Three vacant office buildings along Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in Dallas are being torn down to make room for 435 apartments, with construction now officially underway on a project that will set aside half its units as affordable housing. High Street Residential, the residential arm of Trammell Crow Company, has broken ground on the Class A multifamily community at 5550 Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway, with completion expected by summer 2028.
The development sits on roughly 5.4 acres within an 8.6-acre redevelopment site, according to yieldpro.com. Rather than scraping the site clean, the project will keep and upgrade an existing parking garage while replacing the three vacant office buildings with new residential construction, as Dallas Business Journal reported. The finished community will feature a five-story building and a seven-story building, both integrated with that existing structured garage.
Of the 435 total units, 217 will rent at market rate and 218 will be designated affordable, per yieldpro.com's reporting. The project is structured as a Dallas Public Facility Corporation development, and Dallas City Council action in April authorized the PFC to acquire, develop and own the property and to enter a 75-year lease with High Street Residential or an affiliate, according to citizenportal.ai, which reported the council designated half the units at affordable levels.
Who's Building It and What's Inside
High Street Residential is developing the project with Acram Group as co-general partners, with Parse Capital providing preferred equity, per the same yieldpro.com account. WDG Architecture is designing the community, and OHT Partners is serving as general contractor. The amenity package will include a clubroom, co-working space, sports lounge, resort-style pool, fitness center and a seventh-floor sky lounge, according to ConnectCRE.
Part of a Bigger Shift in Dallas Office Space
The project arrives amid a wave of similar conversions across North Texas. Around 20% of Dallas office space sits vacant, according to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, which notes that office demand remains weak even as housing demand keeps growing in the city. That mismatch has pushed developers to look at empty office buildings as a fix for housing supply rather than a problem to be ignored.
By December 2024, Dallas had already seen close to 40 office conversions, with more than 5 million square feet of vacant space either being transformed or in the planning stages, Downtown Dallas Inc. President and CEO Jennifer Scripps told D Magazine. Statewide, office-to-residential conversions are also underway in Texas. Office-to-residential conversions have produced nearly 28,000 housing units nationwide since 2016.
Dallas-Fort Worth Ranks Among the Nation's Top Conversion Markets
Dallas-Fort Worth now ranks third among U.S. metros for planned office-to-apartment conversions, trailing only Washington, D.C., and New York City, according to Dallas Innovates. The outlet reports 3,163 apartments are in the works inside DFW office buildings, representing more than 82% of the metro's upcoming conversion pipeline — a figure that has jumped 58% from the previous year. Other notable local conversions cited in that report include Renaissance Tower's planned 500 apartments, Bryan Tower's 425 units, and smaller projects at a former Oncor building and the old Star-Telegram headquarters.
NorthMarq reported that the region's multifamily construction pipeline has contracted to about 43% below its 2023 peak, even as net absorption outpaced new deliveries by roughly 1,000 units in the first quarter.
