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Look skyward, Dallas(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dec. 29--That boom you've been hearing isn't a sonic shockwave. It's the red hot North Texas commercial real estate market of 2006. From skyscraper sales downtown to new office campuses in the Telecom Corridor, the Dallas area saw a surge in the commercial property sector the likes of which it hasn't experienced since the 1980s. Let's hope that this time an '80s-style bust isn't lurking around the corner. The housing market is already past the peak. Although local home prices haven't seen the bubbles that plague Western and Florida markets, residential sales turned down in 2006 after years of setting records. Builders took the biggest hit -- cutting profit forecasts and taking financial write-offs. Analysts expect more of the same for the housing sector in early 2007. But Dallas and Fort Worth are among the U.S. cities expected to see modest price appreciation next year. No wonder we're the envy of slumping markets including Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami. Biggest Boom Uptown/ Arts District Don't run to the history books to see what Dallas looked like in the 1980s. Just drive down Woodall Rodgers and take a gander at all the buildings going up in the Arts District and Uptown. More than a half-dozen construction projects are in the works within a stone's throw of the highway -- everything from office and apartment towers on McKinney Avenue to performance halls on Routh Street. The building boom on the north side of downtown tops anything under way in the 'burbs. Biggest Historic Redo Old Parkland Hospital The historic Parkland Hospital complex on Maple Avenue is out of intensive care, thanks to a bold redevelopment plan. Dallas' Crow Holdings and Phoenix-based Alliance Properties ponied up $16.5 million for the Oak Lawn landmark, with plans to convert the 8.3-acre property into office space and apartments. Crow Holdings is preserving the 1913 hospital buildings as its head office. And developer Alliance is working on plans for apartment buildings to be constructed out back. Biggest Building Lease Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas Construction crews will soon be ripping up the prairie in Richardson's Telecom Corridor for a headquarters for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. The medical insurance giant has leased almost 1 million square feet of office space -- about the same as in a downtown skyscraper -- to be built in a corporate campus. Koll Development Co. will build the $265 million office project just east of North Central Expressway. It's the biggest building project in the neighborhood since the telecom bust. Biggest Sale Downtown office towers You can't see it, but there's a "sold" sign hanging on a chunk of the Dallas skyline. Out-of-state investors this year snapped up a handful of center city skyscrapers, including the Bank One Center, Renaissance Tower, KPMG Center, Harwood Center and St. Paul Place. More than $750 million in downtown office buildings were sold in 2006 -- a record. Still pending are the sales of the 42-story Cityplace tower and the 50-story Thanksgiving Tower, which are supposed to close early in the new year. Biggest worry Home foreclosures Instead of dreading a drop in home prices, real estate analysts should be fretting about the foreclosure bubble. More than 15,000 North Texas homeowners lost their houses to foreclosure this year -- the largest number of home loan defaults since the 1980s bust. As thousands of foreclosed homes come back on the market, lenders could be tempted to slash prices. If that happens, local home values could go into a free fall. Biggest Loss Ben Carpenter (1924-2006) Ben H. Carpenter was the antithesis of the stereotypical brash Texas real estate developer. A low-key, behind-the-scenes mover and shaker, Mr. Carpenter let his real estate projects do most of the talking. He built some shouters, including the 12,000-acre Las Colinas community in Irving and downtown Dallas' Southland Center (now Adam's Mark). Biggest cat fights Trinity Bridges, Plano Fountain What were planned as city signatures have caused the fur to fly in Dallas and Plano. When the budget was busted for the first of Dallas' Calatrava bridges across the Trinity River, critics did cartwheels, hoping to see the plan killed. Thanks to some design calisthenics, the $69 million bridge survived the latest challenge. Up north in Plano, community watchdogs went wild over a proposal to spend $1 million of tax money to help fund a Las Vegas-style water fountain. Developers decided to forgo the public sector support rather than become mired in a nasty referendum campaign. Maybe they should consider a bridge? Biggest Retreat Homebuilders After almost a decade of hammering out record profits, North Texas' big homebuilders were in the outhouse at the end of 2006. Both Dallas-based Centex and Fort Worth's D.R. Horton saw their profits plunge, wrote off millions because of canceled land buys and cut back their staffs. With the housing slump cutting into sales on both coasts, builders aren't betting on a quick industry bounce-back. Biggest Land Rush Prosper The Collin County town of Prosper is living up to its moniker. A wagon train of developers has followed the Old Preston Trail north of Frisco, looking for the next patch of rural sod to cut. Big developments planned by Forest City Enterprises, Landplan Development Corp. and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones will add thousands of homes, and shopping and commercial buildings to the town of almost 6,000. Biggest Delay City Lights Three years have passed since developers announced plans for the City Lights shopping center on Dallas' near east side. The Live Oak Avenue development was originally designed as a supermarket-anchored retail center. Now it's morphed into a midrise and high-rise mixed-use complex with apartments, hotel rooms and specialty shops. Developers haven't given up on their big plans for the key property. But a groundbreaking may be a ways off. Biggest Corporate Shift Trammell Crow sale For almost six decades, the Trammell Crow Co. has been synonymous with the Dallas commercial property business. Since the company got its start building Trinity Industrial District warehouses after World War II, Crow Co. has carried the Dallas real estate flag around the globe, just as Neiman Marcus labels have been the symbol for Big D's high-end retail. But now Crow Co. has been sold to a Los Angeles company -- CB Richard Ellis -- and will live on as a downsized Dallas-based subsidiary. Biggest Development Stop The DART line The next trains don't run until 2009 and later, but developers don't mind the long wait. Builders have staked out their corners across from DART's planned light-rail stations and are putting up mixed-use projects in Deep Ellum, the Southwest Medical District and in Las Colinas. Experience has taught them that it's better to get to the station early than to be left in the dust. E-mail [email protected] INSIDE: The year's biggest real estate stories. 3D, 4D Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |