$100M Mixed-Use Plan Hooks 7-Eleven's HQ

The 22-story One Arts Plaza will go up on a 10-acre tract that's been owned for two decades by the Crow family. The present proposal calls for 425,000 sf of office space, 30,000 sf of retail and 110,000 of residential space in 60 condos. Billingsley, known for her suburban office park development, is marking her first project inside the city line. "The reason I got this opportunity is because he had the foresight to buy the land," she says about her father.

Between now and the groundbreaking, there are several hurdles to clear, including 7-Eleven's decision on just how much space it will take. Jack Wilkie, 7-Eleven's vice president, tells GlobeSt.com that the company most likely will need about 300,000 sf. The convenience store retailer now occupies about 400,000 sf in the 1.2-million-sf Cityplace Center at 2711 N. Haskell Ave., which it sold a year ago to the locally based Prentiss Properties Trust for $124 million. True to its promise, 7-Eleven's corporate chiefs put a Prentiss brokerage team in charge of the site search, which got under way last fall. Prentiss' top executives did not return telephone calls by publication time to comment on the announcement and its plans to backfill the class A space.

"We were exploring all options in the marketplace," Wilkie says, stressing Cityplace was part of the competition as were several suburban locations. "Our desire was to stay in Dallas." He says the 78-year-old Dallas company is holding onto its list of options in case the One Arts Plaza project hits a roadblock. But, he adds, "if this all comes together as it was presented today, we will be a happy tenant in 2007." One Arts Plaza is carrying an April 2007 completion, which closely coincides with 7-Eleven's lease expiration in Cityplace, its headquarters location since the 1980s.

Billingsley says One Arts Plaza's construction contracts will be awarded in 10 days. Lionel Morrison is the lead architect and Matt Mooney of Corgan Associates is the architect of record. Tary Arteburn of Mesa Design is the plaza and landscape architect; Jeff Funderburk of Benson Hlavaty Architects is leading the interior design team; and Jim Parrish of Charter Construction is 7-Eleven's construction manager. The renderings will be available in the coming weeks.

The announcement comes just as a Dallas team moves into the next stage to develop a comprehensive plan. A sneak preview of the work to date debuted yesterday morning at a NAIOP breakfast, just hours before the 7-Eleven announcement and a presentation to council. An estimated 2,000 residents have had input and more ideas will be garnered from the public as development strategies are laid out. "We want to capture these big ideas and get them into this plan," says John Fregonese of Fregonese Calthrope Associates of Portland, OR, "so when we take it to council that it's a mandate from the public. It's important that a plan has a super majority. You don't want a plan that changes when council changes."

The comprehensive plan would bring the first overhaul since 1986 in Dallas' zoning. Unlike most metros, Dallas has plenty of land to develop on its fringes. "There are lots of opportunities that many other cities don't have," Fregonese says, "but the lack of planning is hurting."

One Arts Plaza is just one of a handful of projects being pushed by Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and a corps of backers with a vision to catapult the city from a circle with Atlanta and Denver and make it an effective competitor for the likes of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. "This is yet another sign that the revitalization of downtown is real," Miller says in a press release, "and I have every confidence that this decision by 7-Eleven will result in a tremendous boost for our center city."