Developer to Begin Work on 38-Floor Office, Residential, Hotel and Retail Tower

A Dallasdeveloper plans to begin work on a 38-story mixed-use tower meant to anchor alarger 20-acre "smart district" where it wants to create a major technology andeducational hub, transforming the southern limits of downtown Dallas beyondInterstate 30.

Hoque Global and its development partners plan to start construction by mid-2021 onthe project, which is adjacent to Dallas City Hall, the Dallas Convention Center and theDallas Farmers Market. The planned 38-story office, retail, hotel and apartment tower,called One Newpark, would be the initial phase of Newpark Dallas.

At build-out, Newpark Dallas is expected to include more than 1 million square feet of office space, 200,000 square feet of urban retail space, thousands of apartments, a four-star hotel, an urban park and a 1 million-square-foot educational campus toaccommodate students from pre-Kindergarten to higher education. Throughout thedistrict, the group plans to run smart and sustainable technologies focused onconnected systems, low energy consumption and innovations built into the buildingsand streets of the district.

For Mike Hoque, CEO and founder of Hoque Global, said it took a buy in from city andcommunity leaders and the help of other real estate executives in pulling off what isconsidered to be an ambitious plan that will have a positive social impact on the city.The project is in the predevelopment process with the city of Dallas.

“A status quo development could have been built several times over," said Hoque, whohas worked in downtown Dallas for 15 years, in a statement. "But the opportunity to dosomething truly special for Dallas will take bold initiative from many stakeholders in ourcommunity. We are so inspired and ready to move ahead working together as acommunity.”

For the mixed-use tower One Newpark, Hoque Global teamed up with Omaha, Nebraska -based Lanoha Real Estate Co. for the mixed-use tower with high-end corporate office cespace, a four-star hotel, apartments and retail space. The tower is expected to help setthe tone for the rest of the proposed district with future towers expected to connect byskybridges. In all, the 38-story, 825,000-square-foot tower is designed to include 225,000 square feet of office space, in which the developer is in talks with an undisclosedanchor tenant, a 245-room hotel with 30,000 square feet of meeting space to help servethe Dallas Convention Center, a 268-unit apartment portion of the property with resort-style amenities and views of downtown Dallas.

In working on One Newpark, Jason Lanoha, managing partner of Lanoha Real Estate Co.,said this was a "rare opportunity" for a real estate company to develop atransformational building, which will help set the tone for the entire district.

Eric Anthony Johnson, the chief of economic development and neighborhood services atthe city of Dallas, said having a major technology and education hub next to city hallwill be a huge economic catalyst to the city and lead to more opportunities for Dallas togrow its economy.

Hoque Global is partnering with development firm KDC on the educational componentsof the district. Additional details on the education system were not immediately available.

The downtown Dallas office market has the highest vacancy rate in the region at nearly25%, according to CoStar data. Much of downtown Dallas was built in the 1970s and1980s, and although most of the trophy skyscrapers have been updated, they have hadan historically high vacancy rate because of overbuilding during those decades tied tothe Texas oil boom.

In the last few decades, Dallas-Fort Worth has diversified beyond the oil and gas industry, with the highest number of technology workers in the Lone Star State and a significant concentration of industries ranging from financial services firms to insurance companies to technology providers. That diversification has been touted by city leadersas helping make the region resilient from outside economic factors, such as the pandemic.

For the Record

One Newpark is designed by Dallas-based Merriman Anderson Architects, inconjunction with Pickard Chilton. The landscape architect is StudioOutside. Moss Construction is the project's general contractor. Aimbridge Hospitality, which recently expanded its Texas headquarters, has been selected to operate and run the hotelportion.