Not long after my youngest son graduated from high school in 2016, I sold my three-bedroom home in Coppell and traded a long commute for urban, lock-and-leave living. I moved into an apartment in Gables Republic Tower, situated on the DART line between Thanks-Giving Square and the new Pacific Plaza park in Dallas. Since then, I’ve had a three-block walk to work.
A 35-story, aluminum-clad high-rise, Republic Tower was the tallest building in Dallas when it opened in 1954. Five decades later, it was among the first downtown structures to get an office-to-residential conversion. After an 18-month revamp by Gables Residential, residents began taking occupancy in 2007.
Along with high ceilings, I’ve noticed a few perks of living in converted space. First, Republic Tower is built like a tank. I know for a fact that I have neighbors above and on either side of me, but I’ve never heard them. The residents above me could play a game of basketball in their apartment, and I’d never know it. My utility bills are shockingly low, and the elevators zip me up to floor 33 in no time at all.
In addition to Gables, other office conversion pioneers include the father-and-son team of Larry and Ted Hamilton and developer Shawn Todd, whose latest success, The National, is a stunner. But what the city is about to experience is unprecedented.
Todd is converting the 49-story Energy Plaza to vertical mixed-use with about 300 apartments, and Jonas Woods is following up a hotel addition at Santander Tower with 291 apartments. He’s also adding 526 units at Bryan Tower and another 230 at Comerica Bank Tower. Other projects are in the works.
All told, Dallas may soon see an additional 5,000 residents move into the city’s core—bringing the total to nearly 20,000. Woods says he thinks it could be “the single biggest sea change event that Dallas has ever witnessed.”
He’s not wrong. Click here to read more about the conversion explosion and Woods—our Pioneer Award winner in D CEO’s 2023 Commercial Real Estate Awards program.
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