Who Own's DFW's Seven Tallest Buildings?
The tallest towers in Dallas haven’t changed much since the big high-rise construction boom of the 80s, but you may be surprised at some of the details about these icons of the Dallas skyline.
Height: At 921 feet and 72 floors, it's the third-tallest building in Texas.
Completed: 1985
Owner: Chicago-based Metropolis Investment Holdings, which owns more than 6M SF of Class-A office towers in the CBDs of Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, and San Francisco. Earlier this year, the firm’s Pennzoil Place in Houston was named the most intelligent office building project in IBcon/Realcomm’s commercial real estate digital innovation awards.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $123M
Notoriety: The tower’s green silhouette lights got an updated to a new LED system last year and the 256 million colors it can generate can be seen 26 miles away.
Star feature: The City Club occupies the top floor with panoramic views of the city.
Little known fact: This building was supposed to have a twin tower and two other smaller structures as part of the development, but when the economy tanked in the late ‘80s, those plans were tossed out.
Height: At 886 feet and 56 floors, it's the fifth-tallest building in Texas.
Completed: 1974
Owners: Moinian Group in partnership with SMA Equities. The NYC-based Moinian Group also owns Chicago’s tallest, Willis Tower. The company has a history of making big changes in its towers. In NYC, renovations at 1775 Broadway (which overlooks Central Park) were so massive that the 790k SF building’s address changed to a completely different street.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $57M
Known for: Distinctive double X lighting and rooftop oil derricks
Claim to fame: The building was featured in the '70s TV show Dallas.
Little known fact: The base of the building is granite.
Height: At 787 feet and 60 floors, it's the sixth tallest building in Texas.
Completed: 1987
Owners: M-M Properties in a JV with CBRE Global Investors. M-M also owns Plaza of the Americas in Downtown and has plans to build an office tower on a vacant lot at Turtle Creek Boulevard and Cedar Springs Road (when the first tenant inks a deal).
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $115M
Prominent tenants: Comerica Bank, K&L Gates, Andrews Kurth, Orix, Grant Thornton and Fish & Richardson, who combined occupy more than 35% of the property.
First life: The tower was originally built for MCorp Bank and the first five floors contain a massive banking/stock exchange hall.
Height: 738 feet (55 stories)
Completed: 1987
Owners: Hines REIT, which owns almost 19M SF across various markets. Founder, Gerald Hines, and his son, Jeff, were inducted into the NTCAR Hall of Fame in 2012. Gerald developed both the Dallas and Houston Gallerias and has rock star status in the real estate world.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $183M
Known by the locals as: The keyhole building. The top of the building features a 27-foot-wide sky window with the recent addition of the Chase blue logo next to it.
Must visit: The skylobby just below the sky window features fountains and greenery.
Design trick: For clients who didn't want an entire floor, two six-story towers were stacked on top of the building around the keyhole, then rejoined in the center.
Height: 720 feet (62 stories)
Completed: 1986
Owners: Goddard Investment Group bought the building earlier this summer. Goddard CEO, Robert Goddard III, is also a director for Post Properties, which has developed multiple Uptown multifamily properties, including Post Uptown Village.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $156M
Starchitect designer: Architect Henry Cobb of I.M. Pei & Partners summarized his design for this building as “geometry pursued with rigor.”
Named for: Its beautiful two-acre water garden features 172 bubbler fountains, 225 Texas cypress trees, waterfalls, and a central court fountain with 360 computer-driven jets.
Wow factor: It’s the world's tallest building to be glazed with four-sided structural silicone. The skyscraper is clad in green glass and sculpted into a prism. One of the unique features is that it looks completely different as you view it from various locations in Downtown.
Height: 686 feet (50 stories)
Completed: 1985
Owners: A fund advised by JP Morgan Asset Management, which also owns The Crescent.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $170M
Wow factor: The Trammell Crow Center lobby is clad in Kevazingo wood, a product of the Bubinga tree, which grows in the tropical rain forests of Africa’s Ivory Coast. All of the Kevazingo wood in the lobby is from a single log, which measured six feet in diameter and receives its name from a particular cut used to create its fine-grained red veneer.
Angelic feature: The rotunda in the lobby is constructed of Calcatta white marble from Italy. Calcatta comes from the same mountain quarried by Michaelangelo in the 16th century.
History lesson: It was developed by its namesake.
Height: 655 feet (50 stories)
Completed: 1983
Owners: Olymbec USA. The Canadian-based firm has offices across the US and continues to snap up commercial real estate deals across the Midwest (like Ohio, Tennessee, and Georgia). The family-owned company is headed by patriarch, Edward Stern. The purchase this summer was the firm's first foray into Dallas.
Dallas Central Appraisal District Value: $51M
Design features: Built of flame-finished Carmen Red granite mounted on a thick precast backing with light blue, full-tempered, dual pane windows in prefinished aluminum frame
Historical element: The tower aligns with John Neely Bryan’s original street grid of Dallas. Need some space: The building has 205k SF of contiguous space available and a total of 554k SF vacant.
