A mysterious tenant listed only as DFW 22 is behind a major renovation planned for Galleria North Tower I at 13737 Noel Road in North Dallas, and the clues are pointing straight at Amazon. The e-commerce giant did not respond to a request for comment on whether it is the tenant in question.
According to The Real Deal, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation received a filing tied to the 16-story, 395,000-square-foot building, listed under the project name DFW 22 Galleria North Tower I Phase 1. The publication reported the renovation is estimated at $57 million and split into two phases, with the first phase covering roughly 223,000 square feet and running from January 1 through August 13, 2027. A separate TDLR project page, however, lists a Galleria North Tower One renovation with an estimated cost of $5,698,000, a start date of February 2, 2026 and a completion date of August 31, 2026 — a discrepancy the available evidence does not resolve as either the same project scope or a distinct filing.
Part of the intrigue traces back to the property owner's phone number on file, which is linked to Austin-based Devin Ward, identified on LinkedIn as a construction manager at Amazon, the outlet reported. The account Coming Soon Texas has posted that it was betting heavily the tenant was Amazon, noting that the DFW 22 moniker matches the company's internal naming convention of pairing local airport codes with sequential numbers.
A Building With Room to Fill
Galleria North Tower I is owned by Boston-based WS Development, which bought the property with a loan of almost $63.4 million from Athene Annuity & Life Company, per the same account. The building was about 65 percent occupied at the time of the 2025 sale, with several floors sitting vacant. Amenities include a gym, a cafe and an outdoor courtyard, and CBRE handles leasing at the property, the report notes. WS Development did not respond to a request for comment.
Amazon already has a foothold nearby. The company signed a five-year lease renewal in 2024 at Two Galleria Tower on Noel Road, part of a deal in which an e-commerce retailer leased more than 240,000 square feet through 2030 at the Dallas Galleria Office Towers, according to the same publication's earlier reporting. Amazon had previously occupied more than 100,000 square feet in that 13-story building and has added 600 corporate and tech positions to its Dallas workforce. CoStar has separately described Amazon as a major tenant at the broader Galleria Towers property, which underwent its own redevelopment from early 2024 to early 2025.
A Tight Submarket With Rising Rents
Any new Amazon commitment would land in a submarket still working through a glut of empty space. Far North Dallas carried a 29 percent total vacancy rate, higher than every other DFW submarket except the Central Business District, according to reporting tied to the Galleria North Tower I sale. Class A buildings in that submarket recorded 309,581 square feet of positive absorption, while Class B properties saw negative absorption of 173,998 square feet — a split that underscores tenants' preference for newer, better-amenitized space. Asking rents along the Dallas North Tollway corridor averaged $34.68 per square foot, above the area's overall average of $31.34 per square foot, per Partners Real Estate data cited in the same report.
Across the broader Dallas/Fort Worth office market, the direct vacancy rate stood at 23.5 percent in the second quarter of 2026, down 40 basis points from 23.9 percent a year earlier, according to Kidder Mathews research. Total vacancy including sublease space was 25.1 percent, down 90 basis points year over year, while average direct asking rents climbed to $33.86 per square foot annually, up 6.6 percent. Net absorption reached 640,341 square feet for the quarter, a jump of 90.7 percent from a year earlier — signs that some corners of the market are tightening even as older buildings like Galleria North Tower I work to fill vacant floors.
