The Platinum Corridor Is Only Just Getting Started

From the Dallas Cowboys to Warren Buffett, the Platinum Corridor is attracting huge names, enormous capital investment and a ton of cranes. That’s why we’re so thrilled to bring you Bisnow’s DFW Platinum Corridor event on March 31. 

O’Brien Architects director of design Sean O’Brien is the master planner for The Star, a venture developed by the City of Frisco and the Dallas Cowboys that will be a never-been-seen-before entertainment complex featuring a corporate office building, practice fields, an event center, a football stadium, shops, restaurants, a hotel, a medical center and more.  

The whole Platinum Corridor is dense but suburban, he says, and the challenge for developers and architects is to cater to everyone from Millennials to oldsters.

As a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan, Sean says it's a dream come true to work on the project. His component is the retail and entertainment area that consumers are funneled through when they enter from the parking garages.  

Frisco is very pro-development, Sean says, and is attracting a lot of tech companies and others that want to align themselves with big names.

One such name? Warren Buffett. His Nebraska Furniture Mart will anchor Grandscape, a virtual city on the edge of Dallas. When complete, the development will include retail, office, a convention center, a hotel and spa, an outdoor ampitheater, 300 multifamily units, 5,000 parking spaces and restaurants along a waterfront boardwalk.  

Nebraska Furniture Mart is expected to earn about $1B in revenue per year selling blenders, tables and chairs. It will be an insanely large store to cater to the thriving community surrounding it. 

Cawley Partners CEO Bill Cawley is super-active in the Dallas North Tollway, having developed over 1.8M SF in the area. Bill says there are a lot of quality midsized tenants from 10k to 50k SF, though a 100k SF tenant isn’t unheard of. The development has been prudent, so there isn’t a lot of spec space coming online.

Cawley Partners has built eight buildings in the Tollway area, and just completed a building in the Legacy submarket. It's courting several possible tenants for that building.

Tollway Center on the west side of the Tollway between Beltline and Spring Valley Road is also near completion. It’s a 200k SF building that has lots of activity; Bill tells us his team still has two floors to lease but is very happy with the status now.  

Transwestern principal Randy Garrett (shown here with Jo Thompson at a previous Bisnow event), who copyrighted the term "Platinum Corridor,"  says that right now, only one trend matters and that's the haute Millennial trend of becoming a part of a total live/work/play environment. That is certainly booming in the North Platinum Corridor.

From the dazzling Shops of Legacy West to The Star, Texans of all ages (and especially Millennials) will soon be able to reside in stunning low-rise or high-rise residential towers, shop and dine in the finest stores and hip new restaurants, and also walk to work in a brand-new, beautiful office building.

And don't forget the magnificent Wade Park and marvelous master planned Frisco Station mixed-used developments.

Randy says that all kinds of companies are taking space in the Platinum Corridor from small financial services firms to large national firms that need to have a presence in Dallas. Randy is tracking several million square feet of prospects who are searching for space in The Platinum Corridor, and they range from 5k SF to 350k SF and more.

He's excited about Legacy West One (Gadeke's new office tower in Legacy West) Platinum Park and Bill's Tollway Center.

Randy predicts the Platinum Corridor will continue its unprecedented growth for the next three to five years—with a few caveats: no terrorist incident on US soil, no further drop in the cost of oil and no huge Wall Street backlash to a Clinton or Trump presidency.

Randy also has a friendly reminder to city leaders of Plano and Frisco: Continue planning and building all of the infrastructure needed to handle the ever-increasing transportation demands for this booming area.

To learn more about the opportunities in the Platinum Corridor, join us for an informative and fun event in DFW on March 31 at Platinum Park, starting at 7:30am. Register here.