Plans were revealed the other day showing Hillwood building a 70-story office tower near the Perot Museum of Nature & Science in Dallas. The structure designed by British “starchitect” Sir Norman Foster would be just a few stories shorter than Bank of America Plaza, the city’s current tallest building, which has 72 floors. When the idea was unveiled, thoughtful critics like D’s Peter Simek questioned the wisdom of the plan, protesting the structure’s impact on the “existing urban ecology.”
But, being a shallow sort who’s often accused of thinking like a stereotypical male, I immediately wondered, on the other hand, why Hillwood wouldn’t want to just go ahead and build the thing with 73 stories. That way, the Dallas-based developer could legitimately claim to have the biggest one—skyscraper, that is—in all of Big D. So, I asked Hillwood Chairman Ross Perot Jr. about it.
“I’m sure we’ll make it taller, ” Perot replied. “I’m sure we will. But the bottom line is, we’re developers, and we need a good client—and we’re gonna do what the customer wants. Ideally, it would be one build-to-suit client… The true skyline hasn’t really changed since the ’80s,” Perot went on. “Maybe it never will change; maybe corporate America doesn’t want the big towers anymore. But [if they do], we have a site and a plan to upgrade the skyline of Dallas.”
