A signature skyscraper on the Dallas skyline just sold.
And the landmark tower went for one of the highest prices ever paid for a Dallas commercial property.
The 50-story Trammell Crow Center on Ross Avenue was acquired by Regent Properties, a California-based real estate investor that recently opened a second headquarters in Dallas.
While terms of the purchase were not disclosed, property brokers estimate that the iconic downtown tower and the retail and garage building across the street went for more than $600 million.
Only last year’s sale of the Crescent complex in Uptown for almost $700 million set a higher price.
The sale of the 37-year-old high-rise comes after the previous owners — New York-based JPMorgan Asset Management — spent more than $180 million on upgrades and additions to the property, which it had owned since 2005.
The latest makeover included new lobby and outdoor areas for the tower along with retail and restaurant space. And across the street from the office high-rise, JPMorgan Asset Management working with Stream Realty Partners built a new parking garage with ground floor retail.
The improvements paid off, with new and expanding tenants filling up the 1.2 million-square-foot office building during the pandemic.
“We are delighted to complete this transaction and are proud to own a long-standing fixture of the Dallas skyline,” said Eric Fleiss, CEO of Regent Properties. “We spent the last year and a half aggressively looking for high-quality assets that institutional owners don’t want to own because of the pandemic.
“Our strategy has been to buy as many high-quality, well-located Class A urban high-rise buildings as we could,” Fleiss said. “Trammell Crow Center is a great example of what is working and the kind of asset that will do well as we pull out of COVID.”
New owner Regent Properties is no stranger to the North Texas real estate market. It’s the same firm that developed the $300 million Legacy Central mixed-use project in Plano. The 84-acre development at U.S. Highway 75 and Legacy Drive includes almost 1 million square feet of buildings that once housed office and research operations for Texas Instruments.
Regent Properties bought the former tech campus in 2016 and began an overhaul of the properties.
The company bought downtown’s Trammell Crow Center for a new investment fund.
“Last year we set an objective to invest more than $2 billion in high-quality office real estate across Texas and the Sunbelt regions,” Fleiss said. “In the last nine months, we have purchased $1.2 billion in offices and would like to keep buying more.”
Regent Properties has bought a 435,000-square-foot office tower in downtown Austin at 816 Congress. And the company has acquired four office high-rises in downtown San Diego at a cost of $420 million.
The renovations at Trammell Crow Center were a major factor in the purchase, Fleiss said.
“What JP Morgan and Stream saw was that the bones of this tower are still dramatically appealing in today’s world,” Fleiss said. “They needed to put all that money into it to refresh it.
“There is more work to be done,” he said. “We look forward to developing a new project on the Ross Avenue site we bought along with this acquisition.” The vacant corner Regent purchased at Olive Street and Ross Avenue can be the site of another office, hotel or residential tower.
Commercial property firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Jonathan Napper and Mike McDonald marketed the Trammell Crow Center for sale.
The transaction comes as office leasing in North Texas is ramping up after a sharp decline following the start of the pandemic.
Another downtown Dallas skyscraper, the 40-story Bryan Tower, changed hands last month with a sale to a local investor and developer that plans to convert part of the office tower into apartments.
Another major downtown property, the three-building Plaza of the Americas office and retail center on downtown’s northeast side, was also recently put up for sale.
The D-FW area was second only to New York City for investment property purchases in 2021 with almost $47 billion in properties sold.
