Real Estate Sector

Destroying the Cabana Hotel Would Not Be So Bad

Every hour or so, the Save the Cabana Hotel Facebook page reminds its 900-plus followers to SAVE THE CABANA HOTEL. Dallas' luxury Cabana Motor Hotel opened on Stemmons Freeway in 1962, and photographs on the fan page show legends like John Bonham and Robert Plant hanging out. The Beatles, Jimi Hendr ... More >>

Plano Developers Won't Let Homeowners Install Solar Panels Because They're Just So Ugly

Darn those young vegan-organic-diet, yoga-loving hippies with their electric cars and their solar panels. They must all be moving up to Plano from Austin, and frankly the Plano home builders and developers won't stand for it. In 2011, state legislation forbade Home Owners Associations from banning ... More >>

Temporary Injunction Denied in Cityplace Sam's Club Case

After the conclusion of arguments that started Friday morning, District Judge Phyllis Lister Brown ruled against a neighborhood group seeking a temporary injunction aimed at stopping construction of a 130,000-square-foot Sam's Club store near the intersection of Haskell Avenue and U.S. 75. The deci ... More >>

The Next Round of the Cityplace Sam's Club Fight Starts Today

Just about two weeks ago, all seemed lost for a group of residents who were upset about a Trammell Crow development plan that included building of a Sam's Club near Haskell Avenue and U.S. 75. Zoning for the development had already been approved, so the City Plan Commission's July 10 signing off on ... More >>

Round Two of Sam's Club Legal Fight Will Last Into Monday

The second act of the East Village Association's battle to reset the clock on a zoning change that would allow Trammell Crow to build a proposed 130,000-square-foot Sam's Club near Haskell Avenue and U.S. 75 will not be resolved until at least Monday afternoon, after Judge Phyllis Lister Brown was f ... More >>

Judge Restrains City from Issuing Building Permits for Cityplace Development

District Judge Emily Tobolowsky issued an order Friday blocking, at least for now, developer Trammell Crow's plan to build a 130,000-square-foot Sam's Club in Cityplace, just north downtown. Residents in the neighborhood near Haskell Avenue and Central Expressway won a temporary restraining order t ... More >>

Dallas Plan Commissioners Reluctantly Allow Zoning for Cityplace Sam's Club to Stay

Life isn't fair. It's why kids starve. It's why puppies suffer. It's why the people who live next to Cityplace will soon also be living next to a 130,000-square-foot Sam's Club. Dallas' City Plan Commission confirmed this afternoon that yep, the big box Trammell Crow has planned for the corner of C ... More >>

CityPlace Neighbors Are Rallying to Fight Planned Sam's Club, But It's Probably Too Late

Neighbors are, at this very moment, rallying opposition to the Sam's Club that Trammell Crow plans to build at CityPlace. They've launched the inevitable Change.org petition. They've booked Councilman Adam Medrano for a community meeting tonight. They are scouring the final development plan the City ... More >>

University Park Is DFW's Most Walkable Neighborhood, Says Bullshit List

A new, bullshit list has found that University Park is the most walkable neighborhood in all of Dallas-Fort Worth. Highland Park comes next and Addison ranks third. And then the list ends. Well, that settles it then. Come on Uptown, Oak Lawn, Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville and all of Oak Cliff, it's ... More >>

Two Rifles and a Shotgun Were Stolen Yesterday From an SUV Parked Off Lower Greenville

At noon yesterday, Jay Bailey parked his 2011 Chevrolet SUV in the lot behind the Blue Goose Cantina on Greenville Avenue and went to lunch. When he returned an hour later, he found that the lot had been targeted by a vehicle burglar. The rear window of an SUV parked nearby had been smashed, and th ... More >>

Yet Another High-End Dallas Hotel Sold as the Downtown Fairmont Goes For $69 Million

​Yesterday Bloomberg noted that high-end American hotels are being sold to buyers from Hong King, Singapore and China in the hopes of catering to "a growing number of affluent Asians traveling abroad." Among those sold: the Rosewood Crescent Hotel and the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, now in t ... More >>

Arts District to Get a New Outside Attraction: The Crow Asian Sculpture Garden

​The Trammell Crow Center on Ross Avenue already contains the Crow Collection of Asian Art. But that's an inside attraction. And that, far as the Crows are concerned, just isn't good enough. Hence, the announcement that just popped up in the in-box for the Crow Asian Sculpture Garden, described in ... More >>

Say, Out-of-Towners, Why Rent an Apartment When You Should Just Buy the Whole Complex?

