Pegasus Park, the life sciences campus located northwest of downtown Dallas, will get a $32 million upgrade in the coming months.
A new addition totaling 135,000 square feet is planned for the campus, according to The Dallas Morning News. The expansion is set to be one of the largest and most ambitious projects the campus has seen to date.
Pegasus Park has more than 750,000 square feet of space spread across multiple buildings.
Since opening, it has attracted a community of life science companies and organizations, including Southern Methodist University’s SMU Institute for Computational Biosciences, UT Southwestern, Health Wildcatters, Taysha Gene Therapies, and Massachusetts-based BioLabs’ first central U.S. location.
Pegasus Park was originally built as jeweler Zale Corp.’s headquarters in 1968. The property then changed hands in 1981 when it was purchased by Mobil Oil Corp (now Exxon Mobil) and then again in 2015 when it was sold to J. Small Investments.
The Dallas-based real estate investment firm’s COO and general counsel, Steve Davis, explained that the purchase of this “very cool and unique property” was made with the future in mind, according to the Dallas Business Journal.
“We are really excited about what the next 10 or 20 years will bring to the area,” Davis told the DBJ in 2015. “We think Love Field will turn into a business airport that will be convenient to business travelers.”
J. Small Investments and Lyda Hill Philanthropies began renovating the 18-story central tower and surrounding buildings in 2020 to create a mixed-use office campus for life sciences and nonprofit companies.
They aimed to make Pegasus Park “a game-changer for science and tech in Dallas,” per Dallas Innovates.
Their vision was to create a world-class hub for startups, industry leaders, social impact companies, and academics in biotech and life sciences.
Work on Pegasus Park will begin next month, per the DMN, with Perkins & Will, a top architectural firm based in Chicago, leading the project.
Due to be completed by next year, the construction will include the demolition of one building and the renovation and expansion of another.
The expansion is expected to attract even more companies to the campus, thanks to the additional state-of-the-art facilities and resources that will be available.