DALLAS — Read this story and more North Texas business news from our partners at the Dallas Business Journal
A 30-story tower will kick off an effort by two prominent downtown Dallas property owners to create a walkable community connecting several neighborhoods in the city's urban core.
Pacific Elm and the Headington Cos. are working to develop the mixed-use high-rise on Headington-owned land at the intersection of Ross Avenue and Field Street. Plans call for 70 high-end residential units and 30 units of workforce housing on the upper levels.
"Adding bodies to the neighborhood at sort of every price point is a priority for us," Billy Prewitt, chief investment officer for Pacific Elm Properties, told the city of Dallas Urban Design Peer Review Panel on Jan. 26.
Further down the tower would be 150 hotel rooms, 12,000 square feet of meeting space and 10,000 square feet of food-and-beverage space with underground parking.
The two firms created a unified master plan for roughly 30 acres along Woodall Rodgers Freeway, between the West End, the Arts District and other parts of downtown farther south. The companies own about 16 acres combined.
Pacific Elm previously revealed plans to build an 18-story office tower and 25-floor building with 300 apartments on adjacent properties in the Field Street District, 1100 and 1012 McKinney, on the other side of Griffin Street. That project is still in the design process, according to Prewitt.
At full buildout, the wider project could contain as much as 4 million square feet of development, Prewitt told Dallas Business Journal.
The developers presented their latest plans to the urban design panel. Their goal is to create a cohesive community with pedestrian connectivity between neighboring districts. Kimley-Horn is the engineering firm for the project, and Abetya Tibbs is the architect.
"It's a great site to help reconnect all these districts, it's that missing link," said Cameron Bayles of Talley Associates, the landscape architect for the project.
The plan would also reconfigure the Woodall Rodgers off-ramp to Field Street to improve pedestrian and vehicle access between downtown and other neighborhoods.
"We basically had a choice of doing what most developers do and try to turn it into the next center of the universe for downtown Dallas, and Headington had their 10 acres next to us and they had the same choice," Prewitt said.
"We both felt like the best outcome for the neighborhood would be to work together on something that's a lot more cohesive and integrated."
