Developers who want to build a huge mixed-use project on the south side of downtown Dallas got millions of dollars in incentives for the project from the city.
The Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to provide up to $96.1 million in economic support for the proposed Newpark development located just south of City Hall.
Dallas’ Hoque Global has been working for several years on plans for the almost 20-acre district between Canton and Cadiz Streets. The centerpiece of the Newpark project would be a 38-story office, residential and hotel tower built in partnership with Omaha-based Lanoha Real Estate Co.
Additional buildings would be constructed on properties that are mostly occupied by surface parking lots.
“Newpark is an exciting development for the future of downtown Dallas,” Dustin Bullard, executive vice president of economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc., told the City Council. “It will add new density and life to an area just south of City Hall.
“This project will transform acres of current surface parking lots providing amenities, residential, office space and mixed-use development tying downtown to the Cedars and our new Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center.”
Council members gave enthusiastic support for the development, which would fill one of the largest vacant sections of downtown.
“This is the beginning of what will be a transformation south of City Hall into the Cedars,” said council member Omar Narvaez. “We are going to have eventually billions of dollars in building and investment into this area.
“This is what catapults everything to go into the southern part of the city.”
Narvaez said plans for the Newpark district include the eventual construction of a fire station, public library and three schools.
“It’s an exciting project — transformative and neighborhood-creating,” said Mayor Pro Tem Chad West. “It’s 100 times greater than a parking lot.”
The city funding for the $400 million Newpark project would come from economic development grants and money from expansion of a tax increment finance district. The developers must build the project first to receive the funding.
Developer and investor Hoque Global began buying up vacant lots along Canton and Cadiz Streets near the Dallas Farmers Market almost a decade ago.
The property was one of the Dallas sites pitched to Amazon in 2017, when the company was looking for a location for its second headquarters.
The development is one of the largest such projects in the works for Dallas’ downtown area.
The City Council approved the Newpark project on the same day it okayed more than $18 million for a new Goldman Sachs campus to be constructed on the north side of downtown.