The San Raphael Apartments near the Galleria recently sold to a Cleveland REIT.​Says GlobeSt.com this morning, there used to be a time when investors wanting to gobble up multifamily properties kept their coin on the coasts. No more: Now, "Dallas-Fort Worth is at the top of that list," per a direc ... More >>

Mapping the "Available" Space at Valley View

A view of Valley View Center from the sky, as depicted on mall owner Macerich's leasing-info Web site​Ron Natinksy's comments concerning Valley View Center reminded me: We never did hear from a local Macerich rep concerning whatever kind of "plans" the mall owner may or may not have for North Dall ... More >>

City to Refocus Its Attention at Southwest Center on Macy's, Which Is "Still Alive"; Penney's Owner Will Consider All His Options

​Back to Southwest Center Mall for a moment -- or, more specifically, the city's plans to keep the "dead mall," per the Urban Land Institute, alive. Karl Zavitkovsky kept the council's Economic Development Committee behind closed doors for almost an hour this morning, during which point it was men ... More >>

Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Server Farm No More: The DFW's a Data Center!

​A few days ago, Stream Data Centers announced it was in the process of building out a 20,000-square foot server farm in Richardson, in the Telecom Corridor -- not necessarily the sexiest press release in the world. (Though there is the part about the building's being able to "withstand 125 mph wi ... More >>

Fairfield Residential LLC, Owner of Six DFW Apartment Complexes, Files For Chapter 11

Vista at Victory​A Friend of Unfair Park sends word that Fairfield Residential LLC -- which has offices in San Diego and Grand Prairie -- filed for Chapter 11 reorganization yesterday in the District of Delaware, with the first hearing scheduled for tomorrow. Says the notice posted today on Fairfi ... More >>

"Negative Absorbtion": Good for Band Name, Bad for DFW Commercial Real Estate Biz

GlobeSt.com's Amy Wolff Sorter asks Mark Fewin, senior managing director at CB Richard Ellis, and Matt Heidelbaugh, senior director with Cushman & Wakefield of Texas, for their takes on the Dallas-Fort Worth commercial real estate market, and neither like what they see in the second quarter: an ... More >>

Roger Staubach Tosses Enough is Enough's First Pro-Hotel Radio Ad. Really.

I like the title of the first Enough is Enough radio ad: "Really." Oh, really? Really. Anyway. As we've noted before, Roger Staubach's part of this pro-hotel group, and his is the voice heard at the end of the 60-second spot. But before you get to Captain Comeback's pitch, there's another voice warm ... More >>

President Bush Is So Not Getting a Good Deal on Sherry Lane Place Office Space

Bloomberg's story concerning President Bush's new office digs in Preston Center -- first in Berkshire at Preston Center, before he moves into a larger space at Sherry Lane Place -- contains an note of interest toward the end. But first, this relevant aside: Says here that taxpayers will pay $38.95 p ... More >>

Services for Trammell Crow Set for Monday

After the jump, the official Trammell Crow obituary sent to local media today. But first, this information concerning services scheduled for Monday:A public service will be held on Monday, January 19, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. at Highland Park United Methodist Church, located at 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dall ... More >>

Will 2009 Be the Year Valley View Center Goes Bye-Bye? Hope Not.

Dallas's real estate market in 2008 in a nutshell: OK, then not. Which is more or less the analysis offered by GlobeSt.com today as it sizes up the year that was and sneaks a peek at the year that will be or won't, depending on folks' fortunes. Among the prophets lined up for the piece are folks fro ... More >>

A Coffee-Table Tribute to Those Who Built This City (Not on Rock and Roll)

From the book: "Storey Stemmons, Trammell Crow and John Stemmons pose prayerfully as L. G.Rainey of Equitable prepares to take over the permanent financing from J.D. Francis of the Mercantile Bank." After the jump, the full press release announcing the publication of THE BOOK -- Dallas/Fort Worth Co ... More >>

West Village, Meet ... East Village?

