.<\/p>\n Everyone with whom I spoke for this piece had thoughts, many thoughts, about how we got here. Businesses want the shiny and new buildings seemingly announced every other day in Uptown and the suburbs. Downtown\u2019s high-rises are aging, undesirable, unleasable. There aren\u2019t bodies enough to sustain the storefronts that sit empty and wanting. <\/p>\n Oh \u2014 and downtown is unsafe, they said. <\/p>\n The downtown Neiman Marcus, at left, will be staying — though with a smaller retail footprint. It sits across the street from the Mercantile, whose fate is now far less certain.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky<\/p>\n Crime and perception<\/p>\n![\"Servpro](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/YSYCBLBMGJFNJHZYSOIYAKY47M.JPG\")
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