Gensler recently hosted one of its popular Design Forecast Live events in Dallas to highlight how business, social, and other trends are influencing the future of design. It’s based on decades of the firm’s research on the evolution of how people live, work, and play.
In welcoming attendees, Gensler’s co-managing director in Dallas Steven Upchurch said, “We have the ability to reshape the design of place, environment, and experience at every scale in the work that we do.”
Presentations focused on how companies and leaders can thrive in the creative economy and, specifically, how leaders and organizations can help ensure a transformative future for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Kicking things off was Ray Washburne, chairman of Charter Holdings. He also is co-founder and co-owner of M Crowd Restaurant Group, which operates 46 restaurant locations, including Mi Cocina, Taco Diner, The Mercury, and Katy Trail Ice House. He’s president and managing director of Highland Park Village and owns other high-profile real estate assets, including Watters Creek, Knox Street Dallas, the former Dallas Morning News campus in downtown Dallas, and the recently acquired Founders Square.
Below are excerpts from his presentation, which focused on his companies’ projects and his thoughts on Dallas’ new convention center. Be watching next week for a recap of a panel discussion featuring Steve Aldrich of Hillwood, Lucy Billingsley of Billingsley Co., Joseph Pitchford of Crescent Real Estate, and Jennifer Scripps of Downtown Dallas Inc.
HIGHLAND PARK VILLAGE AND KNOX STREET
RAY WASHBURNE: “I get a chance to travel all around the country. I was in Washington, D.C., for the last three days. It’s such a sad town—for a lot of reasons besides politics. About 30 percent of people are back downtown at work, but the rest is shuttered up. It’s a very sad scene to look at. I’ve also spent time in Kansas City, and I was in Houston last week. I didn’t see a single crane in Houston.
“As you go around the country, you realize how blessed we are to be here. Dallas is a vibrant city filled with excitement, enthusiasm, and optimism. We’ve got to keep that spirit going and the cranes up in the air.
“At Highland Park Village, we’ve spent a lot of time renovating the center. We bought it in 2009. Our sales are very strong. We see how many international people come into Dallas—about 20 percent of our customers are international customers, which is exciting. We’re going to continue our development there and finish repaving the parking lot.
“We also were invited by MSD, which is Michael Dell’s real estate company, to be his partner on his Knox Street redevelopment. We’ve just started that project. The holdings that we’re involved in are not only a site across from Toulouse that we’ve cleared, but also everything from Toulouse all the way down to Central Expressway. Eventually, all of that will be redeveloped as well.
“We secured a 99-year ground lease on Chuy’s, which will come down at the end of the year. We’re going to do a 250,000-foot-office building there, and on the site across from Toulouse, we’ll have a 200,000-square-foot building there. It’s already 100 percent leased, and we haven’t even stuck a shovel in the ground yet.
“Behind that will be an Auberge Resort Collection hotel, with condominiums on top. We’re pretty much sold out, and we’re very encouraged by that. We’re also doing a 350-unit apartment building, and right off the Katy Trail we’ll have a one-acre park that’s surrounded by restaurants and retail.
“So, Highland Park Village will be the uber-high-end; we’re moving some tenants, like Anthropology and Rag and Bone, to Knox Street. We’re running the marketing and leasing management like it’s kind of part of Highland Park Village now.”
WATTERS CREEK AND SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT
WASHBURNE: “I bought Watters Creek about a year-and-a-half ago. It was one of the original lifestyle center-type projects that was out there. We’ve had to transform it. … In the suburbs, a lot of the lifestyle centers have gotten so boring. You’ve got the same tenants in every project—Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs—it’s like rinse and repeat every 20 miles.
“We’re trying to create kind of a ‘Knox North’ feel. We’ve got Warby Parker and Lululemon and others, but we’re also bringing in, believe it or not, Barnes and Noble. They’ve come back into the market. They’re doing curated, cool bookstores with cafes. This one will be 8,000 square feet; their old legacy stores were more like 25,000 square feet. But we’re excited to get them back in.
“Because I run local restaurants, I’m a big local restaurants fan. So, we’re trying to rotate older restaurants and bring in local operators that give that center a sense of place. The whole development is about a half-million square feet. It has been a very interesting project to work on.
“I’ve looked at other lifestyle centers in the suburbs; they just need a lot of work. And a lot of them are clogged up and owned by big REITs that are more interested in the credit-worthiness of a corporate tenant to the analysts on Wall Street than they are making a real place.”
DOWNTOWN DALLAS AND THE CONVENTION CENTER
WASHBURNE: “My passion is downtown Dallas. I bought the former Dallas Morning News campus pre-pandemic, and it has been sitting empty ever since. It’s a total of 400,000 square feet—a spectacular old 1940s printing plant and office building.
“Dallas is a boring city—a very boring city. Where do you take visitors here? We don’t have a Pearl District like San Antonio, we don’t have a Stockyards like Fort Worth. What do you do, take people to see where Kennedy got shot? And after that, then what? I’m going to try to create something with Founder’s Square, that big red brick building across from the Omni.
“When they announced plans to redo the convention center, I got very excited. In my view, there have been two big placemaking failures in Dallas in the last 20 years. Victory, in my opinion, is a big failure. For all the hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone in there, no one goes down there, even after Mavericks game. People just get their cars and get out of there.
“The other failure is the Dallas Arts District. Only Lucy [Billingsley] did any placemaking there, with One Arts Plaza. Other than that, the planners were doing what I like to call an architectural petting zoo for the Pritzker Prize-winning architects. They all wanted these great buildings, but there’s no reason to walk up and down the sidewalk. To go from Lucy’s One Arts Plaza to Mi Cocina at Klyde Warren Park—it’s a boring walk. You see great buildings, but they’re not engaged with people on the sidewalk.
“We have a chance at the convention center because there are only three significant property owners down there: me, Jack Matthews on the south, and Ray Hunt on the West. (See map below.) It is a huge advantage not to have to deal with multiple property owners with multiple agendas going on.
“So, how do we tear this convention center down, push it as close up to Young Street where the Omni is to get people and footfall going from there into downtown Dallas, AT&T Discovery District, and the West End? People complain about the homeless at the West End station of DART. Do you know what takes care of the homeless? When there are people on the sidewalk. If we had people streaming from the convention center, going up Lamar, and walking in the West End to the bars and restaurants, you’d scare them off. Why the city planners don’t get that, I don’t understand.
“So my big thing, now that Jack Matthews has been picked as the development manager, is how do we pick an architect and a planning firm that understands footfall on the sidewalk, to get people walking down to the Farmers Market, walk to the Discovery District, into downtoxwn Dallas? I’m afraid with this planning they put in place—this shopping and destination street connector—it’s almost a mile from the Discovery District. No one is going to walk there; we need to push it as close to Young and Lamar as we possibly can.
“If you go to Nashville, even Houston, believe it or not, or Washington D.C., Boston—they put their convention centers right in the downtown, where they become part of the fabric of the city. If we don’t pick the right architect for this redevelopment, we’ll get another designer petting zoo. There will be a beautiful building that will totally turn its back into the street.”
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