A downtown Dallas office tower that just lost its largest tenant to Uptown has landed a major replacement. Law firm Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal signed a 50,802-square-foot lease at Dallas Arts Tower, relocating more than 100 employees from Bank of America Plaza to occupy the building's 18th and 19th floors.
The deal comes weeks after Deloitte's lease at the 55-story tower at 2200 Ross Avenue expired in July, closing out the multinational accounting firm's roughly 100,000-square-foot footprint there. As reported by The Real Deal, occupancy at Dallas Arts Tower fell to 70 percent after Deloitte moved out, but the building's leasing team says momentum has held up. Partners Real Estate manages leasing for the tower and has filled 252,000 square feet over the past two years, with new or renewing tenants accounting for 70 percent of that total.
The Carrington Coleman deal was brokered by CBRE for the tenant, with Partners Real Estate and Stream Realty representing landlord Fortis Property Group, according to Realty News Report. JJ Leonard, the Partners Real Estate managing director who handles tenants at Dallas Arts Tower, has positioned the building as a cheaper alternative to Uptown offices even as the broader downtown submarket struggles with vacancy.
Deloitte's Long-Planned Move to Uptown's 23springs
Deloitte's departure was not a surprise. The firm originally signed its long-term, four-floor lease at the new 23springs tower in Uptown back in January 2024, according to a press release from Granite Properties, when the still-unfinished tower was only 34 percent leased. Deloitte is now moving into the 26-story high-rise at 2323 Cedar Springs Road, joining a roster of tenants that has pushed 23springs to 93 percent leased as of July.
Granite Properties and Highwoods Properties co-own 23springs, a $450 million, 641,563-square-foot tower completed in August 2025 after securing a $265 million construction loan from anchor tenant Bank OZK, per CoStar. The tower replaced a former three-building low-rise office complex. Beyond Deloitte, 23springs has also added law firm King & Spalding, Prudential Financial's PGIM asset management division, and a still-unnamed mystery tenant, with King & Spalding and PGIM both slated to move in during 2027.
A Tower Built Around Klyde Warren Park
Dallas Arts Tower sits near Klyde Warren Park, the green space that separates Uptown from Downtown Dallas and has become something of a dividing line in this leasing story. Deloitte and JPMorgan Chase together freed up 300,000 square feet in the tower back in 2022, and other tenants have since followed the same northward path. International law firm Greenberg Traurig, for instance, signed a lease for 49,400 square feet to relocate from Dallas Arts Tower to the McKinney & Olive tower in Uptown, with that move scheduled for spring 2026, according to Traded.
The tower itself has history. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1987 as Chase Tower, the 738-foot skyscraper is the fourth-tallest building in Dallas, distinguished by a six-story keyhole opening near its crown, per Wikipedia. Brooklyn-based Fortis Property Group bought the building in 2016 and renamed it from Chase Tower to Dallas Arts Tower in May 2023 after JPMorgan Chase scaled back its office presence there.
Downtown's Vacancy Problem and Fortis's Counter-Bet
The renaming came alongside a bigger bet. Fortis Property Group has spent $15 million renovating Dallas Arts Tower, replacing 1980s green marble lobby floors with white stone, installing updated elevator cabs and exterior LED lighting, and building out a rotating 2,000-square-foot public art gallery curated by the Business Council for the Arts inside a former ground-floor Chase bank branch, according to The Real Deal.
That spending is happening against a difficult backdrop. Central Business District office vacancy in Downtown Dallas has ranged between 26.9 percent and nearly 30 percent through mid-2025 and 2026, among the highest downtown office vacancy rates in the country, per Downtown Dallas Inc. Total downtown office stock has contracted by 3.8 percent to 34 million square feet as older buildings convert or get demolished. Measured against that backdrop, Dallas Arts Tower's 70 percent occupancy looks comparable to or better than the broader downtown core.
Uptown's pull is partly demographic. The neighborhood's 75204 ZIP code gained more Gen Z residents in 2025 than any other area in the metro, a trend Hoodline previously reported, with median apartment rents in the neighborhood reaching approximately $2,300 a month. That's part of why accounting, legal, and financial firms have been drawn north across the park to buildings like 23springs, which already counts Sidley Austin and financial firm UBS among its tenants.
Still, the Carrington Coleman signing suggests older downtown towers with fresh capital behind them can still compete for backfill business, even if they can't match Uptown's newest builds for pre-leasing speed. TRD staff and contributor Hunter Cooke reported the original details of the leasing update.
