First, let’s disambiguate: Trammell Crow Residential is not the same Trammell Crow Co. that is looking to build the Sam’s Club in Uptown East/East Village/Cityplace, which is a subsidiary of commercial development firm CBRE. Trammell Crow Residential is owned by Crow Holdings, and has no connection to Trammell Crow Co., but is actually owned by the Crow family.
Now that we’ve got the name game out of the way, let’s talk dirt: TCR has purchased the old Mission Motel — an old Route 66-era motor inn on West Commerce street just down the road from Sylvan | Thirty, which was once an old motel (Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts), too. They are both just down the way from the beautifully restored Belmont Hotel, which is also home to the award-winning restaurant from sausage-preneur Tim Byres called Smoke.
As for the Mission Motel, one of the last surviving old motor court motels on West Commerce, TCR is planning to build 300 or so rental units, as well as 14,000 square feet of retail, on the site and an adjoining lot. The motel, which has fallen into disrepair over the years, will most likely be torn down. I have to wonder, of course, if preservationists will throw a fit over its demolition as they did with the Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts. Sylvan | Thirty developer Oaxaca Interests has pledged to include the old Alamo Plaza sign into their plans, a conciliatory gesture to those up in arms over the old motel’s razing.
This new project from TCR is another in a boom of multifamily development in West Dallas, which is seeing an explosion in new construction after the construction of the new Calatrava Bridge. No longer called the “bridge to nowhere,” the designer overpass spanning the Trinity River has spurned new investment from big names in Dallas business and real estate.
According to Steve Brown, TCR is bullish about West Dallas and North Oak Cliff, as are other developers building and leasing in this quickly transitioning area:
“Each one of our deals has gotten well above what we expected in rental rates,” Bancroft said.
Crow Residential’s planned Commerce Street development is one of several apartment projects in the works for that neighborhood.
Along with the Sylvan Thirty and Wood Partners projects, Henry S. Miller Co. is working on another rental community near the Belmont Hotel.
And developers Robert Shaw and Roger Staubach have announced plans for hundreds of apartments to be built in the Trinity Groves development on Singleton Boulevard.
