- Hall Group acquired the eight-story, 112,000-square-foot office building at 2525 McKinnon St. in Dallas’s Y’all Street district, renaming it Hall Uptown.
- The seller, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management and Morning Calm Management, had owned the property since City Office REIT’s $1.1 billion take-private earlier this year.
- The deal gives Hall Group a dual-headquarters structure alongside its Frisco campus, adding to Dallas office investment that trails only Manhattan nationally this year.
Hall Group has acquired a Dallas office tower in the city’s Y’all Street district, according to Commercial Property Executive. The eight-story, 112,000-square-foot building at 2525 McKinnon St. was sold by MCME Carell, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management and Morning Calm Management. Hall Group is rebranding the property Hall Uptown and will use it alongside its Frisco campus as a dual headquarters, a structure that lets the firm keep a foothold in both the urban core and its suburban home base.
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From REIT to Private Owner
The building last traded for $46.8 million in 2017, when it was owned by City Office REIT. That REIT went private earlier this year through a $1.1 billion deal, after which MCME Carell held the asset before selling to Hall Group. Eastdil Secured Savills brokered the transaction, adding another Y’all Street property to the growing list of assets that have changed hands as institutional owners reassess their Dallas office holdings.
The Details
Built in 2003, the tower offers floor plates of 10,000 to 20,000 square feet and counts City Bank, Rasansky | McKenzie Law, and Crowe Dunlevy among its current tenants. Hall Group’s dual-headquarters plan splits operations between Hall Uptown and Hall Park, the firm’s Frisco campus that has delivered 16 office buildings since 1989 and is now undergoing a $7 billion mixed-use redevelopment. Pairing an established Dallas asset with that suburban campus gives Hall Group a presence on both ends of the metro’s office map.
Zooming Out
The purchase adds to a strong run for Dallas office investment, which totaled $2.9 billion from January through July this year, trailing only Manhattan’s $5.2 billion nationally. Average pricing hit $213.7 per square foot, a 7.9% premium to the national average. Other recent deals include Lone Star Funds’ acquisition of the 457,901-square-foot Premier Place tower from a Glenstar Properties affiliate last month, and Hobbs Brook’s purchase of 17 Cowboys Way in nearby Frisco, both signs that Dallas-area office assets are still finding buyers willing to pay above the national average even as many other US metros see office pricing stay depressed.
Why It Matters
Dallas’s office investment volume, now second only to Manhattan, signals that buyers see the metro’s fundamentals as stable enough to underwrite mid-size, value-add deals even while much of the national office market remains under pressure. Hall Group’s move to a dual-headquarters model also reflects how established Dallas-area developers are consolidating real estate rather than leasing, a sign of confidence in owning versus renting through the current cycle, and a strategy that shields the firm from the leasing volatility still working through much of the office sector. It also mirrors a broader trend of Dallas-based operators buying rather than leasing trophy space once owned by REITs and other institutional sellers exiting the market.
“There are two worlds of office: the high-performing buildings with rising rents that are full, and then there’s everything else… a B building in a B location is really tough, and probably obsolete.”
Ray Lawler, Head of the Americas at Hines, on CRE Daily’s No Cap podcast
What’s Next
Watch whether Hall Uptown’s current tenants, including City Bank and the two law firms, renew as Hall Group takes over ownership, and whether the firm brings additional capital improvements to the 2003-built tower. With Dallas office investment already outpacing most of the country, expect more owner-occupiers and value-add buyers to compete for similarly sized assets through the rest of the year, particularly in submarkets like Y’all Street that have drawn repeated institutional turnover.
