Dallas May Have Lost Amazon, but Downtown was Still a Big Winner

Steve Brown
Dallas Morning News

Toyota went to Plano.

State Farm Insurance landed 10,000 jobs in Richardson.

And the financial giant Charles Schwab is still building its new regional office campus in Westlake.

But when Amazon shopped North Texas for its HQ2 site, it wasn’t interested in the burbs.

Downtown was where the digital retailing giant considered putting thousands of workers.

Sites in the southwest corner of downtown, in the Cedars neighborhood and just across the river in north Oak Cliff and West Dallas all caught Amazon’s eye.

Amazon eventually picked sites in northern Virginia and New York for its 50,000 workers, and Nashville got the 5,000-job consolation prize. But developers say that downtown Dallas was next in line, and that it will reap the benefits for years to come.

Builders and economic development officials say that the fact that downtown Dallas was in serious contention for the country’s biggest office deal ever will help attract more jobs to the center city.

“We have already seen results of more people looking at the downtown area because of the exercise,” said John Crawford, vice chairman of the economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc. “We will continue to add major companies to downtown because of the exposure we got.

“Ten years ago, we wouldn’t have been even considered.”

A lot has happened downtown in the last decade.

Private developers and the public sector have poured billions of dollars into revitalizing the city’s core. Thousands of residents have moved into new apartments and old buildings converted to lofts.

Restaurants and retail are following, along with new hotels.

Throw in one of the country’s largest light-rail transit systems, and it’s no wonder Amazon set it sights on downtown instead of the far suburbs.

Real estate brokers say all of Amazon’s final site considerations in Dallas were downtown or nearby.

“The resurgence of our downtown and the new generation of companies that want to have walkable neighborhoods and locations that are diverse put us in a very competitive posture,” said Philip Wise, a principal in Cienda Partners, which pitched its north Oak Cliff property to Amazon.

“I think the city of Dallas will start to compete very well for these tech-oriented companies that want to be in the center city,” Wise said. “In the core of downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods there are some unbelievable development opportunities.”

Moving In

Companies were already taking notice of the potential downtown. This year, more than two dozen firms have headed downtown for new offices — moving from outside the core or from out of town.

Some of the biggest moves include Arcosa Inc.’s shift to a new headquarters in Ross Tower, Steward Health Care’s move from Boston to 1900 Pearl Street and Sam’s Club’s new high-tech innovation center in downtown’s West End district.

Through the first nine months of the year, net office leasing downtown totaled more than 400,000 square feet.

AT&T is still in the midst of its headquarters redevelopment, a more than $100 million project that will revitalize several blocks of downtown.

Developers who worked hard to land Amazon’s HQ2 are already pitching their downtown-area sites to other companies.

“We see the central business district and downtown Dallas coming back with a vengeance,” said Steve Van Amburgh, CEO of the top Dallas developer KDC. “People are going to want to be there, and we have a lot of potential.”

Skyscraper Campus

KDC and its partner Hoque Global designed a more than 8 million-square-foot skyscraper campus for Amazon to be built on almost 10 blocks on downtown’s south side.

KDC is also buying the nearby former Dallas Morning Newscampus next to the convention center for future redevelopment.

“People are going to want to be there,” Van Amburgh said. “We have assigned two of our guys to do nothing but market that entire area.

“We have uncovered a number of good prospects.”

Van Amburgh said KDC would send a team to California after the holidays to shop the downtown Dallas development to potential tenants.

“We have identified approximately 20 corporate users who have been waiting in the wings for Amazon to decide,” Van Amburgh said. “Just in the last two hours, we have already sent our presentation to other companies.

“We believe we have a good chance for a project like this,” he said. “This can all still happen — we just need to find a tenant that will allow us to complete this vision.”