Dallas – After more than a decade of false starts, redevelopment of the former Valley View Mall site in Dallas is finally underway. On Friday, developers broke ground on a roughly $85 million mixed-use project that will serve as the anchor for the long-planned Dallas Midtown district.

The first phase, called Premier at Midtown, will rise on about four acres at the southwest corner of Dillbeck Lane and Preston Road. The six-story building will feature 296 apartments above as much as 26,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, kicking off the broader Dallas Midtown vision, according to Scott Beck, president of Beck Ventures. The average unit will be about 865 square feet, with rents around $1,800 a month.

Dallas-based Anthem Development is leading the project in partnership with Beck Ventures and Prime Life Technologies America, a joint venture between Toyota Motor Corporation and Panasonic Holdings Corporation. NexBank is providing financing, Cross Architects designed the building, and Anthem’s construction arm will handle the general contracting.

Beck and his partners celebrated the milestone with a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday that featured speeches and the traditional dirt toss, along with new renderings of the luxury apartment building and its street-level retail. They expect to pull permits within the next 45 to 60 days. Construction is projected to take about two and a half years, with the first residents expected to move in by early 2028, Beck said.

“After 12 years of planning, patience, setbacks and perseverance, we are breaking ground on our very first project that will officially begin the rebirth of this district,” Beck told attendees. He added, “This time is definitely different,” nodding to the site’s history of stalled plans.

The stakes stretch far beyond a single apartment building. Beck Ventures first unveiled plans more than 10 years ago to transform the 110-acre Valley View Center site at Preston Road and LBJ Freeway into Dallas Midtown. The vision is a multibillion-dollar mixed-use destination with roughly 1.5 million square feet of retail, restaurants, residential units, office towers, and a hotel-condo tower. In 2013, the city created a 450-acre development zone covering Valley View and the nearby Galleria Dallas to support that vision.

Yet the sweeping redevelopment stalled. Beck has blamed the slow progress in part on the city’s failure to install a needed sewer line, saying that a $36 million city incentive package tied to the project eventually expired as construction never got going. City representatives did not immediately respond to his comments when asked by DALTX Real Estate Team.

Meanwhile, the mall sat decaying. Valley View went dark in 2015, with only an AMC theater operating at the largely abandoned complex at LBJ and Preston until early 2022. The structure was finally demolished in 2023 after a series of fires at the vacant site, including one that left two Dallas firefighters injured.

Premier at Midtown represents only a small slice of the Valley View property, and the future of the remaining acreage is still up in the air. Beck’s firm joined with Seritage Growth Properties and fitness operator Life Time Inc. at the end of 2024 to market the entire site in hopes of drawing additional development partners. Beck has not disclosed which parties have made offers but said the goal is to secure collaborators to develop the rest of the land.

Plans for a larger, multibillion-dollar mix of retail, dining, residential, office space, and more remain on the table, though how and when that full build-out will come together is unclear. “There are other groups out there that are very interested in working with us,” Beck said, describing ongoing talks but offering few specifics.

One lingering question is whether professional sports could become part of the site’s future. Beck would not confirm whether representatives of the Dallas Mavericks are exploring the area for a potential new NBA arena, but he suggested the surrounding district would be suitable for a major venue. “The table is set to make a deal like that happen,” he said.

For now, the focus is on turning years of renderings and promises into visible construction. The broader Dallas Midtown redevelopment is projected at around $4 billion, and Friday’s groundbreaking marked the first real step toward replacing the long-vacant mall with dense, urban-style development. After years of stalled momentum, cranes and concrete at Valley View may finally signal that Dallas Midtown is moving from concept into reality.

Below is a timeline of Valley View Center Mall from its opening through 2025