Why downtown Dallas office space is being turned into 1,000 new urban apartments

The 211 N. Ervay building is a bright spot on the Dallas skyline.

The last survivor of a generation of downtown offices that once sported colorful exteriors, the 65-year-old high-rise is covered in azure and aquamarine panels.

The tower’s vibrant exterior once prompted a Dallas mayor to call it the ugliest building downtown.

But the building’s flashy 1950s look is a big plus for new owner Kenny Wolfe.

“I’m a midcentury modern fan,” said Wolfe, whose firm plans to convert the 187,000-square-foot tower into 238 rental units.

The Ervay Street office is one of a handful of downtown buildings being revamped into residential.

Wolfe Investments plans to start construction on the 211 N. Ervay building this summer and have apartments ready about 18 months later.

“This is our 11th office conversion we are working on,” Wolfe said. “We have a lot of them across the country — 2.2 million square feet in total of office conversions. What we liked about 211 N Ervay is it is close to one of our other assets, the Post Office building, so we are already in the neighborhood.”

Wolfe Investments acquired the landmark 400 N. Ervay apartments on top of the historic Post Office in 2021.

“We have eight of these historic buildings in our portfolio now,” Wolfe said. “I’m a sucker for history.”

The 211 N. Ervay building has a colorful past.

Built in 1958, the 18-story high-rise was constructed by legendary Dallas developer Leo Corrigan, credited with the most additions to the city’s skyline in the 1950s.

The tower — shoehorned onto a 50-foot by 200-foot lot — was designed by Thomas Stanley, the same architect who did downtown’s historic First National Bank Tower (now named The National). The building’s eye-popping porcelain enamel steel panels were fabricated by the same firm that built Dallas’ original signature flying red horse on top of the Magnolia Building.

Wolfe Investments plans to take spaces that once housed workplaces for lawyers and insurance agents and convert them into apartments with an average square footage of about 700 square feet.

“We do a lot of one-bedrooms and a few efficiencies in these buildings,” Wolfe said. “We know the residents that are going to want to live there are more inclined to go for a one-bedroom unit. It’s going to feel big because of the size of the windows.”

Unlike some of the offices Wolfe is working with, the Ervay tower will have very little dead space. Buildings with large office floors sometimes are difficult to transform into rental units.

“It’s easy to pack in a lot of units in that building,” he said. “We bought the old Ohio Bell headquarters in Cleveland and are converting it. Those floors are as big as 32,000 square feet.”

To fill interior spaces, Wolfe said, “we’ve created a lot of storage lockers for our residents on every floor.”

Wolfe Investments has another apartment conversion project in downtown Fort Worth and is renovating two buildings in downtown Atlanta.

“We are working on a deal in downtown Columbus, Ohio, and also downtown Milwaukee,” he said. “Three years ago, we bought our first vacant office building — the Rockefeller Building in downtown Cleveland. That kicked it off.”

Before that first historic building buy, Wolfe Investments acquired mostly suburban apartment properties.

“We started in 2010 buying B-class apartments — the first one in Wylie, which we still own,” Wolfe said. “Then we built up almost 8,000 units over six states.”

Wolfe said he’s looking at multiple office redevelopment opportunities across the country.

“We have another two towers in Atlanta that were put in front of us from a struggling office owner two weeks ago,” he said. “We ‘re seeing a lot of these come to us directly from lenders or office owners.”

With office demand slumping after workers headed home during the pandemic, building owners are scrambling to look at new uses for surplus office space.

Owners of the Republic Center II tower and Energy Plaza near the 211 N. Ervay building also are working on residential redevelopment.

The busiest downtown Dallas apartment converter is Pacific Elm Properties, which is building new residential units in the 50-story Santander Tower and the 40-story Bryan Tower. The real estate firm is also eyeing plans to turn Comerica Bank Tower — one of downtown’s tallest skyscrapers — into a combination of office, apartment and hotel space.

“I toured the units in Santander Tower last week,” said Pacific Elm CEO Jonas Woods. “We expect to have finished units in July and tenants moving in in August. We ended up with 291 units.”

Pacific Elm teamed up with Dallas apartment builder Mintwood Real Estate to develop the residential spaces in both Santander Tower and Bryan Tower.

“I’m pretty excited about what is happening downtown with these conversions,” Woods said. “It’s got the potential to have a bigger impact than anything we have seen to date.”

He plans to begin construction later this year on the more than 1.1 million-square-foot Bryan Tower, which was built in 1973 as the first modern skyscraper constructed by developer Trammell Crow. WDG Architecture is working on the redevelopment of both the Santander and Bryan towers. Merriman Anderson Architects is designing the new ground floor of Bryan Tower.

“We think we are going to be awarded historic tax credits on the project,” Woods said. The high-rise was the first reflective glass tower built in downtown Dallas.

Remaining office tenants at Bryan Tower are being relocated to the middle floors of the building. The lower 10 floors of the building and top 10 levels will be converted into 426 apartments.

New resident lounge areas, a business center, a coworking space, a library and other amenities will be constructed on the tower’s first two levels.

“We have some space outside the building where we will create a pool area and garden area for the residents,” Woods said.