As Projects Begin to Take Root in Arts District, Conjecture About Craig Hall's Stalled Tower

It's been 17 months since the city settled its legal dispute with developer Craig Hall over lease payments related to the Arts District parking garage on Ross Avenue -- and then agreed to dole out up to $9 million from the Downtown Connection TIF if he ever got 'round to...

By Robert Wilonsky

July 23, 2010

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It's been 17 months since the city settled its legal dispute with developer Craig Hall over lease payments related to the Arts District parking garage on Ross Avenue -- and then agreed to dole out up to $9 million from the Downtown Connection TIF if he ever got 'round to building that 24-years-in-the-making, $120-mil mixed-use tower on the property. But since then, silence. In the meantime, Brook Partners and the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System partnered up on the ground-broken Museum Tower, while just this week Spire Realty debuted its plans for a six-building office-hotel-retail-parking complex on 12 acres in the Arts District.

But as the Dallas Business Journal notes this morning, Hall, through several different ventures, is looking to raise $100 million, as revealed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, like this one under the Hall Funding LLC moniker.

Hall won't say what he's planning on doing with the dough, and so the DBJ speculates: Is Hall finally going to build that Arts District tower, or is this related to a planned office-park project in Richardson?

No one's heard nothin' about either, but do keep in mind: The city's agreement with Hall is dependent upon the tower opening its doors by no later than 2015. And, as John Amend tells the DBJ, the Arts District is hot: "I really think that's going to be the new center of downtown."

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