CBRE Ices Plans To Build New Tower, Moving HQ To Former Coworking Space Instead
CBRE has confirmed that plans to build and lease a new 27-story, 750K SF office tower are on hold and that it will instead move its global headquarters to a former Hana coworking facility in Dallas’ Klyde Warren Park.
CBRE has operated its global headquarters out of Dallas since 2020, when it moved from California. Now, in lieu of moving into a new building as planned, CBRE will relocate its executive offices from 2100 McKinney Ave. to the Park District building in Uptown Dallas, The Dallas Morning News reported.
CBRE's development arm, Trammell Crow Co., developed the Park District building, which is owned by MetLife. The executive offices will occupy 67K SF of former coworking space in the building, according to the paper. The floors were built out in 2019 for CBRE’s coworking operation, Hana.
The company expects to make the move by late summer or early fall. CBRE’s Dallas advisory and Trammell Crow Co. employees will continue to work out of 2100 McKinney, CBRE said in a statement.
CBRE had planned to move its headquarters and much of its Dallas operations, including Trammell Crow and its advisory and global workplace solutions divisions, to the office tower at 2401 McKinney Ave., the current site of Truluck's restaurant.
Trammell Crow was expected to have finished the tower by the end of 2024, but it became apparent last year that construction hadn't begun, and speculation about the fate of the new HQ ran rampant. Truluck’s restaurant was accepting online reservations six months in advance as of December 2022 and is still doing so today.
CBRE CEO Bob Sulentic confirmed the new office tower plans are on hold.
“We still believe it’s one of the best office sites in America,” Sulentic told The Dallas Morning News. “And that site is going to get built. It’s a 700K SF office building and it doesn’t make sense right now. But we still need to have a global headquarters.”
In a statement, CBRE said office market conditions had changed considerably since it first announced its move to Dallas in 2020. But it also underlined Trammell Crow's continued intention to develop the McKinney Avenue site.
"The Truluck’s site is one of the best office development sites in the U.S. and Trammell Crow Company will develop that site when office market conditions are right,” CBRE said in the statement. “It is likely that our global headquarters and much of our Dallas area operations will be housed at 2401 McKinney in the future, as it will take several years to develop the building once a decision is made to break ground.”
The company made agreements to get incentives for its Dallas headquarters, including $6.75M in Texas Enterprise Fund grants.
CBRE said in a statement that it continues to fulfill its commitments under the incentive agreement, as the incentives "are tied to job growth and related metrics as well as maintaining a headquarters operation in Uptown Dallas, not a specific location or address."
The commercial real estate firm agreed to add 460 jobs and invest $29M at its Dallas headquarters, as well as creating 550 new jobs while spending $13M on its Richardson offices.
The 131K SF Richardson operations center opened last year. More than 1,000 CBRE employees are based at the facility, which has a 1-to-1.5 ratio of desks to employees based on a hybrid work model, Bisnow previously reported.
UPDATE, MARCH 6, 11:06 A.M. CT: This article has been updated with comments from CBRE clarifying the status of its incentive agreements with the city and state as well as its future plans for the proposed tower site.
