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Dallas County's new parking garage was built with an eye toward the future — both the future of electric vehicles and that of downtown Dallas.
The 12-story garage at 700 Jackson St., across from the George Allen Courts Building, is planned to open this week. Developed by Serra Real Estate Capital, it's been in the works since 2021.
It adds 1,228 spaces of much-needed parking capacity for county jurors and for workers in an adjacent office tower. The project also includes a little more than 18,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.
The project cost nearly $67 million, according to an announcement from the developers.
The forward-looking project has the power capacity to charge electric vehicles in every space if desired.
It's also built to support potential additional development on top, such as an office, hotel, apartment or condo tower of up to 15 stories and floor plates of about 15,000 square feet.
The developer owns the property subject to a credit tenant lease, according to Serra Managing Director Mike Lessel, meaning the company used the credit of the county to get financing and that the county will own the property after 10 years.
A hypothetical rendering shows how a hotel tower could look on top of the garage. Lessel said the rendering was conceptual, only created to see what such a project could look like as part of structural studies.
A hotel development could be quite appealing. The garage is just north of Dallas' soon-to-be-redeveloped convention center and near other potential development sites, such as the Greyhound station expected to shut down this year and a McDonald's that could soon lose its drive-thru permit.
"There are zero plans, no plans at all, to construct anything up there," Lessel said. "It's the county's decision. If they ever want to put offices or something else, that's their business, not ours.”
Labora Group, the family holding company of City Electric Supply, will use 500 spaces in a separate part of the garage for employees at its offices in the 400 Record tower across the street, according to Lessel. A Labora affiliate sold the land to Serra in 2021. A condition of the deal, Lessel said, was that they would sign a sublease with the county for the parking spaces.
Labora will also own the ground-floor retail space through a condominium structure, Lessel said.
Dallas-based architecture firm Corgan designed the garage. General contractors Azteca-Omega Group and H.J. Russell & Company constructed the building in a joint venture. More than half of the subcontractors are minority or women-owned businesses, the developers said.
"By championing diverse suppliers and small business enterprises, as well as addressing critical needs of our aging infrastructure, we have significantly advanced our goal of building a more inclusive and resilient Dallas County," County Commissioner Elba Garcia said in a statement.
Amey Mitthankhediwale, project manager for Azteca-Omega Group, said the project design was finalized just after the start of the pandemic, so the project team faced labor shortages and materials price increases. "We were able to mitigate all those issues," he said.
Carolyn Mulligan, project architect for Corgan, designers wanted to ensure that the garage was surrounded by a walkable pedestrian experience.
"The most important thing that we care about with any building downtown is what the ground level looks like, first and foremost," Mulligan said. "It has to be integrated with the city."
She said the building uses fractal design techniques, breaking the facade into three tiers so it doesn't look as massive as it could have otherwise.
"On a cloudy day like this, the building actually blends into the sky, which is really nice," Mulligan said on a project tour. "It makes it not feel so ominous or so big."