Three Dallas Midtown stakeholders and development partners submitted plans Wednesday to the Dallas Regional Chamber to bring Amazon.com Inc.'s proposed second headquarters to the 430-acre site slated for redevelopment in North Dallas.
Plans for the 100-acre campus on the tract housing the aging Valley View Mall, which is in the process of being demolished. The urban-style campus would have an adjacent, 'Amazon Park,' for the company's employees — if they so desired to locate HQ2 in North Dallas.
"This sits in the center of Dallas in close proximity to housing that is affordable and attainable to employees and easily accessible," Dallas developer Scott Beck told the Dallas Business Journal. "This sits equidistant to downtown Dallas and to Legacy Business Park in Plano."
Dallas-based Beck Ventures has partnered up with Fort Worth-based Crescent Real Estate Equities, which is in the midst of developing the headquarters for American Airlines Group in Fort Worth.
The joint venture has teamed up with two other joint ventures — EF Properties and Hillwood, as well as Seritage and KDC — that are making their development sites available to, hopefully, land Amazon.
"We have three of the top built-to-suit partners on this project with three property owners formalizing the pitch for Amazon," Beck said. "You have all this fiber connectivity to the site and it sits between the Tollway, Preston and 635 — some of the city's major arteries."
The development group plans to add an elevated train connection to link up to the future DART Cotton Belt Rail Line.
And Dallas-based KDC could deliver a 500,000-square-foot office building on the former site of Sears by the 2019 deadline.
Dallas has a great shot of landing Amazon's proposed $5 billion campus, with the region stacking up nicely compared with other metropolitan areas under consideration, Beck said. Other cities competitive for the project include Denver, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
"This is a nationally-connected city with a large enough population and density to attract talent," he said. "Where they need to be located will be based on their growth trajectory and the smaller cities wouldn't be able to handle that growth.
With close proximity to Dallas Love Field and an executive airport in Addison, the Midtown site makes a lot of sense for Amazon, he said. Amazon has already set up a fast-growing regional office within Galleria Towers.
In the bigger cities, Beck said the pricing and availability of land could also be a concern for a fast-growing company, such as Amazon.
"Based on the RFP, they don't want to end up in the same situation as they have in Seattle, which is they are the 800-pound gorilla that has outgrown downtown Seattle," he said. "We have the space to accommodate them."
