Dallas Morning News
Written by: Steve Brown
In case you haven’t noticed, Victory Park is almost finished, just in time for its 20th birthday.
Two decades after the 75-acre project was first envisioned on the northwest corner of downtown, the ambitious mixed-use development is mostly built.
Only a few building sites remain.
This year Victory Park will get its biggest development boost with the opening of four luxury apartment towers.
The new rental high-rises will bring more than 2,000 additional residents to the district that includes Dallas’ American Airlines Center sports arena.
While Victory Park was originally planned to have a large number of office buildings, a shift in plans after the Great Recession has led to the construction of multiple apartment projects.
The apartments have brought new life to a project that was slow to catch on and suffered setbacks in the early years.
Victory Park’s retail and restaurants opened just in time for the economic downturn, and foreign investors who bankrolled the development wound up taking over a big chunk of the project in 2009.
Since then the new owners — represented by Florida-based Estein & Associates — have worked to reposition Victory Park’s retail and add more residential units.
“We have two pieces of land left — one right across from the W Hotel and the back parking garage site on Victory Avenue,” said Victory Park vice president Lance Fair. “We want to see this project through full development.
“Right now we are focused on getting the retail stabilized,” Fair said. “We are going to deliver what was promised.”
Victory Park’s new Cinepolis movie theater will open at the end of this year.
And the two remaining office development sites — controlled by developers Hines and Hillwood — offer opportunities for corporations to plant their flags at Victory Park.
So far, buildings valued for taxes at more than $3.5 billion have been completed at Victory Park.
In 1997, the property along Stemmons Freeway was a rail yard, a toxic power plant site and an old grain elevator.
Now it’s a high-rise connector between downtown Dallas and Uptown.