Empty office skyscrapers downtown are getting a second chance at life through a series of high-profile conversions, with the $300M Energy Plaza facelift the latest to come to fruition.
Rebranded as The Sinclair, the newly opened 1.2M SF tower now houses 239 luxury apartments and 450K SF of high-end office space, The Dallas Morning News reports. Developer Todd Interests spent more than a year renovating the building, which dates back to 1983.
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The two uses have separate entrances and lobbies, similar to how Todd Interests reworked the First National Bank tower on Elm Street into The National residences and The Thompson hotel. That project cost $450M and debuted in 2020.
“We spent close to $1,000 a square foot on the office and residential lobbies because we want people, when they make this their home or office, to feel like they are in a 2024 building,” Philip Todd, the company’s president and managing partner, told the DMN.
The Sinclair was designed by Dallas architect HKS, and Brasfield & Gorrie was the general contractor. Financing was provided by Bank OZK and Slate Asset Management.
The number of apartment spaces being created in office buildings across major cities this year has risen to more than 55,000, nearly four times more than the 12,100 under conversion in 2021, according to a RentCafe report released in January.
Close to 3,200 conversion projects are underway in Dallas, the third-most in the nation behind Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Among them is Renaissance Tower’s partial conversion, which got underway late last year. That project involves removing more than 700K SF of vacancy from the Dallas CBD, cutting the property's office space by 42%, according to a report from JLL.
San Antonio-based GrayStreet Partners purchased the building in 2022.
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