PLANO, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
A dynamic mixed-use site with a new name and an interesting history has a new team to oversee office leasing.
Dallas-based commercial real estate giant CBRE (NYSE: CBRE) will handle leasing at Assembly Park on behalf of owner Triten Real Estate Partners. The project, with 180,000 square feet of office space and 17,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, is a redevelopment of what was formerly Plano Market Square Mall, once a 300,000-square-foot shopping mall built in the 1980s.
Two tenants have already signed leases at Assembly Park’s office space. Louisville, Kentucky.-based CMTA, a global sustainable engineering firm, leased 8,017 square feet, while Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based NSM Insurance Services leased 10,648 square feet of office space.
The space is a creative and collaborative environment, featuring exposed ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows with green space throughout the property. It includes a 4,300-square-foot fitness center with Peloton equipment and is about a quarter of a mile away from the Oak Point Nature Preserve, an 800-acre park in Plano.
"Assembly Park is a tremendous example of how thoughtful and innovative redevelopment can breathe new life into areas to form vibrant, thriving communities," said Ben Davis, senior vice president with CBRE.
Davis, Shannon Brown, and Julee Amparo of CBRE are the brokers for the office space, which was designed by Austin-based Michael Hsu Office of Architecture. Newmark Group previously marketed the site before CBRE took over leasing a month ago. Before that, Transwestern oversaw the site’s office leasing.
The new leasing team is entering the picture as an additional 13,061 square-feet of speculative office space nears completion at the site.
So far, about 20,000 square feet of space has been leased in the project, Amparo said. Additionally, some of the available space is “ready to go” spec for tenants to come in and begin work as usual.
“It's a big thing in our Dallas market about having move-in ready suites, where the landlord puts in their own capital to make that suite have nice finishes,” Amparo said.
“There's not a ton of just completely redeveloped malls that look like this, feel like this and have that creative vibe inside,” Amparo added.
The project’s location is appealing to businesses wanting to be near educated and talented labor. It is also accessible to nearby neighborhoods and schools as well as U.S. Highway 75.
“Whether that’s McKinney, Allen, Plano or Richardson, it’s on major arterials, it’s easy to access from across the DFW metroplex,” Hardaway said.
During the early 2000s, Market Square Mall in East Plano, which was anchored by a TJ Maxx in its heyday, struggled to retain tenants as it began competing with department stores.
But the site gained new life in early 2021, when Houston-based Triten bought the mall and spearheaded a project to redevelop it into a walkable, lively destination for office users and residents. It also boasts about 17,000 square feet in retail space and an apartment complex with 304 units.
“The vision was to create a sense of place for tenants, visitors from the community and residents who are on site and have it be a fun, lively, exciting place to come and spend time,” said John Hardaway, a partner with Triten.
The Annabel at Assembly Park apartment community also delivered this summer, and about 50% of the building is leased.
Triten's other redevelopment projects include Work/Shop, a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use site on Belt Line Road in Far North Dallas. It bought the building in 2019 and renovated the space to include a newly designed lobby and an outside patio.
