Tall & Urban News

The owners of two key properties in North Dallas’ Preston Center business district are seeking zoning approvals to build a pair of high-rises.

Rosebriar Holdings and Burk Interests own almost 1.5 acres (0.2 hectares) along Westchester Drive just east of the Dallas North Tollway.

Rosebriar and Burk are seeking zoning to build two towers with residential, retail, and hotel space on the site near Preston Road.

The properties are currently occupied by a retail center and a medical office building.

“Our corner would be great for a hotel with some condos on top,” said Bill Hanks, retired CEO of Rosebriar Properties. “There is not enough residential in the Preston Center area.

“We would have approximately 240 hotel rooms,” Hanks said. “Above that, we would have 54 luxury condos that would be for sale.”

He said the ground floor of the new building would contain retail.

The single-story building on the site at Westchester and Luther Lane is now occupied by multiple tenants, including Hopdoddy Burger Bar.

Hanks said his firm hired Dallas architect HKS to design the new building for the site.

At the same time, the owner of the three-story medical office building next door, investor and developer Leland Burk, was working with architect GFF.

“We came together to do this in a complementary way,” Hanks said.

Burk said he’s working on plans for an apartment tower that would replace the medical building he has owned since 2014.

“With the fragmented ownership in Preston Center, it makes so much sense for property owners to come together on these sites that have redevelopment potential,” Burk said about the decision to coordinate with Rosebriar. “We have a really terrific development plan for these two properties.”

Burk said designs for both buildings are being driven by recently approved development guidelines for the Preston Center area.

“We do envision upscale residential rental units on our site, no commercial uses,” Burk said. “We will have approximately 255 rental units."

The buildings would be developed separately, and both would be more than 300 feet (91 meters) tall.

The property owners need zoning changes for the height and density of the projects.

The proposed high-rises are two of the largest recent projects in the works for Preston Center, which dates to the 1940s, which includes a combination of office and retail space. It’s close to some of Dallas’ most exclusive neighborhoods, and previous plans for new construction there have drawn the ire of homeowners.

Burk was part of the task force that spent years working on development guidelines for the district.

“Development was deemed to be inevitable, it needs to happen,” he said. “This really needs to be an urban core location in Dallas with the idea that there would be preferred uses.”

Burk Interests owns multiple commercial properties in the Oak Lawn area, in the Uptown area and East Dallas.

“We own lots of properties around the Dallas-Fort Worth market,” Rosebriar’s Hanks said. “We’ve owned this particular property in Preston Center since late 2010.”

The property owners have already started vetting their plans with neighborhood groups in the area and have filed the zoning requests with the city.

It’s unlikely that hearings on the planned redevelopment would take place until the second half of 2020.

For more on this story, go to The Dallas Morning News.