Off-Market Deal Nails Preston Hollow Site

The 2.5-acre tract, built out with roughly 72,000 sf of class B office space, has been won by Champion Partners of Dallas. At one point in the chase, locally based PRG Realty Partners LP was poised for the takedown to get the abutting land to its 2.1-acre site bought in August for a mixed-use development at the intersection of Northwest Highway and Hillcrest Drive.

Independent Dallas brokers Wayne Swearingen and King Laughlin put together a sale-leaseback with a two-year window so the engineering firm can decide if it's going to move or become a lead tenant in one of the projects. The off-market deal's financials aren't being disclosed, but local sources say comparable class B space in Preston Hollow would fetch roughly $60 per sf.

Champion's Steve Modory says several options are being kicked around for the prized infill site: scraping and rebuilding or retooling the mid-1960s trio at 8609, 8616 and 8617 Northwest Plaza Dr. "We'll spend the first six months looking at the various options and monitoring how preleasing is going with PRG on their site," he tells GlobeSt.com.

"We're trying to sort it out," Champion's Ryan Nelson says. "It's a great location."

Modory says throughout the lengthy decisionmaking that inquiries were lobbed by retail, multifamily and medical office users. "There are a lot of possibilities. We just need to ferret it out," he says. "We just feel like it's an irreplaceable infill location."

Modory says the deal was two years in the making. "I really do give King and Wayne credit for keeping it alive," he says, adding the win was made through longstanding relationships on all sides of the deal.

Meanwhile, PRG's Roger Burk says his team will break ground in February as planned. "We're actually moving pretty rapidly on the mixed-use development," he says. The 80,000-sf Hillcrest Crossing will feature underground parking, street-level retail and two floors of office space. TD Briggs of Peloton Partners in Dallas is marketing the development.