Goldman Sachs, developer break ground on $500M Dallas campus

Dive Brief:

Global investment banking company Goldman Sachs broke ground last week on its 800,000-square-foot Dallas campus designed to house more than 5,000 employees. The project will cost about $500 million, according to the Dallas Business Journal.
Located in the NorthEnd mixed-use development near the city’s Victory Park neighborhood, the all-electric building will include two wings on 3 acres adjacent to a park, according to the firm. The project team expects to complete the project in late 2027.
U.K.-based Balfour Beatty is the general contractor, according to multiple media reports. A Balfour Beatty representative said she could not comment on whether the contractor is involved in the project.

Dive Insight:

Designed by New York City-based Henning Larsen Architects, the building will feature social spaces and formal and informal collaboration opportunities and hospitality offerings, as well as an on-site cafe, a fitness center, back-up childcare, underground parking and conferencing spaces.

Dallas-based Hunt Realty owns the building, which is being developed by Hillwood Urban, also based in Dallas.

In June 2022, the Dallas City Council approved $18 million in economic incentives for the project, among the highest in the nation last year for a project of its type, according to the Dallas Business Journal. The agreement is contingent on the company creating or retaining 5,000 jobs in the city.

The New York City-based investment firm employs about 4,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, where it has operated since 1968.

Developers scaled back plans for the 14-story office complex this summer when they cut about 100,000 square feet from the original plan, which called for three buildings totaling almost 1 million square feet, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Even so, the project ranks among the largest office developments that the city has seen in decades, despite challenges facing the sector since the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in hybrid work.

About one-fourth of office spaces in the Dallas-Fort Worth market sat vacant last quarter, according to a research report from Texas commercial real estate firm Partners. The national office vacancy rate was 16.4% for the same time period, according to Colliers.