The owners of the eight-story 1600 Viceroy building near Dallas Love Field have a major transformation in store for the property.
Plans recently filed with the City of Dallas indicate that half the floors will be converted into residential units, according to The Dallas Morning News.
With the demand for office space on the decline and demand for apartments still going strong, conversion projects have sprung up across the metroplex.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, the conversion trend has included large skyscrapers in Downtown Dallas, such as the 50-story Santander Tower on Elm Street and the 40-story Bryan Tower on Bryan Street.
Still, a recent report actually found that such office-to-apartment conversion projects might not be financially feasible for investors since the median cost of an office building in Dallas is $88 million, and the average conversion cost is more than $230 million. Rents for such units in Dallas would reportedly render such a venture unprofitable.
As reported by The Dallas Express, fewer than 20% of conversion projects in the pipeline last year are actually now under construction. Furthermore, the City’s notoriously slow permit approval process has seen a 60% growth in its “projected conversions backlog” since 2021.
However, if such projects do manage to get off the ground, they could be an answer to the city’s housing shortage and help mitigate the shortage looming over the rest of the North Texas region.
The Viceroy building was built in 1983 at 1600 Viceroy Dr., just a stone’s throw away from the Brook Hollow Golf Club. Coming in at roughly 280,000 square feet of space, the Class A property features large terraces on its lower levels.
The building has a diverse history of tenants, beginning with the mortgage company Lomas Mortgage USA, Inc.
Today, the University of Texas at Dallas, the event management firm Freeman, the Visiting Nurse Association of Texas, and the furnishings retailer Perennials and Sutherland LLC are known tenants.
Now, Frisco’s BCI Architects will help usher the 1600 Viceroy into its next chapter, with construction slated to begin later this year.