Jekyll Island and Trammell Crow

Trammell Crow Company's getting much grief today for a $10-million tax break it's receiving to build a $90-mil hotel-and-condo project. It sounds so familiar, only, it's not in Dallas (this time), but outside Atlanta -- on Jekyll Island, a Georgia state park that contains some of the hottest propert ... More >>

Moral Minority

The wages of sin are a big fat bankroll for Trammell Crow, thanks to city council

You, Me & Dupree

You need more Scovells? We got 'em! Meet Dupree, who does not need a couch upon which to crash. I sit up in the cheap seats in the city council chamber collecting the political equivalent of sports trivia. This week I was there waiting for an item to come up when a handsome young fellow with a famil ... More >>

A Crane Strain

This morning, the Associated Press sets out to prove that things are looking up downtown -- by revealing how high the demand is for folks to swing that jib and drop that hook 'round these parts. "In Dallas there's more tower cranes up now than I think there's ever been," says Turner Construction's S ... More >>

Home, Sweet...Home?

What exactly did Tom Leppert move to Dallas?

Full-Court Press Releases

Brian Harkin Someone told us the other day this photo of Sam Coats almost makes them wanna vote for the guy. "Makes him look tough." Which is one way of putting it. If a mayoral candidate has a beef with one of his fellow combatants, we usually hear about it -- in the form of a press release, which ... More >>

Don Hill Asks Tom Leppert: What, Exactly, Are You Spreading?

Tom Leppert, Don Hill just called you out. Doesn't really believe that whole billion-dollar minority contract thing. Neither does our sister paper in Cleveland, come to think of it. On Friday, in his weekly mayoral frontrunner round-up, Matt Pulle noted that at week's end, Don Hill sent Tom Leppert ... More >>

Crow No Mo'. (Well, Kinda. Pretty Much, Yeah.)

On Halloween we told you that the largest commercial real estate company in the world, Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc., was acquiring Trammell Crow Company for $2.2 billion. The only thing standing in the way of the deal going down was Trammell Crow shareholders' giving their A-OK. We ... More >>

Business That's Your Business

Does Every Former NFL Player Wind Up in Real Estate?

David Richards went from HP to SMU to the NFL...to real estate. Well, of course. On Halloween, as you no doubt recall, the largest commercial real estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc., announced it was acquiring Trammell Crow Company for $2.2 billion. The deal isn't expected to ... More >>

Emmitt Finds New Cowboys QB

You know, we thought Emmitt Smith being on Dancing with the Stars was gonna be humiliating. Wow, were we so wrong. I am sure there's other Dallas Cowboys news to discuss this a.m., though, for the life of me, I can't think of what that might be at present; something about Terrell Owens being awesom ... More >>

As the Crow Flies

Office Space

One of the most famous skyscrapers in downtown, worth some $62 million, is now owned by a California real-estate investment company. Looks like somebody really believes in downtown Dallas: In case you missed it, and there was a mention of it Monday in The Dallas Morning News, it says here that Youna ... More >>

A Little Slice of Heaven

Looters

Everybody got a piece when the families at Timbercreek got evicted--except the families

The B.S. Plan

For the real plan, watch the vote on Timbercreek

The REIT Stuff

Credit Risks

As we explained earlier this year, the FBI investigation into bribery at City Hall and beyond had everything to do with how affordable housing developers needed to garner political support at all levels before they could receive millions of dollars in tax credits from the state. With elected officia ... More >>

Re: Forest City, Without the Dead Trees

Former city council person Veletta Forsythe Lill sends this missive regarding yesterday's item about the myriad Web sites devoted to Forest City Enterprises, the developers getting $73 mil from the city to rehab the Mercantile Building downtown: "I find some irony in that the Forest City Web site ... More >>

Letters

Sorry You Missed It Eyes Wide Open in Frisco

Lost Houses

By my count, somebody may be shorting Judge Buchmeyer 110 low-income houses in West Dallas

Smoke-free environment

After a year in operation, Denton's controversial United Copper plant remains a sleepy giant

Hash Over

Blowing smoke

Denton residents like Parks and Delores Olmon want to know how a posse of city slickers managed to railroad plans for a lead-belching copper factory in their town

Home unsweet home

Disgruntled homeowners take to the Web to battle a giant homebuilder over complaints of shoddy workmanship

Deadbeat

Vance Miller lives in a Highland Park mansion, carries weight in the GOP, and parties with high society. He owes you, the taxpayer, $26 million, and he ain't paying.